It’s beat up the EPA day! - July 30, 2008
Yesterday four US Senators told Environmental Protection Agency head Stephen Johnson to resign as they had “lost all confidence” he could follow the law.
“One would be hard-pressed to think of an agency ever quite as demoralized as the EPA is these days,” my colleague Alex noted.
Well today there’s more EPA bashing...
Down in Florida US District Judge Alan Gold has said the agency turned a blind eye to the state’s management of the Everglades in a row over pollution limits. The Palm Beach Post says it was “a blistering attack”.
In 1994 the state approved the Everglades Forever Act limiting pollution, says the paper. Then in 2003 it amended the act to put off enforcement of the limits till 2016, an action the EPA approved.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel characterises the judge’s ruling as meaning the EPA and the state “dismally failed in their duty to protect the Everglades from harmful phosphorus washing off sugar farms, vegetable fields and suburban streets”.
Of course the best thing to do if you’re being criticised is stick your fingers in your ears and shout ‘la, la, la, can’t hear you’ at the top of your voice, as reported yesterday here.
An email obtained by both the Washington Post and AP shows this is exactly what the EPA is doing.
The June 16 e-mail from Robbi Farrell, who heads the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, instructs managers to remind employees "at your next staff meeting" that if they "are contacted directly by the IG's office or GAO requesting information of any kind . . . Please do not respond to questions or make any statements." Farrell issued the same instructions for media inquiries, saying rank-and-file agency officials should "forward the call or e-mail" to one of two press officers and copy her on the exchange. - Washington Post
"If you are contacted directly by the IG's office or GAO requesting information of any kind ... please do not respond to questions or make any statements," reads the e-mail sent by Robbi Farrell, the division's chief of staff. Instead, staff members should forward inquiries to a designated EPA representative, the memo says. - AP
