Thought this would interest list members.
Laurie Belin
www.salon.com
Jumping ship at the EPA
The Bush administration has a plan to
get rid of the senior career staff at EPA -- and it's
working.
From
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By Amanda Griscom
Jan. 8, 2004 | When John Suarez, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's top enforcement
official, resigned on
Monday to take a job at a Wal-Mart
division, he assured his colleagues and President Bush
that the EPA has "been
able to provide more compliance
assistance to industry than ever before." The
operative wording here, of course, is
"assistance to industry," seeing as
Suarez played a key role in the notorious decision by
the Bush administration to
scrap lawsuits against dozens of
coal-burning utilities for past dirty-air
infringements under the New Source Review
provision of the Clean Air Act -- one of
the biggest and most controversial enforcement lapses
in the agency's
history.
To make the situation even more absurd,
Suarez concluded his resignation letter by saying, "I
can assure you that the
enforcement and compliance efforts are
[left] in good hands at EPA." Apparently, he failed to
notice that there are a
fast-dwindling number of good hands
after an exodus of senior talent from the EPA over the
holidays, including the
unexpected retirement of two top-level
career employees in the agency's enforcement division
just weeks before
Suarez's own announcement. Bruce
Buckheit, who had served in the EPA through six
presidential administrations,
and his deputy, Richard Biondi, both
retired with clear signs of indignation about the Bush
administration's disregard
for their positions.
"I just didn't feel comfortable working
in that environment anymore," Biondi told Muckraker
from his home soon
after his resignation. "Certainly the
direction that the agency was going over the last
couple years was different than
what I'd experienced during my 32 years
working for EPA. It was contrary to everything that I
had worked for."
Buckheit, who was director of the EPA's
air enforcement division, is on extended holiday
travel and could not be
reached, but made strong statements to
Greenwire just before his departure: "This new
enforcement policy [under the
Bush administration] will stop almost
all work in the power plant enforcement world," he
said. "If there was any
interesting and useful work [left] in
the power plant sector, I'd still be [at my desk]."
They're not the first to take a stand:
Eric Schaeffer, former director of EPA's
regulatory enforcement division, quit
the EPA in February 2002 in a fury and
sent a withering public resignation
letter to then-administrator Christie Whitman.
Sylvia Lowrance, an agency employee for
more than 20 years who was in
Suarez's very shoes as acting assistant
administrator of the EPA Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for
the first 18 months of the Bush
administration, retired quietly in July
2002. Though at the time she did not
speak out, she has since voiced serious
misgivings about the state of the
enforcement program.
In fact, the number of EPA enforcement
staff has fallen to its lowest level since
the agency was established, having
decreased by 12 percent -- from 528 to 464
-- since Bush took office. According to
a former EPA employee who spoke on
condition of anonymity, the
administration is working on a master plan to
quietly get rid of the senior career
staff at EPA. The plan is carried out through
one very effective strategy: an
incentive for early retirement. "I've heard that
they are offering a financial incentive
of $25,000 in addition to their retirement
plans to get out," said the former
official. "The Bush administration is the first
ever to offer such a plan to senior
officials at EPA."
This is rumored to be precisely the bait
that hooked both Buckheit and Biondi: The
administration offered them a
buyout. And given the officials'
tremendous frustrations, it's perfectly understandable
that they took it. "This
administration came in with a very
obvious bias against the career staff at EPA," said
Lowrance. "I think that they
believed that many of us were not in
tune with their thinking about environmental standards
and enforcement, and
therefore didn't trust their career
staff from the beginning. But what's interesting about
these retirement incentives is
that EPA is not exactly one of the older
agencies in government -- there isn't a whole bunch of
deadwood sitting at
the top echelons."
Another problem, added Lowrance, is that
retirees are not just dropping out of the enforcement
office. "There are
people retiring all over EPA," she said.
"I can think of about half a dozen people that have
recently decided to leave
the Superfund office, for example -- a
program where the administration is totally ignoring
the funding demands for
toxic waste cleanup."
But how does Suarez fit into this crisis
of conscience that's sweeping the agency? He was a
Whitman-appointed
Republican loyalist whose prior job was
overseeing gambling laws in New Jersey's Atlantic City
casinos. He had no
previous professional connection to the
environment and had voiced no objections to the
toothless EPA enforcement
system. So what would cause him to
leave?
"For months I've been hearing rumors
that Suarez was frustrated with his position and
wanted out," Schaeffer said.
The anonymous former EPA employee added
that Suarez was concerned about his reputation: "As
chief law enforcer
for environmental protection in this
country, it was clear to everyone [in Washington] that
he was summarily
unsuccessful -- that he was not able to
run an effective enforcement program under this
administration," said the
former official. "So from a reputation
standpoint, there were pretty clear indicators that he
should resign."
As far as environmentalists are
concerned, Suarez's departure is a welcome riddance.
There's even a bit of humor in
the fact that Suarez suddenly decided to
jump the EPA ship for Wal-Mart -- as if protecting the
welfare of the world's
largest company is an altogether more
upstanding pursuit than enforcing environmental law
throughout the U.S. But
there's nothing humorous in the mass
exodus of the agency's seasoned officials, because, as
Schaeffer observed,
"with us goes the institutional memory
of the agency." All the people who had a connection to
and understanding of
the regulatory framework of the past
will be replaced with new blood -- employees who will
more easily dismiss and
forget the decades of regulations that
the Bush administration has set out to dismantle.
Swings of victory
Nowhere is this reality more sobering
than in the area of Clean Air Act enforcement. While
environmentalists
enjoyed a surprising victory over the
holidays when the Circuit Court of Appeals in
Washington issued a preliminary
injunction to block the Bush
administration's efforts to rewrite the act's New
Source Review rule, it was in all
likelihood more a symbolic than a
practical victory.
The court action was brought by a
coalition of attorneys general from 14 states and
attorneys from 30 cities and
municipalities. They argued that the
EPA's rule would have let more than 22,000 utilities,
refineries and industrial
facilities make major expansions without
being required to install additional pollution
controls. A three-judge panel of
the court agreed that this was a
violation of the Clean Air Act and issued a temporary
injunction.
On the one hand, the decision was "proof
that law is king in this country, not the other way
around," said Chris
Miller, a staff member for the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works. On the
other, it may be that this
legal injunction is a phantom king with
a tenuous rule. Here's why: The hearings will likely
drag on for at least a
year, during which time the New Source
Review rule will remain in limbo, and the
administration will get exactly
what it is looking for: more time.
"While this remains up in the air, the Bush
administration will in all likelihood
simply continue to do nothing," said
Frank O'Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust. "And
this is precisely the
payback its corporate contributors are
hoping for."
Worse still, even if the appellate court
does decide to officially reject the Bush
administration's proposed rule
changes, there will be few top-level
enforcement officials left who have previous knowledge
of the cases and can
move forward with them. After all, it
was Bruce Buckheit and his deputy Richard Biondi who
were the most
knowledgeable about how to prosecute New
Source Review cases. According to John Stanton of the
National
Environmental Trust, "Once you lose your
brain trust, once you lose your institutional memory,
it has a crippling
effect on the ability of the enforcement
office to even proceed."
Judith Enck, a policy advisor to New
York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the
man spearheading these cases against the
administration, said she was well
aware that this victory may not,
practically speaking, have any positive
implications as long as the Bush
administration is running the show. But, she
said, the attorneys general are thinking
longer-term: "This effort will preserve
the [New Source Review] tool so it can
be used in the future -- assuming that
down the road another administration
will come along that actually wants to
enforce the Clean Air Act."
Holiday treats for pollutocrats
And that's not the only grim news from
over the holidays. While the American
public stuffed stockings, lighted
menorahs, and guzzled champagne, EPA
administrator Michael Leavitt and
Interior Secretary Gale Norton were hard at
work pushing some major regulatory
changes through their agencies' pipelines.
Two in particular are of note:
Late in the day on Dec. 23, the U.S.
Forest Service announced that it is
exempting 9 million acres in the Tongass
National Forest in Alaska from the
so-called roadless rule enacted by the
Clinton administration. The decision
would open 300,000 acres of dense,
old-growth woodland in the largest U.S. national
forest to logging and road
building, and expose a total of more
than a million acres to damage from development.
The administration and Alaska Gov. Frank
Murkowski (R) are defending this decision as a major
economic
stimulant, while environmentalists are
calling it a major tragedy in which common federal
land is being used for
narrow local purposes. Of the nearly
250,000 public comments submitted to the Forest
Service on this matter, fewer
than 2,000 supported the
administration's plan, according to the Heritage
Forests Campaign. Critics of the proposal
included the office supply giant
Staples, as well as some Forest Service employees and
a considerable number of
Alaska citizens. The decision was, of
course, most eagerly heralded by companies that have
already proposed 50
logging projects in the area. Least
enthusiastic, perhaps, are the wolves, bears, eagles,
salmon and other wildlife that
inhabit the forest and are steadily
vanishing from the rest of the country.
Then, on New Year's Eve, the Bush
administration said it would not stop companies from
using treated sewage as
fertilizer on farmland and abandoned
mines, despite a petition from more than 70 groups
including the Center for
Food Safety and the National Farmers
Union that alleges the sludge has sickened, and in
some cases killed, people
and livestock. The EPA's Office of
Science and Technology argued that the agency already
forces waste management
companies to filter about 40 pollutants
from sewage sludge, and that there isn't a reasonable
case that they need to do
more.
The EPA did, however, promise to conduct
further tests on 15 untreated chemicals and metals in
the sludge,
including acetone, barium and nitrite,
to determine if the pollutants should be removed down
the line. In the
meantime, however, sludge-smearing can
continue as usual. The groups critical of the practice
claim that at least three
people have died in the past decade
after contracting staphylococcus infections from
sewage sludge. It seems they
may have to wait for a few more deaths
before the shit finally hits the fan.
Muck it up
Here at Muckraker, we always try to keep
our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground (a real
physiognomic
challenge). The more sources we have,
the better -- so if you are a fellow lantern-bearer in
the dark caverns of the
Bush administration's environmental
policy, let us know. We welcome rumors, tips,
whistle-blowing, insider info,
top-secret documents, or other useful
tidbits on developments in environmental policy and
the people behind them.
Please send 'em along to
[log in to unmask]
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salon.com
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About the writer
Amanda Griscom is a columnist for Grist
Magazine.
Her articles on energy, technology and
the
environment have appeared in
publications ranging
from Rolling Stone to the New York Times
Magazine.
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