Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a 501(c)3 nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.
A federal judge sounded more like a tough-talking truant officer when he dressed down the Environmental Protection Agency last week for failing to enforce the Clean Air Act.
"EPA has been grossly delinquent,” noted U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman, who assailed what he branded “the foot-dragging efforts of a delinquent agency.”
Since most of the major media failed to report on this remarkable ruling, it might be worth taking a minute to examine just what prompted Friedman, a judge appointed by President Clinton, to use such unusually blunt language.
The case involved a lawsuit by the Sierra Club, which pointed out that the EPA had ignored a congressional directive to set toxic air pollution standards for literally dozens of industries, including manufacturers of plastics, paints, chemicals and pesticides. These are among the biggest sources of cancer-causing chemicals in urban areas. EPA’s failure was recently highlighted by a Government Accountability Office report, which noted that 95 percent of Americans face an increased risk of developing cancer as a result of breathing air toxins.
In its lawsuit, the Sierra Club also observed that the EPA had blown deadlines to set standards for various products that emit smog-forming pollution—perhaps one reason why the Clean Air Watch Smog Survey found smog problems in 38 states last month.
The EPA had a pretty lame alibi: It was busy.
Friedman noted that EPA was busy all right—busy trying to cut deals for polluters. The agency, he said, “currently devotes substantial resources to discretionary rulemakings, many of which make existing regulations more congenial to industry, and several of which since have been found unlawful."
The agency’s priorities reflect the Bush administration’s cozy relationship with polluters.
Here is a brief recap of a couple of those time-consuming, industry-friendly EPA activities that have left the public gasping (there's more here).
EPA put Humpty Dumpty in charge: In 2003, the Bush administration created a giant loophole for coal-burning electric power plants, which are collectively the nation’s biggest source of pollution. Prompted by the power industry, which contributed tens of millions of dollars to President Bush and (mainly) other Republican candidates, EPA said power plants could actually pollute even more.
A federal appeals court gave Judge Friedman a precedent for colorful language when it overturned this attempted giveaway to polluters, noting that it would make sense only “in a Humpty-Dumpty world .”
Even so, EPA’s pro-polluter action left scores of power plants belching smoke and chemicals into local communities.
EPA ruled that mercury is benign: In one of its most flagrant "nice-to-industry” actions, the Bush EPA overturned a ruling by the agency under President Clinton that electric power plants were a major source of toxic mercury—a declaration that should have led to prompt and universal cleanup.
Again the power industry weighed in at the White House, and again, the EPA caved. It ruled that mercury from power plants wasn’t toxic at all—even though the power industry is the nation’s biggest unregulated source of mercury, and mercury from other smokestack industries is considered toxic.
This legal lie was concocted by a law firm, Latham & Watkins, which represented the power industry. It helped that two Latham & Watkins alumni—Jeffrey Holmstead and William Wehrum—were at EPA literally rewriting the rules to cut the break for their former employer’s clients and exempt power plants from mercury controls well into the future.
After more than four years of such vile deal-cutting, Holmstead left EPA last August for a year-long, around-the-world tour. (A prediction: He will surface again within a matter of weeks, probably to rejoin Latham & Watkins or a similar firm.) Holmstead left his deputy, Wehrum, behind to finish the job of helping industry with such initiatives as:
The dirty-dust cover-up. Last year Wehrum spoke to a gathering of cattlemen and warned them that EPA had scientific evidence that cattle dust could pose a health threat. Wehrum suggested some research that the cattlemen could conduct to beat the rap—and they did—The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported .
Now Wehrum may have a complicated to-do list, since Judge Friedman ordered the EPA to move more quickly to deal with the toxic pollution mess.
But the real mess inside EPA probably won’t get cleaned up before the next presidential election.
