Bush’s EPA letting polluters off the hook
I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears that the Bush administration is dropping the ball, intentionally, in prosecuting polluters. Who could have imagined it?
The Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.
The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.
Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials, and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.
Eric Schaeffer, for example, was the director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement in the Bush administration, but resigned in protest because the administration refused to seriously pursue enforcement. “You don’t get cleanup, and you don’t get deterrence,” Schaeffer said. “I don’t think this is a problem with agents in the field. They’re capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House.”
What’s more officials are in place to do the work on going after polluters — though the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division now has far fewer investigators than is required by the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act — but no one in positions of authority is taking the issue seriously.
[E]nvironmental prosecutions by U.S. attorneys’ offices have sharply dropped as prosecutors facing new pressures on issues such as terrorism and immigration take away resources for environmental prosecutions and try to divert cases to the main Justice Department, EPA agents said.
“Environmental crimes are simply not in the U.S. attorney top 10 priorities,” said one senior EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media.
Prosecutors counter that the EPA has fewer agents and is bringing them fewer cases. “We’re not turning away environmental crimes in order to prosecute other crimes. They are just not being presented in the first case,” said Don DeGabrielle, the U.S. attorney in Houston.
EPA memos show that investigators also have encountered new obstacles to their long-standing practice of directly referring cases to federal or state prosecutors. A new policy distributed May 25 requires agents to seek prior approval from the head of their division and establishes new paperwork procedures. This has slowed agents’ ability to make referrals, congressional investigators said.
If I didn’t know better, I might think the Bush administration doesn’t much care about protecting Americans from polluted air. That couldn’t be, could it?
One can only wonder if King George would take a different view of environmentalism—if one of his polluting buddies decided to dump a few thousand tons of toxic dust on the grounds of a certain ranch in Crawford, Texas. Maybe someone else who “just loves Dubya to pieces” could build an aluminum smelter (sans the stack-scrubber system) and a shiny new Chinese coal-fired power plant just upwind of that ranch. Then, another of his buddies could conceal some barrels of industrial waste beneath that ranch—say, maybe 5 or 6 feet below the subterranean water-level.
Are ye feelin’ the love NOW, George?
Betcha he’d learn to spell “Kyoto” really, really quick….
This is one of those “No, really?” reports, like “bread found to consist mostly of flour” or, “New Army Chief of Staff to be chosen from among senior Army officers”; or – no, wait, my favourite, I actually heard this on one of those police-chase shows last night – “in our experience, people running are usually running away from something or to something”, that make you feel like you’ve been shot out of a cannon straight into the heart of Stupidsville.
Actually, Bush cares about promoting things he thinks are important, and he thinks business is a critically important step on the way to lots of money. It is, but he has such a simplistic worldview and is so lazy that he doesn’t want to take all the steps to get there responsibly. It might even be more correct to say that he doesn’t think any of those things – his backers do, and he just does what they say. THOSE people don’t care if the river in your town will no longer support life, or if the air quality makes every bird look like a crow and they’re only distinguishable by size. No, because thay don’t have to live where that’s going on. If they did, as Steve suggests above, they might be able to dredge up a little outrage.
There’s never been an administration so willfully ignorant and rapacious, not in America. This is smash-and-grab government.
Reducing pollution requires achieving goals by meeting benchmarks. We know how Bush feels about that.
Bush is part of that wealthy group who know that they can afford pollution because as long as there is a safe place to live, they will buy it. As long as there is clean water they will own it and as long as there is oil in the world anywhere it will belong to them. So why should they be worried about pollution when they will face no consequences from it. They believe they will always be able to afford to pay for their safety even if they have to build themselves an underground city, they will be protected from pollution. The focus is to get as much wealth as possible no matter how much pollution it may cause.
The hard part for America to understand is that unless the solutions to all our energy problems are profitable they will be kept from us.
Poor, poor Dubya, something else he has been unable to get his tiny mind around, taking care of the environment and business, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There is no doubt he has been the worst guardian of this country. Ever.
Testify, bjobotts!!!! “The hard part for America to understand is that unless the solutions to all our energy problems are profitable they will be kept from us.” Thomas Jefferson, still smoking from the fumes of the time machine, couldn’t have said it any better.
The sad part is, it wasn’t always that way. Once altruism was more than just a hard word to spell if you’re from Crawford. Profit was always a consideration, but it wasn’t always the only one, and once the U.S. led the world in the development of technology that enhanced the quality of human life. The smarts and know-how are still there – there just aren’t any rewards or recognition for being altruistic.
I’ve always believed that, for Bush, “Clear Skies” meant “No Tree Left Behind”.
I am always surprised when people try to rationalize this president’s moral character when in fact he has none. He is out to rape and pillage America and then leave when his stint is over. If this country is in a recession and barely habitable, it will not matter to him sitting in his penthouse in Dubai.