“Ensuring that all Americans have access to safe drinking water is an absolute top priority for EPA.” – EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy.
Really?
If actions really do speak louder than words, these are among the most disingenuous words to grace any government website.
Just ask the people of Flint, Mich. More than two years after their city’s switch to another water source sparked a lead water crisis and national outrage, many of them are still drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth with bottled water.
While McCarthy isn’t even around anymore to explain herself, Flint and the state of Michigan will be picking up the pieces for a long time.
The state so far has sent $230 million in relief to Flint. In his proposed FY 2018 budget, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder included another $48 million for continued aid. He is also pushing for strict new lead and copper rules. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed criminal charges against 14 city and state employees in connection with the crisis, including the two emergency managers appointed to run the city’s finances over the crisis timeline. Two consulting firms face civil charges. The investigation isn’t over.
Federal aid is on the way as well, with passage of a water infrastructure act that includes $120 million for Flint to replace lead water pipes and fixtures.
The EPA, for its part, has a bottled water advisory and handy tips on its website such as a video explaining how to use a faucet-mounted filter, all while insisting the crisis was the state’s fault.
But those claims no longer hold water, according to two federal investigations.
Reports from both the EPA’s Inspector General and the U.S. House Oversight Committee late last year said the EPA made a bad situation in Flint worse, by demurring on the problem as a state issue, despite having both evidence in hand and authority to get involved.
Instead, the EPA spent nine months downplaying and dismissing the evidence of high lead content brought by its own water expert Miguel Del Toral, and ignoring “desperate pleas” from community groups and even U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich.
The agency’s virtual thumb-twiddling over Flint while busying itself with expensive and less-immediate problems underscores just how far removed the EPA is from its original purpose of ensuring environmental protection.
It has been a rogue agency ever since its creation in 1970, according to former FDA official Henry Miller, writing in National Review. As the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnics, Miller was privy to EPA-funded reports. He says the agency disregards the costs of the regulations it imposes (currently $386 billion per year, or 2.1 percent of GDP), spends more and more money to address smaller and smaller risks, and churns out questionable research.
“The overwhelming majority of it was shoddy, irrelevant, and unpublishable,” Miller wrote. “But the grants bought the goodwill of researchers who would rubber-stamp unscientific EPA policies while serving on advisory committees.”
Indeed, take a five-year, $29 million EPA study which found no evidence that hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) causes widespread, systemic contamination of drinking water. The agency, however, caved to political pressure and changed the conclusion to one that favors environmentalist activists rather than the oil and gas industry, while spending millions that could have been used to address problems in Flint.
A deeper dig into the study finds the primary authors of the fracking study, other than EPA staff, were from The Cadmus Group, a consulting company frequently contracted by the EPA and whose portfolio is stuffed with renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.
The next head of the EPA needs to address these antics, and bring the agency back on point. As attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt has a notable track record of fighting EPA overreach, including the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court over the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. As McCarthy’s expected replacement, Pruitt has an opportunity to right the ship, starting with the trifling quote above.
When the EPA is permitted to operate in CYA mode, responsive to political pressures rather than the dictates of science and public safety, you get Flint.
If the EPA exists for any reason, it is to prevent, or at the very least, catch problems such as Flint’s water issues in their earliest stages. A government agency that employs more than 15,000 people and spends $8 billion per year needs to pay more attention to the most severe and preventable crises.
Kathy Hoekstra (@khoekstra) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a regulatory policy reporter with Watchdog.org.
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