A top House Republican wants the Environmental Protection Agency’s watchdog to answer questions directly from his staff about its report on the agency’s involvement in the approval process for Alaska’s Pebble Mine.
Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, sent a letter to the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General Monday about the office’s report that was deemed incomplete by the office’s own standards. The inspector general report did not include 25 months of emails from an EPA ecologist who has been accused of colluding with local groups to block the mine.
Smith said he was so displeased by the inspector general’s report issued in January that he asked former Secretary of Defense William Cohen to analyze the report. Cohen had done his own investigation into the Pebble Mine affair in October and found the EPA colluded with non-government organizations and had pre-determined conclusions to block the mine.
The secretary’s analysis of the inspector general report “raises questions about the narrow scope employed in the EPA OIG’s report as it pertains to EPA’s use of a pre-emptive [veto],” Smith wrote.
On Jan. 13, the EPA’s inspector general released its report on the agency’s Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment, which has caused construction on a potentially lucrative mine in the area to be delayed for years, if not killed.
The report showed no evidence of bias in how the watershed assessment was conducted, no evidence the EPA predetermined the outcome of a challenge to the site under the Clean Water Act, and that policies and procedures for ecological risk assessment, peer review and information quality were all followed.
However, the report also states investigators couldn’t fully investigate the assessment because years of emails from a key employee are missing.
Phil North, an ecologist with the EPA based in Alaska, is accused by House Republicans of illegally colluding with local tribes to block the mine. North was proven to have used his personal email to consult the tribes on how to petition the EPA for a rare pre-emptive veto of the Pebble Mine.
But the inspector general reported that 25 months of North’s emails from his government account are missing in what they’re saying was an “unauthorized and accidental loss of federal records.” Without those emails, the inspectors found no inappropriate actions by the EPA.
The EPA has not issued the veto Smith mentions in his letter.
According to Cohen’s analysis, the independent watchdog did not review the full email record available to them and instead only focused on a short time frame, from January 2008 until May 18, 2012. He also said the inspector general did not investigate certain areas that warranted questioning and the report did not scrutinize use of a hypothetical scenario when doing a scientific analysis of the mine.
The interactions of North and other EPA staff with local groups was also not a part of the watchdog’s report, Cohen said.
Smith said he wants inspector general staff to meet with the committee to discuss the report’s perceived failings.
“The EPA OIG’s lack of investigative rigor displayed by the report has led many, including this committee, to question the report’s completeness and its conclusions,” he wrote.
