Two top House Republicans were critical of a watchdog report that found the Environmental Protection Agency was innocent of wrongdoing in delaying, if not killing, the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.
The report, issued Wednesday morning, was incomplete by the Office of Inspector General’s own standards. The reason for that was simple: 25 months of missing emails from an EPA ecologist accused of colluding with local tribes to block the mine. Investigators couldn’t fully investigate the assessment without the emails.
House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, called the report “misleading” without the emails.
“The inspector general’s report on EPA’s actions to block the Pebble Mine draws misleading conclusions without having all the facts,” Smith said. “The [inspector general] itself admits that it was unable to obtain and review all relevant documents and was unable to interview a key subject about pertinent information the investigation had uncovered.”
Phil North, an ecologist with the EPA in Alaska, is accused by House Republicans of illegally colluding with local tribes to block the 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.”
“We could not review all emails from the retired Region 10 employee’s EPA email address,” the report stated. “Region 10 identified 25 months of missing emails for the retired employee that overlapped with the 52-month time period of our review … As a result, we are unable to draw any specific conclusions related to that employee’s emails during that period.”
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report late last year that accused North of advising local tribes on how to block the mine.
According to that report, 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. The veto was never issued, but the incident troubled Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
“An EPA employee having inappropriate contact with outside groups during a review process is troubling at best,” Chaffetz said. “This report only confirms what the committee outlined in a staff report and letter to EPA a few months ago. EPA must stop all pre-emptive [veto] activity and undertake the more reliable conventional decision-making process.”
