The EPA’s Pebble Blame Game : By Kimberley A. Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-epas-pebble-blame-game-1432250642
The agency digs deep for excuses—and not very good ones—to explain its veto of an Alaskan mine project.
Government agencies have a certain descending order of excuses they employ as a scandal grows. When they reach the point of quibbling over semantics and blaming low-level employees, it’s clear they know they’ve got a problem.
The EPA has a problem: its pre-emptive veto of the Pebble Mine, a proposed project in southwest Alaska. The law says that Pebble gets to apply for permits, and the Army Corps of Engineers gets to give thumbs up or down. The EPA, a law unto itself, instead last year blocked the proposal before applications were even filed. The agency claims it got involved because of petitions from Native American tribes in 2010, and that its veto is based on “science”—a watershed assessment that purportedly shows the mine would cause environmental harm.
This column reported a week ago on EPA documents that tell a very different story. They reveal the existence of an internal EPA “options paper” that make clear the agency opposed the mine on ideological grounds and had already decided to veto it in the spring of 2010—well before it did any “science.” Emails showed an EPA biologist, Phil North, working in the same time frame with an outside green activist to gin up the petitions. It’s not much of a leap to suggest that the EPA encouraged the petitions so that it would have an excuse to intervene, run its science as cover, and block a project it already opposed.
None of this looks good, and in a nearby letter EPA Region 10 Administrator Dennis McLerran is already bringing up semantics. According to the EPA—and other environmental groups now picking up the same line—the agency didn’t “veto” the project, but simply put “restrictions” on it. Indeed. The “restrictions” are that Pebble can’t build its mine, or for that matter even a significantly smaller one. Veto, restrictions, it’s all the same thing. The EPA killed the project.
In a conversation with me last week, Mr. McLerran also turned to the “underlings did it” excuse. Asked about the options paper that shows the EPA’s early determination to veto the mine, Mr. McLerran told me: “I have never seen that options paper. None of the key decision makers have seen that options paper. It came out in this disclosure process. It is a preliminary document, done by lower level staff.” He repeated that he “never saw the options paper” later in the conversation. The comments are revealing, since they indicate that Mr. McLerran knows that the paper is a problem and wants to distance it from the “decision makers.”
The comments are also curious given new EPA emails I’ve reviewed from the period the options paper was making the rounds in Mr. McLerran’s region. On June 7, 2010, Michael Szerlog, manager in the EPA region’s aquatics resources unit, sent an email to a colleague with the subject line “Updated version of the Bristol Bay Options Paper.” The message mentions Mr. McLerran: “Here is the latest version for review prior to submission to Dennis on Tuesday afternoon.”
On June 15, Kendra Tyler, special assistant in Mr. McLerran’s office, wrote to EPA staff: “I know that Dennis would like a briefing on the options paper soon . . .” On June 30, Mr. North emailed colleagues to explain that: “The only time the RA [Regional Administrator] is available to discuss the options paper before he visits Bristol Bay is Thursday . . . ” Later that day, Matthew Magorrian, also in the regional office, told a big group of EPA employees that “DM already has draft of options paper.”
Also interesting is that the list of EPA employees who make up the core group discussing the options paper are not a bunch of low-level chemists and permit writers. Most have real titles: Mike Bussell, then the director of the EPA’s Office of Water and Watersheds in Seattle; David Allnutt, then acting regional counsel; Linda Anderson-Carnahan, then acting associate director of environmental cleanup; Tami Fordham, then policy adviser. Mr. McLerran says no “key decision makers” saw the options paper. It must depend on what the definition of a key decision maker is.
Several of those included in these email chains would go on to take active roles in performing the EPA’s “watershed assessment” of the mine project. Ms. Fordham is listed as a contributor, as is an EPA officer named Richard Parkin. Mr. North, deeply involved in both the options paper and in getting the tribes to file their petitions, is one of the report’s primary authors. Emails show he actively lobbied his co-authors and report contributors on the merits of a veto. Mr. McLerran says “key decision makers” decided to perform three years of “science” on Pebble. But it turns out those doing the science were those who had already decided to block the mine.
The EPA offered this statement on Thursday: “It is a normal part of EPA’s deliberative decision making process to fully evaluate all options to address an issue presented to the agency. There was a wide spectrum of EPA staff viewpoints, but ultimately, based on a full consideration of options, EPA decided that more information was needed before making a decision, and the agency undertook a comprehensive science review.”
The EPA is worried because it is getting blowback that goes beyond public disapproval of its abuse of power. In November a court ordered it to temporarily cease work on its veto, and the EPA inspector general is deep into an investigation. The agency is right to be worried; its Pebble veto is a scandal.
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