Category Archive: Uncategorized

1. EPA Nominee Epitomizes Agency’s Transparency Problems

   April 10, 2014 2:57 pm Leave a Comment

   The nominee to head the EPA’s air quality office Janet McCabe has at least one attribute that would make her a great culture fit for the agency – a record of non-transparency. Her resume thus far at the EPA includes a secret email address used to collude with environmental activists and the crafting of major environmental regulations with no supporting public data – two traits pervasive at the agency.

   Like disgraced former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, and many other top EPA officials, McCabe maintained a secret email address that she used to collude with environmental activist groups. Hers – “@ikecoalition.org” – stems from her former job as director of the environmental activist group Improving Kids’ Environment. Emails uncovered by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests reveal that Janice Nolen from the American Lung Association sent McCabe an email on this address with the subject “Burning Marshes to address oil.” Current EPA administrator Gina McCarthy replied to Nolen’s email saying, “Thanks Janice. We’re on it!”

   “That is where her fellow travelers in the Big Green industry knew to reach her, and apparently how she wanted them to continue to be able to reach her,” said Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who helped uncover these secret emails. “And by which she could reach them, all presumably outside of the prying eyes of the laws forbidding that they do so.”

   McCabe also has an impressive record, in her current role at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, of helping craft major environmental regulations that rely on non-public data that the EPA refuses to share with Congress. Such non-public information was used as the basis for 85 percent of Clean Air Act regulations from 1990 to 2020, costing the economy $2 trillion.

   Though McCabe’s shady history of non-transparency may hurt her in the confirmation process, if confirmed, it will make her a perfect fit within the agency.

2. EPA Exposes Unsuspecting Individuals to Dangerous Pollutants

   April 8, 2014 4:19 pm Leave a Comment

   The EPA is exposing people to high levels of pollution in its experiments – whose outcomes are used to justify the war on coal and energy producers around the country. It hopes that these experiments’ outcomes will justify stricter emission standards in its upcoming National Air Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).

   But in conducting them, it is exposing people, including the elderly and those with asthma and heart problems, to pollution levels 50 times greater than what the agency says is safe for humans without disclosing the risks according to a recent Inspector General’s report.

   This is a stunning display of hypocrisy. Take particulate matter (PM), for example. The EPA sets PM standards at 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air, but the IG report says that experiment subjects were exposed to up to 751 micrograms of PM.

   Former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson stated:

   Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should… If we could reduce particulate matter to healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our country.

   But, managers overseeing EPA human testing told the IG’s office that “the exposure risk for healthy individuals is minimal.”

   Either the EPA is exaggerating the science about the dangers of PM to advance its own regulatory agenda, or it is exposing people to deadly emissions for no reason.

   “It is a concern that EPA would assert in the rulemaking process that [PM] exposure is deadly,” said Senate Republicans calling out this hypocrisy, “while simultaneously asserting in the waivers signed by participants in EPA human exposure studies that these exposures are not harmful.”

3. EPA Sued For Stonewalling Freedom of Information Act Requests, Again

   April 7, 2014 2:43 pm Leave a Comment

   The EPA is again being accused of stonewalling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI) filed suit yesterday to try to force the EPA to turn over blocked FOIA requested records related to its veto of a West Virginia coal mine permit. The agency has controversially claimed that the veto was due to the potential harm the mine would have on mayfly populations.

   The suit also alleges that the EPA stonewalls requests by charging excessive fees for the information. EELI says its fee waiver request was denied and was required to pay $2,000 to access the information. This is despite its compliance with a 1966 FOIA provision, whose intent was to ensure freedom to information for even financially small petitioners, which states fees should be waived if the information will be “broadly disseminated to the public.” According to Chris Horner, EELI’s legal counsel, “Every time the agency uses these tactics they do succeed in delaying disclosure and wearing down smaller, private parties with far fewer resources than the federal government.”

   Horner claims the EPA is engaging in political bias in its fee decisions, targeting conservative groups over liberal ones. Last year, Senate Republicans reviewed more than 1,200 fee waiver application and found that the EPA waived the fee for environmental groups 92 percent of the time while rejecting conservative groups by the same percentage.

   This stonewalling is simply the latest in a long string of similar accusations against the EPA. For example, it was accused of delaying FOIA requests for information about the Keystone approval process and stalling FOIAs regarding information about official EPA business conducted on private emails (presumably to avoid having to comply with FOIA requests). A federal judge last August opined that the EPA “may have purposefully attempted to skirt disclosure under the FOIA,” adding that “numerous inconsistencies” in the agency’s court filings “undermine confidence in their truthfulness.”

4. EPA Perverts Peer Review Process

   March 28, 2014 6:54 pm Leave a Comment

   The EPA is warping the peer review process to give its regulations scientific clout. Congressional investigators found that the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Ozone Review Panel – the scientists who “peer-review” the EPA’s regulations – suffer from lack of impartiality and conflict of interest.

   For example, 16 of the 20 members of the panel are cited – more than 700 times in total – in key EPA environmental regulations that these members are then supposed to assess unbiasedly. And, 15 of the 20 panelists are on the EPA’s payroll, cumulatively receiving $180.8 million in EPA grants, with one panelist, Ed Avol of the University of Southern California, receiving $51.7 million. This is at best a gross conflict of interest and at worst a pay-off. It is certainly scientific misconduct and likely a violation of federal law. Meanwhile, the panel continues to “review” the EPA’s proposed National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) that are projected to cost a record $100 billion annually.

   House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) criticized the panel last week for this lack of independence: “panelists reviewing their own work; a lack of turnover among CASAC Ozone Review Panel members; and, existing financial relationships between Panelists and the Agency.”

   The EPA’s use of so-called “sweetheart review,” where biased parties conduct the review, is just another example of its agenda-driven, junk science. In this case, the EPA is completely ignoring the fundamental tenet of the peer review process that scientists be “blind” to the study they are reviewing so no bias – even if unintentional – is brought to the review.

5. Fake CIA Agent Had Major Impact on EPA Policy

   March 24, 2014 3:37 pm Leave a Comment

   Somewhere between getting hired with no experience and pretending to be a CIA agent who didn’t show up to work for 2 years, John Beale managed to make a major impact on EPA policy.

   Beale played a key role in morphing the organization’s focus from protecting the environment to pushing a radical political agenda that aimed to – as he said – “modify the DNA of the capitalist system.”

   According to a report published this week by the Senate Republicans Environment and Public Works Committee, Beale was instrumental in writing the “EPA Playbook” on strategy. That playbook consists of: “sue-and-settle arrangements with a friendly outside group, manipulation of science, incomplete cost-benefit analysis reviews, heavy-handed management of interagency review processes, and capitalizing on information asymmetry, reinforced by resistance to transparency. Ultimately, the guiding principal behind the Playbook,” the report claims, “is the Machiavellian principal that the ends will justify the means.”

   All this from a man who, before bilking taxpayers out of $1 million while playing make-believe secret agent man, had no background in environmental or legislative policy. He was hired by his college buddy at the EPA after being fired from his job at a law firm, and leading an “itinerant life” that included stints as a police officer, physiotherapist, and apple picker.

   Beale’s rapid rise and widespread influence, without training or background, raises additional questions about the professional culture and lax oversight at the EPA. The delegation of critically important policy decisions to a non-neutral, unqualified con artist like Beale also raises questions about the legitimacy of many of the EPA’s regulations as a whole.

6. House Subcommittees Attack EPA’s Unscientific Carbon Capture and Storage Mandate

   March 14, 2014 4:06 pm Leave a Comment

   Both the Energy and Environment Subcommittees laid into the EPA yesterday for proposing new regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions from coal power plants that essentially mandate new plants be built using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology–an expensive method that hasn’t yet been proven viable on a large scale.

   Chairman Lummis (Energy) and Chairman Schweikert (Environment) called such a de facto mandate unscientific, political, and an unprecedented power grab.

   CCS technology has not been proven safe or effective and is not operating in any commercial scale power plant in the U.S. – therefore making it uncompliant with the EPA’s own New Source Performance Standards (NSPS). With these proposed regulations on coal plants, Chairman Lummis says the EPA looks to “set a legal precedent for mandating unproven technologies… there is no science behind the “de facto” mandated storage requirements.”

   Such an unscientific mandate furthers the EPA’s image as a political rather than scientific entity. Regulations like this one allow it to continue its agenda of, according to Lummis, “picking winners and losers through environmental regulations… based purely on politics.”

   As the EPA’s regulatory reach grows, so does its power. The CCS regulation illustrates this, says Chairman Schweikert: “This isn’t about climate change. It’s about expanding Federal power and it sets a dangerous precedent.”

7. EPA Uses Federal Charge Cards for Personal Expenses

   March 13, 2014 1:55 pm Leave a Comment

   Last week the EPA’s Inspector General issued a report finding that EPA employees are abusing agency credit cards to purchase a wide array of personal items at the taxpayers’ expense.

   For example, auditors found that several cardholders bought gym memberships for themselves and their family members totaling almost $3,000. Among the other improper items stolen were videos, gift cards, and meals. In total, over half of the suspicious transactions looked into by the IG ($79,300 of $152,600) were found to be “prohibited, improper, and erroneous.”

   What makes this theft even more egregious is the fact that the EPA ignored its own policies that require its offices to review their purchases at least once every two years. Region offices were allowed to bypass such reviews without any consequences or follow up. Such lax oversight is in violation of the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act, which was recently passed to address longstanding problems with federal charge-card abuses.

   This episode is endemic of the lax oversight pervasive at the EPA: Last year it came to light that a top EPA official did not show up for work for a-year-and-a-half, falsely claiming that he was working for the CIA, defrauding the taxpayer of over $1 million. EPA officials seem to have a nasty habit of looking the other way while certain staffers squander taxpayer money.

8. New EPA Sulfur Regulations Projected to Drive Up Gasoline Prices by 9 Cents a Gallon

   March 7, 2014 8:19 pm Leave a Comment

   The same day AAA reported a five percent increase in gas prices in February and projected the price will keep rising through at least April, the EPA announced new regulations that will cause even more pain at the pump.

   The EPA is rolling out strict new rules aimed at dramatically curbing sulfur in gasoline by 2017 – but at what cost? The regulations have left oil companies scrambling to invest in the expensive new technology necessary to achieve the mandated two-thirds reduction to 10 parts per million (ppm) from the current 30 ppm.

   This will dramatically increase costs. According to a study from Baker & O’Brien, this move will cost refiners up to $10 billion in capital costs and $2.4 billion in annual compliance costs. This would raise gasoline prices by up to 9 cents a gallon – increasing the price of every product that uses gasoline as an input (i.e. everything).

   The EPA of course says that the environmental benefits of this move will outweigh these costs. But upon closer inspection that’s doubtful. Experts claim that the EPA has not provided enough evidence to show that lower sulfur levels will appreciably improve air quality. The fact is that sulfur in gasoline has already been reduced from 300 ppm to 30 ppm in just the last decade – further reductions at such a marginal level are unlikely to make noticeable improvements but are sure to be extremely costly.

   “This rule is all pain and no gain,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, “This winter’s cold snap underscores just how vulnerable American families and businesses are to any increases in energy costs, and yet the administration is moving forward to raise prices at the pump.”

9. EPA Surprise Tactic Chases Away Miners and Sets Dangerous Precedent

   February 26, 2014 6:34 pm Leave a Comment

   Typically, the EPA reviews proposed mining projects once the company behind the venture submits a permit application—this gives the project time to ensure that its environmental plans have been thoroughly developed. But in the case of the proposed billion-dollar Pebble mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, the EPA bowed to activists and issued a final report on the environmental impact of the project before a permit application was submitted.

   So why is this a big deal?  This action – issuing an environmental group-solicited preemptive attack on a potential resource extraction site – illustrates a dangerous new precedent from the EPA. It shows that the agency is now willing to break from the traditional permitting process (which has ensured environmental safeguards are taken while offering project investors stability and due process) in order to kill projects before a permit application is even submitted.

   Many worry that such preemptive reports could be used as a basis to prematurely veto future economic opportunities in the region because potential investors would recognize that the EPA is already committed to preventing development no matter how thorough the permit application is. Alaska’s Senior U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, 10 of 12 Alaska Native Regional Corporations, and numerous other experts and concerned individuals share this view.

   Here are just a few of the major flaws with the EPA’s report:

   • The EPA’s report was intended to be scientific, but the report used anti-mining organizations like Earthworks as peer-reviewers, a clear violation of the independence that typifies the scientific peer-review process.
   • The EPA used an outdated model of a mine that would never be permitted today strawmanning the state-of-the-art Pebble plan.
   • The agency failed to provide adequate time for public comment, scheduling the comment period during the time when most affected Alaskans were participating in the hunting season that sustains them through the winter months. 

   The EPA’s action was applauded by environmental activists who pushed the agency to kill the project. They’ve gotten their wish–following the draft report, Pebble’s lead developers Anglo American withdrew their 50% stake in the project and partner Rio Tinto revealed that they were also considering leaving the project.

   Located in the economically disadvantaged region of Southwest Alaska, Pebble Mine would have offered 3,000 short-term jobs and more than 1,000 well-paying, long-term careers to a region where such prospects rarely exist. Unemployment in the area ventures well into the double-digits outside of the hunting season, while the population in Bristol Bay has declined 23 percent from 2000 to 2009 and school enrollment has fallen by 55 percent from 1997 to 2010.

   The EPA is confusing the traditional permitting process by preemptively issuing a de facto ban of potential resource extraction – an act that will likely be used to ward off potential investors in the state. Such a move sets a dangerous new precedent from the EPA and suggests that it is more concerned with pleasing its friends in the environmental movement than fulfilling its congressional mandate as a scientific agency responsive to the public interest.

10. Emails Highlight EPA’s Role as Mouthpiece for Activist Groups

    February 1, 2014 7:27 pm Leave a Comment

    New emails obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute show the astonishing degree of collusion between the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental activist groups.

    In some cases, the EPA asked environmental groups such as the Sierra Club for their talking points and agenda items so that the agency could incorporate activist viewpoints into official government messaging.

    As we noted in an earlier blog post, the EPA chose to hold hearings on proposed regulations for coal fired power plants in cities and states that receive little of their energy from coal. These newly-uncovered emails confirm why the agency avoided the major coal-producing states: environmental activists suggested areas that would be “friendlier forums” for discussing the EPA’s move to essentially ban new coal plants.

    Examples of the EPA’s cozy relationship with activists are plentiful–the agency even helped activists collect signatures for petitions on EPA rulemakings, using official government events to aid activists. Emails also show that activist groups were sent advanced copies of EPA releases and the EPA incorporated activist group messaging into the agency’s briefing documents for Congress.

    These new revelations only confirm that the EPA is the country’s most powerful environmental activist organization.