EPA Inspector Finds Mercury Proposal Tainted
EPA Inspector Finds Mercury Proposal Tainted (washingtonpost.com)
The Environmental Protection Agency ignored scientific evidence and agency protocols in order to set limits on mercury pollution that would line up with the Bush administration’s free-market approaches to power plant pollution, according to a report released yesterday by the agency’s inspector general.
Later in the article:
“I don’t think anyone has ever seen as much political influence in the development of a rule as we saw in this rule,” said one EPA staff member, who attended meetings between administrators and staff. “Everything about this rule was decided at a political level. . . . The political level made the decisions, and the staff did what they were told.”
This staff member and another, both of whom asked for anonymity because they feared the consequences of being identified, said that instead of considering a range of possibilities, staff members were told they had only one.
“Maybe we would have come to the same conclusion [anyway], but we didn’t necessarily look at the other options,” the second staff member said. “We were driven by one option.”
