Obama's Likely Choice To Head EPA: Right Time, Wrong Person

With the possible exception of the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency has seen its effectiveness, credibility and mission wither more than any other Executive arm during the administrative nightmare of the last eight years. Respected environmental experts and scientists have seen their findings and recommendations marginalized, edited or downright ignored. In cases where the data was simply too strong to ignore, the Bush administration took the back-door route by concurring, and then selecting wide swaths of industry to be exempted from any corrective actions resulting from said studies. In a word, the EPA is in a shambles, and drastic measures are needed just to bring the agency back to normal operating standards, much less the dynamic and conscientious body that we need. Those measures will require an extraordinary and visionary leader, and President-elect Obama's (apparent) choice of Lisa P. Jackson simply doesn't cut the mustard.

After I ramble on for a minute or two about the stultifying effects of too much exposure to the bureaucracy, I'm going to link to another blog to fill in some details. I generally try to avoid doing this as it is usually a poor substitute for strong research using primary sources. But the blogger in question has more than enough experience on this issue to qualify as a primary source, and frankly, considering the influence the current administration has had on squelching scientific debate and allowing the brain trusts of agencies like the EPA to seep away, finding good sources these days, especially for issues that are best defined via scientific language, is much more difficult than it should be.

When people like me (and other paranoids) talk about the bureaucracy, we tend to give it an animation and structured identity that may elude those of you who have all your faculties. The thing is, in many cases, the bureaucracy actually does produce a tangible set of behaviors in its members, such as postponing/avoiding controversial decisions as a form of self-preservation, and the desire to preserve the credibility of the institution itself, often by concealment or obfuscation. The second thing is also a form of self-preservation, but it's more tied to ego than actual survival: "My career is respectable only as long as my employer remains respectable."

The reason I mention these things is because I see the telltales of the bureaucratic mindset when I look at Lisa Jackson's career. Make no mistake: I'm not impugning everybody who works for the government, and I'm really not trying to set Lisa up as an "evil entity" that's out to ruin our environment. I have no doubt that she cares for the environment, probably more than the majority of Americans. And she's damned smart too; Masters in Chemistry from Princeton. But that's not enough. To bring about the changes the EPA needs, the Administrator must recognize that industry has had too free a hand in policy decisions for too long, and they need to be kept out in the yard while the house gets cleaned. But I'm afraid she doesn't realize this, which is strike one against her. I'm going to let New Jersey PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) Director Bill Wolfe cover strike two:

http://www.peer.org/chapters/nj.php

"Opened in June 2005, New Jersey PEER is headed up by Bill Wolfe, a former client who spent the previous 13 years as a Policy Analyst and Planner with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (1985-1995; 2002-2004).

Bill came to know PEER in 1994 when his career at DEP was punctuated by his public disclosure of a memoranda between Governor Whitman and the Agency seeking to suppress, distort, fail-to-warn the public, and avoid aggressively responding to scientific research documenting high levels of mercury in NJ freshwater fish.

Shortly thereafter, Bill left NJDEP to become the Policy Director for Sierra Club's NJ Chapter from 1995-2002. Then in 2002, Commissioner Bradley Campbell invited Bill to rejoin DEP and serve as the "conscience of the Agency". Bill left the Agency in July 2004 to rejoin the NJ environmental community."

That's just a little background on the guy. Here's his blog piece:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/12/media_speculation_over_who_pre...

"Let me begin by noting that personally, I like Jackson. She is a people person and her heart is in the right place. The record shows that at the outset, I praised her nomination by Corzine as DEP Commissioner (sorry, can't find a link to the Star Ledger article archive for the quote). At the time, I felt that Jackson might help take some of the politics out of the scientific and regulatory policy decision-making at DEP, which had become overly politicized and media driven during the Campbell tenure (full disclosure: I was directly involved and worked for Campbell).

But I was wrong. Jackson has been a disappointment. Here's the troubling inside story.

Her tenure as DEP chief has left the agency adrift, suffering from 3 consecutive years of budget and staff cuts and handcuffed by a hiring freeze. In addition, about 300 career professionals have been forced out by early retirement programs - thus DEP has lost institutional memory. Morale is low.

Jackson has shown questionable judgment. For example - on policy and management, she has allowed her Assistant Commissioner for Site Remediation to continue to badly mismanage the toxic site cleanup program."

I'm going to interrupt Bill for a minute so I can tell you a story: There once was a thermometer manufacturing plant that went out of business, leaving an empty facility with high levels of mercury on virtually every square foot of the property. Back in the mid-1990's, the EPA instructed the owners to clean the site up before attempting to sell. So the owners used the tried and true method of, "Let's don't and say we did", and the facility was never cleaned up. Lo and behold, a few years later, a fricking child-care operation called Kiddie Kollege opens its doors; the same doors that should have been locked tight until the mercury was cleaned up. Back to Bill:

"And here's where I lost confidence in Jackson. Her credibility was called into question by a highly misleading press release she issued jointly with the NJ Attorney General in response to the Kiddie Kollege mercury poisoning tragedy, where about 60 toddlers were poisoned by mercury in a daycare center that was a DEP regulated mercury former thermometer factory. According to Jackson:

"As soon as the DEP discovered that the formerly abandoned site was housing a day care center, inspectors moved in, took samples and shut it down," said DEP Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson. "We remain committed to working with the AG's office and DHSS to get to the bottom of this egregious and unconscionable situation. A day care center should be a safe haven -- not a room full of toxic mercury."
Lisa P. Jackson August 3, 2006 NJ Attorney General press release:
http://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases06/pr20060803b.html

But, as I documented and disclosed to the NY Times, Jackson knew that DEP failed to enforce a 1995 cleanup Order and that DEP "discovered" the problem at the day care center during the first week of April 2008. But instead of acting immediately upon "discovery" of the problem, DEP quietly negotiated a voluntary cleanup agreement with the owner and waited over 14 weeks before they sampled and notified parents on July 28, 2008."

Okay, that last part is the key. As you can see, shielding the owner of the property from harm, and (likely) damage control to reduce government exposure to legal action took precedence over the safety and health of the children and staff at this day care. 14 weeks, with the knowledge that mercury was present and children were wallowing in it. Both the delay and the lie about said delay are bureaucratic traits of the worst fashion.

Strike three may seem less important than strike two was, but it does (I fear) have wider implications for the environment. In response to the sheer number of toxic sites in New Jersey that (by law) needed to be cleaned up, and in light of budgetary woes that put a crunch on the size and quality of her staff, Jackson pursued a controversial approach to managing these clean-ups called LSP (Licensed Site Professionals). Basically, instead of pushing for more funding to do her job, this is an approach to privatization of site remediation. In her own words:

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislativepub/budget%202009/Testimony/DEP_...

"A key legislative measure that we support would be to authorize the adoption of a licensed site professional (LSP) program, similar to that enacted in Massachusetts, but modified for the needs of New Jersey. This would be a cornerstone of true SRP reform. Such a program would, for the first time in New Jersey's history, hold environmental consultants accountable for their work, similar to that of a Professional Engineer. An LSP will be required to adhere to a strict code of ethics with provisions for license revocation, suspension and penalties. SRP case oversight would still be provided, but to a lesser degree for most cases, and would be based on the complexity/sensitivity of the case."

In plain words? We will now simply license somebody, to be hired by the owners of the property that needs evaluating for cleanup, and then we'll (mostly) just let them do the assessments. Expand that to a grander (national) scale, and you have a smaller, more administrative (as opposed to hands-on) EPA that relies on the private sector to do our environmental protecting. Sound familiar? It should. And this:

"The above-mentioned changes coupled with strengthened enforcement authority, a greater say in remedy selection and tighter controls on financial assurances will result in a more protective program as well as one that promotes economic redevelopment. It would allow the DEP to adequately address more cases and move cases more expeditiously through the system while still adhering to strict clean up standards."

is language that's eerily similar to what was used recently to "streamline" the process for authorization of Federal land use by industry. Strip away the time-consuming and backlogged scientific assessments, and things get done quicker. Well, some things don't need quick, they need thorough, and I'm afraid Lisa P. Jackson doesn't understand that.