According to its mission statement, the Environmental Protection Agency acts is protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment.
However, since its formation in 1970, the statement may have secretly been amended to include that the agency must also want to go out on a limb for that area. It is at least one explanation for the EPA Inspector General indicating that the organization acted too slowly to address the lead contamination discovered in the Flint, Michigan water supply.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had the authority and information to take decisive action on the lead contamination of Flint’s drinking water in June of 2015 — seven months before it actually acted, a federal watchdog said Thursday.The Office of Inspector General for the EPA said the agency should have issued an emergency order to protect Flint residents from the contaminated water in the summer of 2015. The EPA didn’t issue such an order until Jan. 21 of this year.“These situations should generate a greater sense of urgency,” said EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins. “Federal law provides the EPA with emergency authority to intervene when the safety of drinking water is compromised. Employees must be knowledgeable, trained and ready to act when such a public health threat looms.”The report is the harshest official rebuke by a federal agency to date of the EPA’s response to the lead contamination crisis, amid ongoing civil and criminal investigations. Susan Hedman, the EPA’s Region 5 administrator, resigned over the Flint crisis, effective last Feb. 1.
Ooooh…a “harsh rebuke”. That will certainly sting the agency, which has felt quite free to be the enforcing arm compelling companies to comply with insane regulations related to climate change and broadened the terminology of “navigable waters” to the point farmers get fined for putting in stock ponds on their property.
Certainly, Susan Hedman will face jail time…just as Eric Holder did for “Fast and Furious”, Lois Lerner did for the I.R.S. scandal involving political man-handling of conservative groups’ applications for non-profit tax status, and as did the EPA crew responsible for the Animas River debacle.
Never mind.
The government elites will always take care of their own. Proof for this assertion includes the fact that a Republican on the Michigan legislative committee looking into the situation, Sen. Jim Stamas, touts that the group’s 34-page report on the man-made disaster recommends bigger bureaucracy instead of punishment.
…Stamas writes the report is focused on solutions, not placing blame, but it does take a hard stance on the state’s emergency manager law. It calls for major reform, writing the state should repeal the current one-person emergency manager and replace it with a team of three experts, if any city or school district should fall under state control.The committee chairman also calls for stricter safeguards within Michigan’s Lead and Copper Rule writing: “One of the primary causes of the Flint water crisis was a poorly written, interpreted, and applied Lead Copper Rule. This rule, which was promulgated by the federal government and adopted in Michigan, is simply insufficient to protect Michiganders.”
EPA: Too big to fail with people too powerful to jail, despite completely deviating from its original mission.
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