Another EPA story
The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.
An important story, and one worth noting, though it did make me ask a different question when I first saw it. You see, I had already posted a blog entry about this very issue two months ago. How much do I want to repeat myself? Wider than that, is it still news when somebody has already reported on it? It does explain a lot of the culture of posting stories before all of the facts are known. Everybody wants to be first, but you can lose some of the detail that way as well.
The current story does have more context and as a result, has a few other points I think are worth discussion, so no repetition in necessary.
But environmental prosecutions by U.S. attorneys' offices have sharply dropped as prosecutors facing new pressures on issues such as terrorism and immigration take away resources for environmental prosecutions and try to divert cases to the main Justice Department, EPA agents said.
"Environmental crimes are simply not in the U.S. attorney top 10 priorities," said one senior EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media.
Prosecutors counter that the EPA has fewer agents and is bringing them fewer cases. "We're not turning away environmental crimes in order to prosecute other crimes. They are just not being presented in the first case," said Don DeGabrielle, the U.S. attorney in Houston.
EPA memos show that investigators also have encountered new obstacles to their long-standing practice of directly referring cases to federal or state prosecutors. A new policy distributed May 25 requires agents to seek prior approval from the head of their division and establishes new paperwork procedures. This has slowed agents' ability to make referrals, congressional investigators said.
It always strikes me how much this Republican administration, despite their traditional position of limiting the size of government, has managed to increase the size and scope of the bureaucracy in every area. On the other hand, they do it in ways that reduce the government's effectiveness, which I guess gives them more arguments in favour of its complete abolition.
Well, except in cases where it can help. Help the polluters, that is.
The Justice Department in August also touted a plea bargain with IMC Shipping Co. that required the Singapore ship operator to pay $10 million in connection with a massive oil spill in 2004 that killed thousands of birds in Alaska's Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
Prosecutors told the court they had enough evidence to indict the company for criminal negligence under the Clean Water Act and for making false statements early in the investigation. But the deal they reached called for guilty pleas to two counts of violating the Refuse Act and one violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Prosecutors cited the company's cooperation for the leniency.
The decision to drop the negligence charges could be valuable to the company, which as a result remains eligible to seek reimbursement from a special government fund for $77 million of the more than $100 million it has spent cleaning up the spill.
After all, we wouldn't want these polluters to be responsible for paying their own clean-up costs when there are tax dollars available for the job.
