Trusting EPA

[Sue Darcey, Pesticide Report <sdarcey@erols.com>]

If the question is, can we trust EPA staff?, I would answer,
yes, I trust 70% of EPA staff and managers to do the right
thing, and deliver information to people as they need it,
most of the time.

But I think that about 15% of EPA staff and managers are 
are untrustworthy because they are not in the job to serve 
the public -- they are in it because they are punching a ticket that they need
to punch to get on to what they perceive as their "real 
career" -- their next jobs in the private sector, as well- 
paid environmental consultants, private practice attorneys,
or industry scientists (the "revolving door" phenomenon).
These types are too busy building contacts with chemical
companies and alliances with the industry they regulate, and
can't be bothered to fulfill any information request from
the public. Sometimes they deliberately won't fulfill any 
information request that may make their private sector 
"customers" (EPA pesticide staff will sometimes refer to 
pesticide registrants as their "customers") and future 
employers feel threatened or look bad, thus hampering the 
public's "right to know." 
 
Maybe another 15% of EPA employees are just "coasting" in 
their jobs, and don't care what interests they are serving
as long as they get their paychecks, and YOU get out of their 
face by 3:45 or 4:15 pm so they can meet their 4:30 carpool group
in time to get back over the 14th Street Bridge and get 
home.  And God forbid that you try to get information from
EPA on a Friday, when about 75% of the staff take their "flex"
day off (a lot of EPA staff are on a flex-time schedule 
that involves working longer days for nine out of every 10 
working days, so that they can take the 10th day off. Between
"flex-time", "training" time, annual leave and the 10 
official government holidays, the average EPA employee is 
OFF the job about 12 weeks per year.  No wonder they have 
to use so many contractors to run the docket rooms!)

These are the lazy bureacratic types who could care 
less about finding the documents you need, retrieving your 
FOIA request, or passing your phone query on to the right 
person.  They have zero interest in environmental issues, 
and could just as well be working for HUD up the street, 
or over at the Treasury Dept. 

Two other quirks about the environmental agency as an 
institution make EPA less "trustworthy" as an agency fulfilling
the public's need for information.  One of these quirks
is that the agency is operating under five or six disparate
environmental laws (TSCA, Clean Air Act, FIFRA, etc.), and
only one is specifically designed to fulfill "right-to-know"
needs -- the Toxic Release Inventory law under EPCRA (Emergency 
Planning and Community Right to Know Act).  Some of the other
EPA laws actually work against the public's "right-to-know",
particularly the pesticide law, FIFRA (which includes $10,000
penalties for any agency employee who knowingly discloses certain
information about pesticides); and the toxic substance
law, TSCA (lots of CBI provisions here), because of all the
"confidential business information" concerns built into these laws.

The other dilemma is that the conservative Republican crowd
(sorry, but politics do have an impact on EPA) currently 
running Congress is not funding EPA adequately,and informatio
systems at the agency suffer from a lack of funding.  A lot
of databases/computer systems there need to be upgraded, and
staff needs to be hired to run them, if the FOIA process 
is to work smoothly, and all information is to be retrieved 
in a timely manner.  One congressman (Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va.)
even worked earlier this year to shut down EPA's website 
from Feb. 17-22, using some phony, trumped up concerns about
the site's "vulnerability to hackers," to do so.  Portions
of EPA's website were down for weeks after, shutting out
public access to all sorts of important information.


Sue Darcey, Pesticide Report