On its website the EPA claims:

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. Since 1970, EPA has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people.

The EPA, that many could now call the Environmental Polluting Agency, has taken some hits during the current Bush administration. Mr. Bush set his environmental agenda early by pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol (the greenhouse gas reduction treaty) shortly after coming into office, declaring it "fatally flawed."

In 2001 President Bush appointed former Governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman as EPA Administrator. She resigned two years later after butting heads with the government over issues such as global warming and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Ms. Whitman has also been questioned about her role in the environmental ethics of the agency when she was called to testify before Congress in 2007 about whether she misled World Trade Center site workers and residents about air-quality safety post 9/11. The EPA claimed the air was safe to breathe days after the attacks, subsequent collapse, and cleanup of the area in lower Manhattan – yet many people have been stricken with respiratory problems directly linked to having inhaled the tainted air.

Current EPA head Stephen Johnson has been called on to resign this week by four senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee. In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the senators claim that Johnson abused his position by lying under oath. They say he hindered a waiver for California to set their own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act due to presidential policy preferences, "rather than the lack of compelling and extraordinary circumstances." 

Last December, the EPA blocked California’s request to set their own law regarding vehicle emissions. Mr. Johnson said the decision was because "the Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules."

Sixteen states that wanted to adopt the California emissions standards could also back California if legal action is taken.

California’s Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. also threatened the EPA with legal action if they don’t start regulating the greenhouse gas emissions coming from port vehicles such as container ships and trucks.

"Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and cause massive greenhouse gas pollution. Because Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency continues to wantonly disregard its duty to regulate pollution, California is forced to seek judicial action."

The EPA has also come under fire this week by Florida U.S. District Judge Alan Gold who ruled that the agency failed to protect the Everglades under the Clean Water Act. Judge Gold said the agency turned a "blind eye" to the mandated cleanup program limiting the amount of damaging phosphorus runoff from sugar and dairy farms. The pollution reduction was set with a 2006 deadline, one that the sugar industry blocked with a bill that favored a more lenient 2016 gradual reduction schedule. Phosphorus is blamed for native vegetation die-off.

The agency that was built around the premise to regulate and help protect the environment has grown corrupt and needs some regulation of its own. The Bush Administration seems content to corrupt and manipulate the environment for its own agenda – and it seems to be happy to ruin the environment up until Mr. Bush’s last days in office.  

keeping the earth ever green

Lisa Tae-Ran Schroeder