GAO High Risk Report Urges Action on EPA, Last Minute Bush Rules Add Insult to Injury

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

We knew Bush's version of the Environmental Protection Agency was bad, but a new government report out this week indicates that it's so bad that it's downright risky to be a water-drinking, air-breathing American.

Earlier this week, I noted how Bush may have avoided giving a large number of pardons, but his use of midnight regulations had the effect of pardoning polluters and negligent regulatory agencies. Nowhere is this more apparent than the ugly changes that have taken place at the EPA.

When the Government Accountability Office came out with its 2009 High Risk List this week, I was not surprised to see the EPA as a new addition on the list. Alongside other timely risks such as better regulation of the financial industry and bolstering the Food and Drug Administration's policing of medical devices, the EPA was called out in the GAO report for not having the scientific information to adequately protect the nation from harmful pollutants, and for not being stringent enough in its dealings with industry.

Though the GAO has been routinely ignored for the past eight years, I hope incoming EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is listening. Same goes for Obama's White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley.

Bush's EPA was woefully inadequate already, but his last-minute changes to regulatory policies just as he was leaving office cripple the agency even further. Here are a few of the changes Bush pushed through at the end of his reign, mostly without the benefit of an attentive Congress to look them over (thanks again to ProPublica.org, for their tireless investigation into Bush's midnight regulations):

After a last-minute regulation was established to free the EPA from the burden of regulating rocket fuel in our nation's drinking water, it was found that the agency made a mistake in coming to such a conclusion. The chemical in question, called perchlorate, causes serious thyroid problems in babies, children and pregnant women. The EPA's inspector general criticized the methods used to determine the danger of perchlorate. However, the IG did not address widespread concerns over the EPA setting the safe dosage level at four times that of California's and the lack of requirements to clean-up contaminated sites. A final decision on the matter is now subject to a review by the National Academy of Sciences.

Not only are our waterways less policed than before, but dirtying them is more acceptable as well. Dumping is easier now that the EPA narrowed its definition of "navigable waters," making it legal for industry to use smaller marshes, ponds and streams as waste repositories.

As if that weren't enough of a blow to the Clean Water Act, feedlots got their own special pass. Thanks to another midnight regulation, confined animal feeding operations can voluntarily self-report when they're going to dump excrement into local waterways. If the company determines that it doesn't pollute too much, they can decide not to obtain a dumping permit from the EPA.

The agricultural sector is being allowed to skip out on air quality laws as well. Another midnight regulation that has already taken effect allows farms to avoid reporting on air pollution caused by their animals' waste. In the past, this reporting facilitated emergency planning by notifying local residents when air pollution exceeded safe levels.

Also in effect is a revision to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Lead that sounds like it might help reduce emissions, but the efficacy of the new standards are unknown. The supposedly tough new standard was weakened by the Bush Administration in a last-minute rule change that exempts many major polluters. Apparently, the reason the EPA even acted on this issue in the first place was a court order prompted by recent studies indicating that lead poisoning is even more dangerous than previously thought.

Another change in air quality regulation, one that adds so-called "fugitive emissions" to the final count on emissions allowed to a particular vent or smokestack, also exempts high-pollution industries such as surface mining and some agricultural industries.

In other scary chemical news, the EPA also determined that ipconazole, a fungicide used in cotton production and on some legumes and grains, can be applied legally in the U.S. The EPA said the chemical is probably not carcinogenic, though the only evidence it used to come to that conclusion is based solely on experiments on rats and mice.

This example cuts right to one of the main issues addressed in the GAO report. The report states that the EPA "lacks adequate scientific information on the toxicity of many chemicals that may be found in the environment -- as well as on tens of thousands of chemicals used commercially in the United States."

Not only is the EPA making what I'd consider bad decisions overall when it comes to protecting our environment (remind me again what EPA is an acronym for?), but they don't even have the requisite knowledge to be making such decisions.

The EPA's Integrated Risk Information System is a joke. There's a backlog of 70 incomplete assessments on dangerous chemicals, while only nine have been completed in the past three fiscal years, according to the GAO. Some 17 percent of assessments have been ongoing for almost a decade, meaning many determinations are already outdated before they're even published. One EPA official recently told Congress that their assessment of the known carcinogen dioxin may take more than 20 years to complete. The GAO also faulted the EPA for not using the authority it has to compel companies to submit health and safety information about new chemicals.

Though being on the high-risk list isn't appealing, it seems unlikely that the EPA will clean up its act just because the GAO called them out. The GAO report noted that previous criticism of and recommendations to the EPA have been ignored by the agency, and that problems the GAO warned the EPA about in the past have only been made worse by EPA actions.

I'd like to call the attention of the incoming administration and the new Congress to a tiny footnote at the end of the GAO report's table of contents that reads, "Legislation is likely to be necessary, as a supplement to actions by the executive branch, in order to effectively address this high risk area."

That means you.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Technorati Tags: Analysis EPA GAO environment protection bush midnight regulation risk science information assessment pollution pollute