Environmentalists vs. Scientists
COHEN, BONNER R.
Environmentalists vs. Scientists The EPA has become an inhospitable place for dissenting experts. BY BONNER R. COHEN IT MUST HAVE BEEN A SHOCK to people in communities from Maine to California...
...In a letter to the Washington Times on June 10, 1998, 13 EPA dissidents wrote that they found the situation at the agency "so reprehensible that we submit this letter, risking our careers rather than choosing to remain silent...
...The treatment meted out to Lewis and Rimar is not limited to scientists...
...Released through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in August, this investigation concluded that, "While the specific component(s) of the sewage sludge responsible for employees' symptoms have not been determined, the nature and timing of the symptoms suggest occupational exposure by ingestion or inhalation of the sludge as a probable cause...
...Senator James Inhofe, who chairs a panel of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, recently told a Capitol Hill conference that he has been sought out by EPA scientists complaining about their treatment by the agency...
...It was yet another example of the agency moving full-speed-ahead with a regulatory program before fully assessing the scientific implications...
...Given the lengths to which EPA is willing to go to snuff out internal opposition, some EPA dissidents go underground...
...Inhofe pledged to hold hearings soon on EPA's "abusive tactics...
...Hugh Wise, an environmental scientist at the agency, is one of many professionals there who don't share EPA's views on risk...
...In 1993, David Lewis became so concerned that he wrote letters to vice president Al Gore and EPA administrator Carol Browner informing them of the abuse of science at the agency...
...Such was the public outcry over the drinking water contamination that EPA in July 1999 was forced to accept the verdict of a blue-ribbon panel and recommend that the use of MTBE be sharply reduced...
...They accuse EPA and state environmental agencies of engaging in a reporting "game" whereby "an unfortunate mix of politics, bureaucratic inertia, and bad science means that conflicting, erroneous, and manipulated sets of water quality data containing little accurate information on the actual condition of the nation's rivers and streams are routinely reported by states and dutifully compiled by EPA for presentation to Congress and the public...
...But the activities of the dissidents strongly suggest Rimar's "atmosphere of fear" may be closer to the mark...
...It says it "supports the efforts of its scientists . . . to engage in outside activities that are consistent with government regulations...
...His is no isolated case...
...Though the agency says the practice is safe, EPA scientists, including Lewis, warned that the pathogen-laden sludge, which is still "biologically active" when dumped, could trigger a host of illnesses in humans and animals...
...What the dissidents have in common, however, is their deeply held conviction that the agency has lost its way and is about to do—or is already doing—more harm than good...
...When he got no response, Lewis went public, with an article in the prestigious British journal Nature (June 27, 1996) asserting that science at EPA had reached the point of crisis...
...With the assistance of EPA dissidents, Bond has determined that the agency has passed out nearly $1 billion to about 1,000 such organizations in the past five years...
...that drive them to rebellion range from the agency's misuse of science to fraud, waste, and abuse in the multitude of programs EPA administers...
...Microbiologist David Lewis has spent 29 years with EPA...
...Brian Rimar, a scientist with EPA's regional office in Denver, was asked by his superiors to carry out an assessment of an EPA cleanup proposal at a Superfund site in Colorado...
...They went on to protest what they said was "fraud or waste in our agency, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, and alerting the public that EPA regulations and enforcement actions based on poor science stand to harm rather than protect public health and the environment...
...While Inhofe investigates the agency's mistreatment of its scientists, Senator Christopher Bond, chairman of the Small Business Committee, has his sights set on exposing EPA's practice of funneling grants to organizations that can be relied on to support the agency's regulatory actions...
...And it is just this kind of behavior that is prompting a growing number of long-serving career EPA employees to challenge the agency's brass on a variety of fronts...
...Yet EPA scientists who see their disciplines misused and try to warn higher-ups that the agency is on the wrong track face the threat of retaliation...
...Science at EPA suffered another setback in December 1998 when the agency's brass overruled its own scientists and torpedoed a science-based standard for chloroform in drinking water...
...BY BONNER R. COHEN IT MUST HAVE BEEN A SHOCK to people in communities from Maine to California to learn that the party chiefly responsible for contaminating their drinking water these past few years was none other than the U.S...
...Like Lewis, Rimar sued the agency and was awarded a settlement, $100,000, last fall...
...The dissidents weren't fooling when they said they were "risking their careers...
...Finally, the sludge issue will be at the center of hearings expected to begin by early February before James Sensenbrenner's House Science Committee...
...One case in point makes the MTBE debacle look tame by comparison...
...Yet in overseeing a congressionally mandated program to put "cleaner-burning" fuels in the cities with the most serious air problems, EPA allowed the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) to find its way into the water...
...The ink was hardly dry on the Nature piece before EPA retaliated against Lewis, charging him with a series of ethics violations, all of them later thrown out by a Department of Labor mediation board...
...Unexplained deaths linked to sludge have occurred in several places, including those of an 11-year-old boy in Pennsylvania, a 26-year-old man in New Hampshire, and hundreds of dairy cows on two Georgia farms...
...The agency's a mess," he says...
...Early in 1999, the Butler County (Ohio) Department of Environmental Services requested, and got, an investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into severe illnesses coal miners are suffering after exposure to sludge applied for mine reclamation...
...The decision, dissidents argue, will force water system operators to waste precious resources battling fictitious threats resulting from the purification process itself...
...Of the 13 people who signed the letter, five have lost their jobs...
...According to attorney Stephen Kohn, president of the National Whistleblowers Center, EPA's arsenal includes "threats to demote or transfer employees, baseless criminal investigations, and trumped-up charges of ethics violations, all aimed at ostracizing, intimidating and ultimately silencing those who speak out...
...In his view, "The use of science at EPA has deteriorated to the point that the agency, rather than protecting public health and the environment, is actually putting them at risk...
...Environmental Protection Agency...
...Sometimes EPA's dissidents confront the agency openly, for which they can pay dearly, and sometimes they do so furtively, through leaks or clandestine meetings with members of Congress...
...The more they dig, the more they'll find...
...Water suppliers in the United States, however, have come to see the presence of these traces as posing a far lower risk to public health than the pathogens that would otherwise be in drinking water...
...For its part, EPA apparently believes it best not to repeat a negative...
...When Rimar concluded that EPA's plan would leave so much copper in local soil and plants that it would endanger nearby livestock, he, too, was harassed by EPA's internal investigative arm, the Office of Inspector General, before being driven from the agency...
...it is also used against EPA employees who report wrongdoing or refuse to carry out instructions they believe are illegal or unethical...
...Tellingly, the authors of the report—EPA employees and current and former state environmental officials—chose to remain anonymous...
...Since 1993, EPA has allowed so-called Class B municipal sludge, mostly human waste, to be spread as fertilizer on farmlands, national forests, and other areas...
...In explaining its chloroform decision, EPA argued better safe than sorry: It is "appropriate and prudent to err on the side of public health protection when there are indications that exposure to a contaminant may present risks to public health, rather than take no action until risks are unequivocally proven...
...In May, a study titled Murky Waters: Official Water Quality Reports Are All Wet: An Inside View of EPA's Implementation of the Clean Water Act was released by a group who call themselves Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility...
...Speaking for himself and not the agency, Wise notes that "EPA regularly designates certain chemicals as 'toxic' pollutants or 'hazardous' pollutants but fails to inform the public of one of the cardinal rules of toxicology...
...Considering what Rimar calls the "atmosphere of fear" prevailing at EPA, it is not surprising that many of the agency's dissidents have turned to Congress for help...
...The mere presence of the chemicals does not convey toxicity...
...Lewis filed a whistleblower complaint and, in a settlement last year, was awarded $140,000 in damages and legal fees...
...The agency doesn't comment publicly on its legal battles with Lewis, Rimar, and other employees suing EPA...
...The issues Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va...
...What makes this fiasco instructive is that EPA had ignored warnings from its own scientists contained in a December 1992 report, "Alternative Fuels Research Strategy," which concluded that the gasoline additive could leak from gas stations and underground storage tanks and end up in groundwater...
...Chloroform is created when drinking water is chlorinated to remove microbial pathogens...
...Contrary to its scientists' recommendations, EPA insisted on an unachievable chloroform standard of zero...
...The presence in drinking water of trace amounts of chloroform and other so-called disinfectant byproducts is thus inevitable...
...Lewis, now on the faculty at the University of Georgia and awaiting termination by EPA, is hopeful the congressional investigations will bear fruit...
...The dose makes the poison...
Vol. 5 • January 2000 • No. 17
