Texas Green Blotter

Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo picks up on a story published this weekend in the Washington Post:

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears that the Bush administration is dropping the ball, intentionally, in prosecuting polluters. Who could have imagined it?

The Post writes:

The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.

Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials, and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.

“You don’t get cleanup, and you don’t get deterrence,” said Eric Schaeffer, who resigned as director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement in 2002 to protest the administration’s approach to enforcement and now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group. “I don’t think this is a problem with agents in the field. They’re capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House.”

The slower pace of enforcement mirrors a decline in resources for pursuing environmental wrongdoing. The EPA now employs 172 investigators in its Criminal Investigation Division, below the minimum of 200 agents required by the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush.

The EPA counters, however, that:

Administration officials said they are not ignoring the environment but are focusing on major cases that secure more convictions against bigger players.

“We have been on an unprecedented run of success in the enforcement arena,” said Granta Y. Nakayama, EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. “These are major cases we are pursuing.”

Nakayama said that, in the past three fiscal years, the EPA has cut between 890 million and 1.1 billion pounds of air pollution through enforcement, making them “three of the four highest years in the agency’s history. . . . You’re seeing, I think, a historic period in terms of getting pollution out of the air.”

Moreover, TCEQ reports that it had a banner year in FY 2006:

Fiscal Year 2006 was a year of significant accomplishments for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). In this year, the TCEQ issued more administrative orders with higher penalties and supplemental environmental project (SEP) costs than in any year since the agency was granted administrative penalty authority. Enforcement efforts resulted in 1,531 administrative orders issued with over $9.9 million to be paid as penalties and over $3.2 million to be expended for SEPs. There were an additional 31 civil judicial orders issued through representation by the Texas Attorney General’s Office that resulted in over $25.6 million to be paid as penalties and $5.5 million to be expended for SEPs.

Surely, if the Texas Republicans are to blame for the problem, why is TCEQ reporting better enforcement stats? It’s not as if TCEQ is apolitical – see, e.g., the recent brouhaha over the appointment of Buddy Garcia to the Commission.

My suspicion is that the drop in federal civil cases is, in part, political, but I think it’s unfair or at least inaccurate to insinuate, as Benen does, that the problem is with Bush and his laissez faire buddies.

Law enforcement tends to go in cycles, with the agenda being pushed by the media and popular agitation. When a major disaster happens, politicians and pundits suddenly become aroused, hearings are ordered, funding picks up, and the appropriate agencies start doing their jobs (or at least making hortatory noises). See, for example, the recent example of PHMSA after a series of pipeline explosions in the late 90s and 2000s.

There haven’t really been any major environmental disasters (global warming notwithstanding) lately. No Love Canals, no Three Mile Islands, no Exxon Valdez-type oil spills. Popular focus has been elsewhere - for example, terrorism and public corruption.

This explains why EPA would focus its resources on big cases – to try to gain attention for its efforts, and to squeeze as much blood from as few turnips as possible.