Bush Administration Covered Up 500+ Blocked Water Pollution Cases

Environment News Service. Posted December 17, 2008.

"The Denver regional office warned that "[w]e have literally hundreds of OPA [Oil Pollution Act] cases in our 'no further action' file" and forwarded a lengthy list of 'violations which we failed to take cases on.'"

"The Kansas City regional office warned that morale 'has plummeted,' that employees 'have lost hope,' and that 'our stress level has been overwhelming [and] has reached critical levels.'" the chairmen told Obama.

"The San Francisco regional office warned that these problems 'are real and must be addressed," noting in one case that "[i]t is time to pull the plug on keeping this case on life support,' the chairmen wrote.

In June 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in the Rapanos case that federal agencies could assert jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act for many waters only after going through a time-consuming and resource-intensive process of demonstrating a "significant nexus" to "traditional navigable waters."

"This Administration has only exacerbated a series of bad Supreme Court decisions by not enforcing the Clean Water Act and by placing development interests above those of the public," said Chairman Oberstar. "By withholding relevant information and misleading Congress our nation's waters have gone unprotected for too long. Only through Congressional action can we restore necessary Clean Water Act protections to our nation's waters."

"We have known for some time that the Clean Water Act is broken and that thousands of streams, rivers and wetlands have lost federal anti-pollution protections," said Joan Mulhern, legislative counsel with the public interest law firm Earthjustice. "But now we know the extent to which the Bush administration has been covering up the problem."

"While the committees' report is very revealing, the EPA's cover-up continues," Mulhern said. "They are still withholding documents on hundreds of dropped enforcement actions, and the information they did give the chairmen redacted identifying information that would tell the American people which water bodies have been contaminated illegally with oil spills, fills, and other industrial discharges by polluters."

"We thank Chairman Oberstar and Chairman Waxman for this investigation and their determination not to let the Bush administration off this hook for this huge breakdown in Clean Water enforcement and its proclivity for allowing polluting industries to set the nation's clean water policies," Mulhern said. "Earthjustice hopes to work closely with Congress and the next administration to get the needed legislative fix enacted as quickly as possible."

"The new administration must immediately reverse this pattern of leaving waters unprotected and hiding the mess from the public, and support swift Congressional passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act." This 2007 bill would clearly define the waters of the United States that are subject to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.

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