The EPA-NGO Tango

Senate report details how EPA officials divert millions of tax dollars to activist groups

Are tax dollars being channeled through the Environmental Protection Agency to Democratic activists working in the nonprofit sector?

A comprehensive new report released Wednesday by the Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee makes clear that the answer to that question is yes. The report is entitled "The chain of environmental command."

Major mainstream media which generally parrot the perspectives and analyses of the environmental movement have utterly ignored the report.

This isn't news?

Well no, not exactly. To those of us who have worked in the environmental business, the incestuous relationship between the EPA and the various environmental NGOs has been obvious for a long time, even during periods when the Republicans were nominally in charge, the EPA has been washing the NGO's hands and vice versa for year. It has, however, become far more open, with much more money involved in recent years.

One would think that millions of tax dollars being directed by government officials with significant conflicts of interest would be significant news at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Clearly someone who doesn't read the Washington Post at least, which has several daily columns devoted justifying the Federal government, and to how to squeeze more money out of the Feds, who make up a substantial portion of their subscribers.

But searches on both of those websites turned up zero coverage of the report, which was produced under the direction of Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the committee's ranking minority member.

Here are just four of the conclusions described in the report's executive summary regarding government funding of environmental nonprofits:

• Former far-left environmentalists working at EPA funnel government money through grants to their former employers and colleagues, often contributing to the bottom line of environmental activist groups.

• Under President Obama, EPA has given more than $27 million in taxpayer-funded grants to major environmental groups. Notably, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund – two key activists groups with significant ties to senior EPA officials – have collected more than $1 million in funding each.

• EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck appears to be inappropriately and personally involved in the allocation of EPA grants to favored groups. Enck is also the subject of an inquiry led by the EPA Office of Inspector General.

• EPA also gives grants to lesser-known extreme groups. For example, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade received hundreds of thousands of grants under former Administrator Lisa Jackson despite challenges by state regulators over the use of such grants.

Just for giggles, I looked up the "Louisiana Bucket Brigades" to see what that was all about. Surprising that I hadn't seen the term before. Essentially the "Bucket Brigades" have designed a low cost system for sampling air pollutants. Good for them.  However, I have a problem with the use of such technology in the hands of activists and non-professionals. It is easy to contaminate samples even using clean expensive technology; it is much more difficult to take clean, representative samples. But that's not likely what they're seeking. They want to find violations (which they allegedly did). However, I can see plenty of ways that they could inadvertently or deliberately contaminate the samples and find false violations.

The EPA trains these NGOs on how to sue the EPA to get what they want; I'm sure that EPA's legal resistance is perfunctory at best. As Instapundit points out, the GOP needs to be more aware of the left's "Lawfare" and initiate more of it's own.

Time to impose my "modest proposal" for the staffing of controversial agencies; political affirmative action. Fire half of the existing employees at random (you may be safely sure that over 90% of them are democrats or undeclared fellow travelers to their left), and replace them with proven conservatives, and let the two different sides police each other's behavior.