With a reverential nod to maverick economist Jeff Madrick, who wrote a popular book of the same name, I begin today a series of blog posts entitled “The Age of Greed” that is designed to shine a bright spotlight into the dark corners where Washington lobbyists are busy looting the protection of public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment.  Business-as-usual efforts to stall or derail regulation won’t make it into this space.  Rather, behavior has to be demonstrably and extraordinarily egregious to qualify for ridicule here.  My first candidate:  The largely successful efforts by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the American Forest and Paper Association (AFPA) to derail the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) study of the devastating health effects of dioxin—you read that right, dioxin!—for more than two decades, capped last week by its letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson …

On January 9th, the Supreme Court will hear Sackett v. EPA, which concerns whether an individual has a right to a judicial hearing before, rather than after, an agency finalizes a so-called administrative compliance order.  The case has important potential to undermine the environmental protection, including the government’s ability to promptly respond to environmental threats such as factory outfalls leaking pollutants into rivers. 

The lawsuit involves an Idaho couple, Chantell and Mike Sackett, with a .63 acre property overlooking Priest Lake, Idaho. The Sacketts cleared and filled about a half acre of the property with gravel to ready it for building a house.  EPA officials discovered the fill and notified the couple that they had filled a “jurisdictional wetland,” meaning a wetland covered by the federal Clean Water Act.  (Mike Sackett has publicly stated that although the property could get “wet” in the spring, it was …

It’s my great pleasure to announce that the Board of Directors of CPR has selected Jake Caldwell to serve as our new executive director. He succeeds Shana Jones, who earlier this year announced she would be leaving CPR to teach environmental policy at Old Dominion University. 

Jake comes to CPR after six years at the Center for American Progress, where he was the Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade and Energy. His research and writing in that capacity frequently focused on environmental issues, including climate change regulation, renewable energy financing, clean energy and conservation, biofuel production and more. From November 2008 to January 2009, Jake served as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team, in the Energy and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agency Review. He has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey …

Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced a bill earlier this month that proposes to change regulatory and tax policies with the goal of encouraging more entrepreneurial activity and creating more jobs.  The legislation contains a grab-bag of proposals, such as allowing more aliens with professional expertise in stem cell research to become permanent residents and extending an income tax credit for certain small businesses.  I can’t speak to the merits of these and other proposals in the bill with one exception.  The legislation would codify the current requirement found in executive orders that federal agencies complete a cost-benefit analysis of proposed and final “major” rules.  This idea may sound reasonable on its face, but ultimately it would hinder the ability of federal agencies to issue health and environmental safeguards, and provide no help to the economy.

As other CPR scholars and I have …

Three years ago today, an earthen wall holding back a giant coal ash impoundment failed in Kingston, Tennessee, sending more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry over nearby land and into the Emory River. The ash had chemicals including arsenic, lead, and mercury. Clean up costs could be as much as $1.2 billion.

Public policy progress often comes in the wake of disasters. But three years after Kingston, it very much remains to be seen whether that disaster will at least lead to the needed regulations to stop the next one. Can EPA get the train back on the track? I hope so.

EPA had pledged that it would publish a proposed rule on coal ash by the end of 2009. But because OMB all but hijacked the process, the proposed rule didn't come until May 2010, and it was actually multiple proposals …

On Tuesday, the American Chemistry Council sent EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a letter about the provisions regarding IRIS toxic chemical assessments in the omnibus spending bill. The ACC said:

H.R. 2055 also directs EPA to include documentation describing how the NAS Chapter 7 recommendations have been implemented or addressed in all IRIS assessments released in Fiscal Year 2012. The documentation is to include an explanation for why certain recommendations were not incorporated. Thus, it is incumbent on EPA to fully explain how the IRIS assessment of dioxin comports with the NAS recommendations. To comply with Congress's direction, EPA should withdraw the dioxin assessment from interagency review and take the necessary steps to implement the NAS recommendations.

Withdrawing the dioxin assessment would be a huge deal, setting back progress on protecting the public from the chemical. But is this what Congress directed in the omnibus? Luckily …

It was October 1990, George H.W. Bush was President, and the vote wasn’t close in either chamber: Congress overwhelmingly passed the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, including provisions requiring EPA to reduce mercury emissions from major sources such as power plants.

Today the EPA at long last released its rule regulating mercury emissions from coal-fired utilities.  The fact that the largest remaining sources of mercury will finally be required to reduce their emissions is an important and historic development. And EPA’s steadfastness in the face of kicking and screaming by the dirtiest of the utilities down to the bitter end is a cause for celebration.  But thousands were needlessly poisoned during years of delay, and today is less an occasion for a victory lap than one for sober reflection.

How is it that one industry has wrangled nearly a quarter-century delay from the time …

Whoever accused the EPA of running amok is surely chagrined by the news last week that the agency is behind (again) on another important rule, this one to regulate the stormwater that pollutes many waterbodies across the United States.  Nancy Stoner, EPA’s Acting Assistant Administrator for Water, told a House Subcommittee last week that the agency would be missing another deadline for proposing the rule. "We're continuing to work on those …  We are behind schedule," she said, according to E&E News PM (subs. required).

Although the statement may be just another sad development that won’t get much attention, stormwater is a serious problem because it carries fertilizers, oil, pesticides, sediment, and trash as it flows over concrete and asphalt surfaces and discharges at high volumes into local waterways.  This uncontrolled discharge scours stream banks, damaging aquatic habitats and eroding natural flood protection infrastructure.  In …

The environmental community breathed a small sigh of relief last week when congressional negotiators released a spending bill without policy riders that would have prevented EPA from advancing rules on greenhouse gases, endangered species, and coal ash.  One rider that was included will slow EPA’s efforts to assess toxic chemicals’ potential health effects under the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) process.  Although the rider was substantially revised from a version floated in the House in July, it will still delay important public health protections on arsenic and other toxic chemicals.

Ever since the National Research Council released its review of the IRIS formaldehyde assessment in April, the chemical industry and its GOP allies have been arguing that the IRIS program should be stopped until EPA revamps its process for assessing chemical risks.  The NRC committee went beyond its charge of assessing EPA’s draft formaldehyde assessment …