LA Weekly

EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley -- the same EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley who just a year ago took the EPA to task for calibrating mercury emissions standards to the Bush administration and industry's liking -- resigned today.

"As I conclude nearly 35 years of public service, I hope I have successfully demonstrated that career civil servants can provide you and future Presidents an excellent pool of candidates for Inspectors General positions due to our experience in government and the non-partisan nature of the positions. Unfortunately, I fear the pay inequities that were created with the implementation of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2004 will make it increasingly difficult to convince career employees to accept IG appointments in the future. I hope your Administration will work with Congress to address this issue and to encourage qualified career employees to serve as Inspectors General in the future."

The whole letter (as a downloadable PDF) is here

And a great profile by Dale Russakoff of the Washington Post is here:

"We are not just about following rules," said Tinsley, the EPA's inspector general since 1999. "We want to know if the rules make sense."

Tinsley recently has issued investigative reports concluding that a number of them do not. In late September, for example, she reported that a rule promulgated by the EPA "has seriously hampered" clean-air litigation against electric utilities by scaling back a requirement that polluters install emissions controls when adding to their facilities.

The same day, even as EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt was on the campaign trail for President Bush, touting the nation's air as "the cleanest most Americans have ever breathed," another IG report found that smog levels in major metropolitan areas had remained the same or gotten worse, making the air unhealthful

Tinsley is the second Inspector General to resign this week, after Department of Transportation IG Kenneth Mead on Monday.

UPDATE: If you want to understand the OIG/EPA conflict over mercury standards in more detail -- and the historical background of those standards -- check out Jeff Johnson's "Long Time Cutting" from Chemical and Engineering News.
.

Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)