Stephen L. Johnson, Stooge of Corporate Polluters

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 to protect human health and the environment. It employs 17,000 people, and has more than a dozen labs. Its staff is highly educated and technically trained; more than half are engineers, scientists, and policy analysts. The Administrator of the EPA is appointed by the President. The current administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, is a stooge of America’s corporate polluters.

According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island: “Administrator Johnson suggests a man who has every intention of driving his agency onto the rocks, of undermining and despoiling it, of leaving America’s environment and America’s people without an honest advocate in their federal government.”

Four senators, including Whitehouse, Boxer of California, Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Lautenberg of New Jersey, have called upon Johnson to resign. They claim that he has not only favored polluters, but has violated the law and committed perjury before Congress.

On December 19, 2007, Administrator Johnson denied a request by California for a waiver of the Clean Air Act so that it could impose a set of standards on motor vehicle emissions that were stricter than the federal standards. This was the first time in over 50 instances that the EPA had ever denied outright a California waiver request. In sworn testimony before Congress, Johnson testified that he based his decision on California’s failure to meet criteria required under the Clean Air Act. He swore that the decision was “mine and mine alone.”

According to the senators, it was a lie. It was perjury.

Former Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett later testified that Mr. Johnson had in fact determined that California met the Clean Air Act criteria necessary for approval of the waiver and had communicated to the Bush Administration that he intended to grant the waiver. After White House officials told him that such a waiver was contrary to the President’s policy, Johnson reversed course and denied the waiver.

The senators accused Johnson of inaugurating a reign of terror, attempting to intimidate scientists and employees of the EPA, and instituting a pro-polluter policy.

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report detailing the increasing politicization of the EPA. Of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists surveyed, 889 of them — 60 percent — “said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.”

Scientists had been directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from EPA scientific documents, misrepresent scientific issues, and omit important scientific findings.

Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA’s work without fear of retaliation. The highest rate of political interference (84%) was found among scientists who conduct risk assessments that could lead to strengthening regulations.

Among Johnson’s acts of misfeasance: he departed from the consistent recommendations of agency scientists, public health officials, and the agency’s own scientific advisory committees, and instead set an ozone standard that favored polluters.

He had EPA's top environmental regulator in the Midwest fired over her efforts to force Dow Chemical to clean up chemical spills.

In defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., he dismissed findings by his own agency that greenhouse gases pollute our air and threaten the public; he refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

He willingly allowed his advisory panels to be infiltrated by the very industries they are meant to regulate and control.

He removed a prominent toxicologist from a scientific review board investigating chemicals used in common plastic goods because the industry didn’t like an opinion she had stated years before regarding the dangers associated with those chemicals.

At the behest of President Bush, he overruled scientific recommendations on smog standards.

He repeatedly refused to appear before congressional committees or to produce materials requested by Congress.

Senator Whitehouse and others have accused Mr. Johnson of a long list of other misdeeds. He has turned the EPA from an agency that protects the environment into an agency that protects corporate polluters; in effect, an environmental pollution agency. He has blocked stronger regulations and prevented enforcement of the environmental laws now on the books.

You would think that prevention of pollution would be a nonpartisan issue. Isn’t everybody against pollution? Apparently not. The industries that pollute, contaminate, and poison our environment are violently opposed to efforts to strengthen and enforce the anti-pollution laws. Bush and his den of scoundrels, including Johnson, totally support the industries, not the American people.