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Eric V. Schaeffer, EPA Director, Office of Regulatory Enforcement resigns
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Source: Common Dreams
Text of EPA official's resignation letter
Published on Thursday, February 28, 2002 by MSNBC
EPA Official Quits, Rips White House
Regulatory Chief Cites Push ‘To Weaken the Rules’
by Miguel Llanos
The head of regulatory enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency has stepped
down, MSNBC.com has learned, claiming in a resignation letter that the EPA is “fighting a
White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce.” An
EPA spokesman denied the allegations, saying the Bush administration was committed to
enforcing the nation’s environmental laws. IN HIS RESIGNATION letter, Eric Schaeffer
complained specifically about what he saw as attempts to weaken Clean Air Act
regulations on coal-fired power plants.
“It is hard to know which is worse,” he wrote of a review of a key Clean Air Act provision,
“the endless delay or the repeated leaks by energy industry lobbyists of draft rule changes
that would undermine lawsuits already filed” against power plants.
Those lawsuits were filed during the Clinton administration, but a review ordered at the
start of the Bush administration has left the status of such actions unclear.
“At their heart, these proposals would turn narrow exemptions into larger loopholes that
would allow old ‘grandfathered’ plants to be continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase)
without modern pollution controls,” Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer told MSNBC.com that he started at the EPA 12 years ago, hired by the first
Bush administration. Then EPA chief Bill Reilly was “great on enforcement,” he said, and
that administration actually closed loopholes in the Clean Air Act.
“It’s very ironic,” he said, that President Bush should be seen as weakening an
environmental law tightened by his father. “His dad should talk to him.”
Schaeffer, who resigned as director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement Wednesday
night, said he wouldn’t be surprised if other EPA officials eventually follow him. “There’s a
lot of frustration in enforcement,” he said.
Text of EPA official's resignation letter
BUDGET CUTS CITED
Schaeffer also wrote that “our negotiating position is weakened further by the
administration’s budget proposal to cut the civil enforcement program by more than 200
staff positions below the 2001 level. Already, we are unable to fill key staff positions, not
only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs, and the proposed budget cuts would
leave us desperately short of the resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated
corporate defendants we face.”
Clean air activists said the letter as proof that the Bush administration is saying it wants
cleaner air while cutting deals with the industry to ease up on pollution controls.
“This letter really strips away the veil and gives the lie to the Bush administration’s claim
that it’s working to clean up the air,” said Frank O’Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and a critic of Bush’s environmental policies, called the
resignation “a wake-up call telling us that the Bush administration is quietly eliminating
clean air protections by refusing to enforce the law against its utility industry allies.”
WHITMAN IN THE MIDDLE
The letter, written to EPA chief Christie Whitman, concluded, “I believe you share the
concerns I have expressed.”
Schaeffer told MSNBC.com that Whitman has been “doing some pushing back” against
pressure from the White House and the Energy Department, which is pushing for greater
energy production. “How far she’ll get and whether she’ll win I don’t know,” he said.
Whitman, when she was New Jersey’s governor, was a vocal supporter of lawsuits against
power plants whose pollutants were ending up in other states like New Jersey.
As EPA chief, she has said the lawsuits that were settled will be honored but has been
less clear about the possibility of future lawsuits.
Whitman praised a “Clear Skies” initiative announced earlier this month by President Bush
as “the most aggressive initiative to cut air pollution in a generation.”
Environmentalists disagreed, saying that abiding by the Clean Air Act would cut pollution
more than the new initiative.
Democrats in the Senate have raised similar concerns and are likely to block passage of
the proposal.
EPA RESPONDS
Whitman’s spokesman, Joe Martyak, countered Schaeffer’s criticisms by saying the Clear
Skies initiative represented the best approach to reducing power plant pollution.
He also denied the allegations of tension and an administration divided over policy.
“I don’t characterize it as tension,” he said. “You have different agencies with different
missions” and the Energy Department, for example, focuses on improving energy supplies.
That interagency dialog, he added, “comes up with the best policy overall.”
“Is there tension?” he asked. “I’d say there are difficult situations but it’s not an issue of
conflict, but working through” the issues.
Martyak also said the EPA remains committed to enforcing environmental laws, and that
the measure of success should not be in the number of EPA staff jobs but in results.
Those include the fact that the dollar amount spent by violators on cleanups has doubled,
he said.
Text of EPA official's resignation letter
Copyright 2002 MSNBC
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