The lower number of prosecutions and convictions of criminal polluters by the Bush Administration is not just the result of a discretionary judgment about the threshold for what constitutes a criminal offense, and it isn’t a problem that can be blamed on the individual failures of EPA investigators. Eric Schaeffer, former director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement, explains, “I don’t think this is a problem with agents in the field. They’re capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House.” Schaeffer resigned his government post when he realized that he would be more effective as an outside critic of the Bush White House’s negligence, and founded the Environmental Integrity Project.
The problem with the government’s weak pursuit of criminal polluters is the result of George W. Bush’s own decision to break the law. The Pollution Prosecution Act makes it a crime for the President to employ fewer than 200 investigators in the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division. There are presently only 172 investigators employed. The crimes of corporate polluters are mirrored by George W. Bush’s own crime, and as a result of both, American citizens are suffering.
(Source: Washington Post, September 29, 2007)
