=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #254
—October 9, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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EDITORIAL: EPA CHIEF HARASSING WHISTLE BLOWERS
William Reilly, chief of EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency) is trying to punish two whistle blowers inside his
agency. Mr. Reilly has taken steps to prevent William Sanjour and
Hugh Kaufman from ever again traveling outside Washington, DC, to
meet a local grass-roots group, give a speech, or analyze a waste
disposal problem. If Mr. Reilly gets away with this cowardly
behavior, no one in EPA will be safe from arbitrary punishment by
the chief, in violation of federal laws on civil service and
civil rights, and in violation of universal laws of human decency.
For over 10 years two EPA employees, William Sanjour and Hugh
Kaufman, have been voluntarily helping grass-roots citizen
groups. Donating their time, these two men have traveled back and
forth across the country to make speeches, offer consultations,
and provide technical assistance to citizen groups fighting
dumps, incinerators, and deep-well injection proposals. They are
technically trained (one a physicist, the other an engineer),
politically savvy and plain-spoken. What separates them most
clearly from their colleagues at EPA is their serious commitment
to helping people at the grass-roots level. They often make
local appearances and help people understand why EPA is working
for the polluters and against the citizenry. They offer an
insider’s view that is refreshing and heartening to anyone who
has ever heard them speak. (See RHWN #210, “An Insider Tells Why
EPA Is Like It Is.”)
Now William Reilly is punishing these men by ruling that they can
no longer accept money from citizens as reimbursement for travel
expenses they incur on their own time, even when they are
officially on vacation and traveling as individuals, not as
government employees, to assist citizen groups. If Reilly is
successful, it means Sanjour and Kaufman–AND ANY OTHER AGENCY
EMPLOYEES WHO MIGHT TRY TO HELP CITIZENS–will have to pay for
all their own travel, which would essentially restrict them to
local appearances. It is an unmistakable attempt by Mr. Reilly
to punish these men and to cut off the last vestige of support to
grass-roots groups available from within EPA. It must be obvious
that Mr. Reilly’s ruling is a violation of these men’s human
rights and a slap in the face to grass-roots activists everywhere
who count on Sanjour and Kaufman for help.
Both Sanjour and Kaufman have been at odds with their bosses
inside EPA for many years. For example, Hugh Kaufman was put
under surveillance by Anne Burford (Ronald Reagan’s first chief
of EPA). Kaufman had criticized Burford and her sidekick Rita
Lavelle (who later served time in jail, thanks to Kaufman) for
playing fast and loose with Superfund monies, so Burford set out
to “get” Kaufman. She had him tailed to a motel where he was
photographed entering a room with an unknown woman. A gleeful Ms.
Burford thought she has the goods to ruin Kaufman’s career–to
discredit him and perhaps even get him fired. Turned out the
unknown woman was Kaufman’s wife. And it was Burford who
ultimately got fired as Kaufman turned the tables and left her
twisting in the wind.
For his part, Sanjour has been at odds with his supervisors since
the days of the Carter administration when he saw that his bosses
were dragging their feet developing hazardous waste regulations
Congress had ordered them to create. He pointed this out. He was
reprimanded and then transferred to an uninteresting job; since
then he has viewed the bureaucracy around him as part of the
problem and not part of the solution. He puts his faith in an
aroused public, not in wimp government bought and sold by
polluters.
Sanjour’s jaundiced view of EPA seem justified by the record.
Despite Mr. Reilly’s claim that his leadership has brought
science into EPA decision-making for the first time, a stream of
reports issuing from the U.S. General Accounting Office [GAO] (an
arm of the Congress) reveals nearly continuous failure by Mr.
Reilly’s EPA to fulfill its responsibilities. These reports are
available free from GAO at P.O. Box 6015, Gaithersburg, MD 20877;
phone (202) 275-6241. For example, TOXIC SUBSTANCES; EPA’S
CHEMICAL TESTING PROGRAM HAS MADE LITTLE PROGRESS
[GAO/RCED-90-112]; and HAZARDOUS WASTE–CONTRACTORS SHOULD BE
ACCOUNTABLE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE [GAO/RCED-90-23];
SUPERFUND CONTRACTS; EPA’ PROCEDURES FOR PREVENTING CONFLICTS OF
INTEREST NEED STRENGTHENING [GAO/RCED-89-57]; and WATER
POLLUTION–MORE EPA ACTION NEEDED TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF HEAVILY
POLLUTED WATERS [GAO/RCED-89-38].
But EPA does have one thing it can be proud of. At the Citizens
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) national grass-roots
convention in 1989, Bill Sanjour and Hugh Kaufman were each given
special awards for extraordinary service to local people
protecting the environment nation-wide. Obviously, to thousands
of Americans these men are a credit to the EPA–they are the
agency’s finest.
Why is William Reilly out to get them? For one thing, they
brought formal charges against Mr. Reilly for clear violations of
federal law when he tried to reverse federal policy based on an
ill-fated breakfast meeting with Dean Buntrock, chief of the
nation’s largest waste disposal company, back in 1989. Because
charges were filed, EPA’s Inspector General was forced to open an
investigation. Unfortunately, Mr. Reilly proved to be slippery;
he managed to appoint his own investigator and he chose someone
whom he had the power to hire and fire. To no one’s surprise,
this “investigation” exonerated Mr. Reilly of all wrong-doing
despite substantial documentary evidence to the contrary. (See
RHWN #151, #156, #157
and #159.)
Now Mr. Reilly evidently sees an opportunity to get revenge while
sending a signal to grass-roots environmentalists in the
process–“You don’t count, and my agency will do everything in
its power to see that you don’t get help.” Mr. Reilly has seized
upon a law passed by Congress last year, the Ethics in Government
Act, which was Congress’s attempt to curb the corruption of the
Reagan-Bush years–years when more public servants have been
jailed, fined and banished from government in disgrace than in
any other decade of American history. Clearly, no Congressman or
Senator intended the Ethics in Government Act to prevent citizens
from buying Bill Sanjour or Hugh Kaufman a plane ticket so they
could get some help from these two. It is a perverse and
self-serving misinterpretation of the law by Mr. Reilly, a tacit
admission that his character is petty, his understanding of
grass-roots environment protection shallow, and his appreciation
of American democratic values lacking in depth and substance. Do
not let William Reilly get away with this shameful deceit. Call
or write your Senator and Congressman. Ask them to investigate.
Ask them, “Is this what was intended when you passed the Ethics
in Government Act?” To learn their phone numbers, phone (202)
224-3121 in Washington, DC. Or drop them a note; just address it
to Senator So-and-so or Congressman So-and-so; the only address
you need is “Washington, DC” and a zip code: for the Senate, it’s
20510 and for the House 20515. Urge them to investigate.
As it happens, Environmental Research Foundation has just
published an astonishing little report authored by William
Sanjour called ANNALS OF THE EPA: PART 1. WHO’S POLICING THE
POLICE? in which Sanjour reveals a new story of deception and
intrigue within the EPA–a story that EPA chief Reilly has so-far
successfully stonewalled. In 1986 citizens in Kentucky reported
that a notorious waste hauler was dumping liquids into a hole in
the ground leading to an old coal mine. The citizens say EPA
Region IV (Atlanta) sent investigators twice but then EPA was
silent. Corinne Whitehead of the Coalition for Health Concern
asked Sanjour to investigate. But when Sanjour tried to get the
official EPA report–and ALL EPA field investigations ALWAYS
produce a report–the file was empty. Who had removed the report?
As Sanjour probed further, the plot thickened. Where does the
buck stop in this felonious mystery? The buck stops at Bill
Reilly’s door. So far that door remains closed and ominously
silent.
It is clear from this report that several highly-placed EPA
officials may have violated federal laws, and that Mr. Reilly has
failed to investigate. Who DOES police the policeman?
Get: William Sanjour, ANNALS OF THE EPA: PART 1. WHO POLICES THE
POLICEMAN? (Washington, DC: Environmental Research Foundation,
July, 1991). $5.00.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: whistleblowing; whistleblowers; whistle
blowers; federal; epa; william reilly; william sanjour; hugh
kaufman; citizen groups; gao; ethics in government act; anne
burford; rita lavelle;