The little town of Washington, Ga., had a big problem with the Environmental Protection Agency a few years ago. It seems the agency was threatening to hit the town with fines of $50,000 a day because it had not passed wastewater toxicity tests to the agency's satisfaction.
It's not that EPA had identified a toxic pollutant in the wastewater. No, the problem was that laboratory-grown water fleas didn't reproduce as fast in the wastewater as they did in pure water. Bewildered local officials hustled up to Washington to meet with their congressman, Charlie Norwood, to find out what the reproductive habits of water fleas had to do with the environmental problems posed by city wastewater. So what if fleas didn't want to have sex in it?So what?
As it turned out, EPA couldn't really explain what flea sex had to do with water quality. Sheepish agency officials had to drop the fines. But the matter didn't quite end there.
When one of the agency's own scientists, David Lewis, cited the flea-sex flap in a column in a Georgia newspaper as an example of skewed agency priorities, EPA brass threatened to sanction him for alleged Hatch Act and ethics violations. The problem? He had listed his affiliation with EPA before his affiliation with the University of Georgia, in a manner that seemed calculated to cause the agency maximum embarrassment. But Mr. Lewis hadn't come up with the wastewater water-flea standard.That was the agency's doing.
An editorial here last month cited Mr. Lewis' difficulties and pointed out that an administrative law judge had sided with Mr. Lewis in the case, saying EPA had selectively enforced its ethics rules against an employee who was within his rights to criticize the agency. Mr. Lewis says the agency ultimately had to apologize to him, clear him of wrongdoing and pay him $115,000 in legal fees and damages.
Now it appears Mr. Lewis is not the only one with a complaint. In a letter responding to the editorial and to a news story in The Washington Times, more than 15 agency scientists, managers, staff and others complain that the threats and harassment Mr. Lewis had to endure are in fact "pervasive" at EPA. Retaliation against whistleblowers occurs at "every management level" and involves officials at the highest levels, including the office of Administrator Carol Browner.
In the meantime, they say, the agency is losing hundreds of millions of dollars to fraud and waste. And it is implementing regulations and taking enforcement actions that are based on unsound science.These actions may actually harm, not help, the environment and public health.
"I have only said publicly," says Mr. Lewis, "what EPA's scientists across the country are saying behind closed doors. Last year, in [an independent] survey,three out of four EPA scientists, managers and support staff responded that science is not well integrated into EPA's mission. EPA scientists know what Carol Browner cannot seem to understand:'Bad science does not protect the environment.' "
Given what's at stake here, federal lawmaker sought to take seriously the concerns of David Lewis and his colleagues. Agency scientists should be allowed to spell out their differences with EPA without fear of retribution from persons uncomfortable with their criticism.
In the long term, lawmakers should take a look at the Science Integrity Act introduced by Calif.Rep. Richard Pombo. The legislation, which Mr.Lewis helped draft in his spare time, calls for the use of outside scientific panels in reviewing regulations with a scientific aspect to them. It might help refocus the agency on protecting human health and the environment in general, rather than Viagra for fleas.
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