Growls

Almost three weeks ago, we growled about what a policy paper from the Cato Institute called Congress’ “culture of spending.” Well, today’s Washington Post has a story on the front page that shows the effects of that “culture of spending.” The story, accompanied by a picture of a beautiful sunset over Chesapeake Bay, discussed the broken promises over cleaning-up the bay.

In essence, the story blamed “Chesapeake progress reports” that “painted ‘too rosy a picture’ as pollution reduction deadlines passed up” followed by these two introductory paragraphs

“Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing -- even issuing reports overstating their progress -- to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say.

“The cleanup, which had its 25th anniversary this month, seems doomed to miss its second official deadline for achieving major reductions in pollution by 2010.”

Rather than tracing the problem to Congress’ “culture of spending,” the Post stopped at the bureaucrats in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, explaining:

”But the agencies charged with the cleanup have never mustered enough legal muscle or political will to overcome opposition from the agricultural and fishing industries and other interests.

“Instead of strengthening their tactics, though, they tried to make the cleanup effort look less hopeless than it was.

“That picture emerges from internal documents and from interviews with current and former officials involved in the cleanup, including two who served as director of the EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program Office, the closest thing to a "bay czar" that the decentralized effort has.

“William Matuszeski, who headed the program from 1991 to 2001, described how the program repeatedly released data that exaggerated its success, hoping to influence Congress. His successor, Rebecca W. Hanmer, said she was instructed by regional leaders in 2002 not to acknowledge that the effort would fall short of its 2010 goals.

"To protect appropriations you were getting, you had to show progress," Matuszeski said. "So I think we had to overstate our progress." Several state governors said they were unaware of inflated data, and another EPA official disputed Matuszeski's account.

“The cleanup's failure has prompted a coalition of environmentalists and scientists this month to call for replacing the EPA's approach with firm regulations on farms, sewer plants and developers. A group of watermen has joined environmentalists in threatening a lawsuit, hoping a judge can force the EPA to quicken the pace of the cleanup.

“For the bay, the consequences are clear: The vast marsh-rimmed estuary has just as many pollution-driven "dead zones" as it did in the 1980s and less of the life -- crabs, oysters, watermen -- that made it famous.

While the Post is correct in saying the agency (EPA) responsible for cleaning-up the Bay failed and the Post  deserves credit for devoting the resources for the story, the paper did not explain that the cause can be traced back to Congress and the greedy bureaucrats at EPA who were more concerned with growing the EPA’s bureaucracy.

And where were the compassionate “green” interest groups during the past 25 years? Pushing Congress to provide ever more money for EPA to become every more bloated? Will the eco-radicals ever learn the value of cost-benefit analysis? And, finally, will any of the EPA bureaucrats who “tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing” and “issuing reports overstating their progress” go to jail? And will Congress change their “culture of spending” to one of providing oversight and holding bureaucrats accountable for taxpayer dollars?