The Air We Breathe

The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. That mission requires trained, educated, and dedicated employees to do the often difficult work of regulating powerful companies.

At least 300 employees have left since the new WH administration moved in. Still, I suspect that number is higher since the agency is not answering questions about the number of employees that left initially and how many decided to take the suspiciously spurious offer of getting paid until September by sitting at home doing nothing.

Doing nothing is not why these people took a job with the EPA. And they are not wimps who are easily cowed into a corner. I know because, as Michigan's Motor Fuel Quality Program Manager, I helped draft, implement, and enforce Michigan's summertime gasoline ozone standards to improve air quality in 10 of Michigan's counties where residents needed cleaner air to breathe. That took the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality pulling together several often contentious and warring factions to devise a solution that worked for all involved stakeholders (automakers, gasoline suppliers, the ethanol industry, local, federal, and state governments, environmental lobbyists, etc.) and we did manage to do that and not bankrupt average citizens when they pulled up to the gas pump in those counties. 

Make no mistake, this new WH administration seeks to undo much of what the EPA has accomplished to clean up our air and water. You might think the new guy wouldn't do that when we all need fresh water, and we all breathe the same air. But I know from experience that the most powerful corporations and the guy in the WH will look after their pocketbooks more than then they will worry about the long-term effects of their short-term financial decisions. 

One business lobbyist working on Michigan's committee to address the air quality admitted that his children had asthma, but it was no big deal; they just took meds for it. That might work--until it doesn't. Ask one of my former co-workers. Before the new rules took effect, her 10-year-old son died because he couldn't breathe, and his asthma medicine failed to help him. 

We might be unable to put the feral orange tabby back in the bag now that it has been turned loose, but I hope we as a country can find some way to control that cat so it doesn't wreck our entire home.

A recent ProPublica story gave me hope for our environmental future by reporting that many EPA employees will stay for as long as possible. One longtime employee said it best: “I don’t work here for the f*cking money. I work here because I believe in it and want to serve the public.”

To everyone at the EPA who does what they can to protect our air and water, I raise a glass of clean water to toast you and thank you from the bottom of my lungs.