Bush Nominee For EPA Enforcement Chief Has History Siding with Polluters

[JABBS]

President Bush has nominated Granta Nakayama, a partner in the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, to lead the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The Senate must approve the appointment.

Thomas Skinner, the EPA's acting head of enforcement, told the Baltimore Sun yesterday that Nakayama would have to recuse himself from "a number of other matters that Kirkland & Ellis have handled over the years."

That includes Kirkland's representation of chemical company W.R. Grace & Co., which faces multiple criminal charges alleging the company and seven of its current or former executives knowingly put their workers and the public in danger through exposure to vermiculite ore contaminated with asbestos from the company's mine in Libby, MT.

"This is one of the most significant criminal indictments for environmental crime in our history," Lori Hanson, special agent in charge of the EPA's environmental crime section in Denver, said in February after the charges were announced by the Justice Department.

Since 1999, the EPA and Grace have been at loggerheads over a variety of environmental problems stemming from the company's asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore from its Montana mine. Several EPA's regional offices are still working with state and federal agencies to determine how many sites in more than 40 states where Grace shipped the tainted ore remain contaminated.

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Kirkland & Ellis' Web sites lists a number of other environmental battles it fought, often against the EPA, on behalf of companies that use toxic materials and chemicals.

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To read more on this topic, go to Journalists Against Bush's B.S. (JABBS)

[Deep13]

1. That's a surprise!

Didn't Whitman get pushed out because she wouldn't go down on polluters? I remember the Outside magazine article from 2001 calling Gail Norton a "Natural Disaster."

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Why do you think the guy was chosen for this job?

Without fail bush nominees are chosen for maximum cynical good ol' boy "I'll show you" effect. Every time.

[Moderator]

3. Nice blog but,

Rule number 5 in LBN rules:
5. Whenever possible, post excerpts and links from reputable mainstream news sources that are available online. Do not link to blogs, vanity sites, or blatantly biased sources, except in cases where reputable mainstream sources are not available. Please make an effort to link directly to the original source of an article, instead of linking to sites that have re-published someone else's content, or re-packaged someone else's content as their own. The moderators have the authority to decide which websites are appropriate for posting in the Latest Breaking News forum and which are not.

[JABBS]

4. LBN rule

Sorry. I didn't realize not to post to a blog. I thought a blog could be a source for LBN. Thanks.