Waxman - Whitman Lied On EPA Mercury Studies - LA Times

[hatrack]

WASHINGTON — "On her final day as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christie Whitman assured members of Congress that the EPA would do required economic and technical studies before proposing a rule to reduce mercury emissions from power plants.

Despite Whitman's assurance, EPA career staffers say this analysis was put off on orders from agency political appointees — and the proposal was written in part by utility interests who strongly supported it.

Whitman said in interviews this week that, if she had known the studies of the mercury proposal were not being done, she would have intervened. But according to a June 27, 2003, response from Whitman made public Thursday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), she had been alerted to such concerns and promised four Democratic lawmakers that all necessary analyses would be completed by Dec. 15, 2003.

Waxman was one of the lawmakers who received Whitman's letter after inquiring about reports at the time that the analysis had been shelved. "Her statements now are indefensible," Waxman said. Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, rejected Waxman's criticism as unfounded. She said it was her expectation that the agency would deliver on its commitments to the lawmakers after she departed."

EDIT

[NNadir]

1. Whitman is a contemptible Quisling.

Her first step on going to the EPA was to begin betraying citizens of New Jersey by giving coal burners the right to trash our state, which by the way has the highest Mercury contamination in the US, most of it from coal burning.

Her collaborating with Bush will prevent this chronic liar and fraud from ever again acceeding to high office in New Jersey. This is a poor silver lining.

It goes without saying of course that one MUST be a liar and a fraud to accept any post in the Bush administration with the word "Environmental" in the title. Still, this person has disgraced our state. I sure as hell wish she'd move to fucking Wyoming or Utah.