EPA = Ecocide Political Agency

In what is now a weekly occurrence, two more reports/stories were released this week detailing how the EPA's refusal to act as required by law, politicizing every issue, and outright obfuscation has destroyed lives and ironically the environment.

The first story is tragic. After years of asking the EPA to do something, this American community finally had to "sue" the United States in a body associated with the Organization of American States (!) to intervene – then the agency decided to do something:

"Mossville is still suffering. There are still people that are dying," she says.

As evidence, they point to government blood tests showing residents with three times the normal levels of dioxins in their blood. Dioxins are carcinogens, often called the most toxic substance known.

Health surveys in Mossville [Louisiana] show widespread respiratory problems and other ailments. Residents also say many in the community have died young, from cancer.

After YEARS of rebuffing their requests, the EPA in January agreed to test whether Mossville qualifies as a federal Superfund site. Investigators arrived in April. Superfund designation could mean federal funding for cleanup and, possibly, relocation for residents who want to go.

Mossville won another victory in March. An international human rights commission agreed to rule on a case brought by Mossville against the United States government.

"It means they are going to have a legal judgment on their right to live in a healthy environment," says Monique Harden, co-director and attorney with Advocates for Environmental Human Rights

Advocates for Environmental Human Rights filed suit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of the people of Mossville. It was the first time the commission, an arm of the Organization of American States, decided to rule on an environmental injustice case in the United States, according to Harden.

(Source: CNN June 2, 2010 "Toxic town's advocate sees victory ahead")

Then this story; the agency refused to allow the development of micro-organisms that could have consumed all of the oil being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico at this time:

… is the incomprehensible choice of William Reilly, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to co-chair the presidential commission to investigate the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

During Reilly's tenure, the EPA implemented policies that prevented the development of a high-tech method to mitigate the effects of the oil washing onto the magnificent beaches along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida.

Reilly should have known: Innovation had been stymied by his agency's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques. The regulations ensured that biotech researchers in several industrial sectors, including bioremediation, would continue to be intimidated and inhibited by regulatory barriers. Those policies remain in place today, and the EPA's anti-technology zealots show no signs of changing them.

Characteristically, the EPA didn't let science get in the way of policy. Its regulation focuses on any "new" organism (strangely and unscientifically defined as one which contains combinations of DNA from unrelated sources) that might, for example, literally eat up oil spills.

The EPA ignored the widely held scientific consensus that holds that modern genetic engineering technology is essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier, cruder techniques of genetic modification. In fact, the U.S. National Research Council observed in 1989 that the use of the newest genetic engineering techniques actually lowers the already minimal risk associated with field testing.

(Source: Investor's Business Daily June 2, 2010 "Perspective: Obama Slips Up On Oil Spill Panel")

All to be added to the agency's legacy in what it failed to do on Marco Island.