Embarrassing revelations from internal documents expose EPA’s true motive in prolonging legal attacks against WA dairies–and it’s not about protecting public health or the environment
News that federal regulators paid a faraway professor nearly a quarter-million dollars to frame three Washington state dairies for water pollution caps a series of deeply embarrassing moments for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice.
The mounting evidence confirms what the Washington state farming community has been saying for well over a decade: the EPA’s interest in continuing to sue these Yakima-area family farms isn’t about protecting public health or improving the environment.
As shocking as it is, the over-$200k payoff DOJ and EPA gave a Wisconsin professor for her deeply-flawed court testimony against the dairies wasn’t necessarily much of a surprise to people following EPA’s behind-the-scenes machinations dating back to 2012 and earlier.
During this time, people watching the agencies behind the scenes have seen a science study falsified, a coverup of likely-illegal secret changes to federal documents, backroom coordination with discredited anti-farm activist organizations, pressure tactics used against Washington state agencies, and more.
The EPA’s Region 10 Office in Seattle at one point even claimed that the farms were breaking the rules because the farmers had used the wrong font color on a required report, said Jay Gordon, Policy Director for the Washington State Dairy Federation.
“EPA would send it back, costing them literally tens of thousands of dollars, just to correct little details,” said Gordon. “It was clearly abusive. It was clearly about trying to bankrupt these farms. It was clearly about exercising really abusive levels of power.”
Nit-picking font colors, coordinating with dishonest activists, manipulating official documents and pushing fraudulent science doesn’t do anything to protect public health. Paying a professor $215,800 to use textbooks and Google Earth to churn out bad science, falsely blaming farms 2,000 miles away of polluting groundwater, doesn’t do anything whatsoever to actually improve the environment.
But all of these things do expose the fact that EPA’s and DOJ’s real motive in continuing to pour public resources into suing the dairies out of business is not at all what they’ve claimed publicly.
“Their endgame all along was actually to get all the [targeted] farms out of business, so that they could turn to anybody else that they wanted–farms, dairy farms, livestock farms across the country–and say, ‘If you mess with EPA, this will happen to you too. Don’t question our judgement or authority ever, or we will bankrupt you,’” Gordon said.
As far as the EPA’s true motives, perhaps the most telling detail is the glimpse that recently-uncovered documents have given into the federal agencies’ plans to continue this abusive battle against the Washington farms.
The now-exposed DOJ contract with the Wisconsin professor, Rebecca Larson, shows the feds plan to continue fighting through at least 2029, anticipating years of their ongoing efforts to discredit the dairies in court despite the huge investments they’ve made in protecting the environment and exceeding already-strict standards.
“These farms have done more to protect the environment, I would argue, than any other farm in the United States, if not the world,” said Gordon, detailing a series of regulations the dairies had already been complying with, and then even stricter requirements for extensive testing, documentation and reporting that the EPA added on top. “(EPA’s) game was not about your performance. It was about, ‘Can we bankrupt you?’”
It’s time for the EPA and DOJ to admit what we all can see: their endgame here isn’t protecting public health or the environment. The agencies’ strategy appears to be using never-ending litigation to bleed these farms dry, giving them greater power to regulate at their whim.
It’s an approach Gordon points out one former EPA official compared to the ancient Romans’ “enforcement by crucifixion.”
CNN in 2012 reported that Al Armendariz, who had been head of the EPA’s Dallas office, resigned over the offensive–but apparently revealing–comments after a video of them became public, sparking a political firestorm in Washington, D.C.
“He said it on camera, (but EPA) Region 10 did it,” Gordon said. Of the 4 farms the EPA originally targeted in the Lower Yakima Valley, only one remains in business.
Now that the public can see the truth about EPA and DOJ’s crusade to destroy these farms, it’s time for their twisted game to stop.