by Matthew Hay Brown
The Senate investigation into the EPA decision last month on greenhouse gases isn’t going at all the way Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer wanted.
First, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson declined Boxer’s invitation to defend his decision to deny California permission to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles at a “field briefing” next week in Los Angeles.
Now one of his associates tells the California Democrat that the agency won’t be providing the documents she requested in time for the session.
“Who does the Administrator think he and the EPA work for?” Boxer asked in a statement released late Friday. “The EPA Administrator needs to be reminded that he works for the American people. The Bush EPA can run, but they can’t hide. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold the Bush EPA accountable for this outrageous, unprecedented decision.”
EPA Associate Administrator Christopher B. Bliley wrote Boxer Friday that the agency was trying to gather the documents she requested, but would not be able to meet the Monday deadline she had set.
“Please be assured that EPA respects your very strong interest in this issue and is committed to providing the committee to the extent possible information necessary to satisfy its oversight interests consistent with our Constitutional and statutory obligations,” Bliley wrote. “Your request is a top priority for this agency and we are working hard to respond as quickly as possible.”
At issue is Johnson’s decision last month to deny the request by California to begin regulating the emissions that scientists say contribute to climate change – reportedly against the unanimous recommendation of the EPA’s legal and technical staffs.
Johnson said that fuel efficiency standards signed into law by President Bush on the same day that he issued his ruling rendered the California standards unnecessary. Both the Senate panel and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are investigating how he came to his decision.
Scheduled to appear at the field briefing on Thursday are California Attorney General Jerry Brown and the heads of the California Air Resources Board and the Sierra Club.
Bliley said the agency would not provide an additional response to Boxer’s request until Friday, the day after the briefing. He described a system he said the agency had established to collect the documents, and said “preliminary results suggest there may be tens of thousands of emails and documents that are possibly responsive to your request.”
“Although we have taken the steps described above in order to process the request as quickly and effectively as possible,” he wrote, “this will still be a significant logistical burden on the Agency.”
Boxer fired back a reply directly to Johnson, saying his “continuing refusal to cooperate with this Committee … demonstrates a failure to understand that the EPA and its Administrator are accountable to Congress and to the people of the United States.”
Then she reiterated the Monday deadline.
“It is essential that we have these documents since you have refused to attend the briefing, and have not allowed any other representative of EPA to attend,” Boxer wrote. “Apparently we will have no EPA Administrator and no documents. What we will have is an excellent presentation by State leaders that will make clear the outrageous nature of the decision you have made to deny California and the other states the right to curb global warming.”
Federal law gives California unique authority to develop its own air quality standards, subject to EPA approval. Once the agency grants a “California waiver,” other states may adopt the same rules.
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A dozen other states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland, stand ready to enforce the California standards on greenhouse gas emissions.
California was joined by several of the states in a federal lawsuit this week against the EPA. The suit filed in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco seeks to overturn Johnson’s decision.