Here We Go Again 2014.06.26

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Issa Threatens EPA With Contempt as Team Obama Celebrates Its Climate Anniversary

While most of President Obama's Cabinet was touting the anniversary of President Obama's landmark speech in which he laid out plans to address climate change, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was left facing a contempt threat from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.

Issa issued a subpoena in November for documents and communications between the Environmental Protection Agency and the Executive Office of the President over a five-year period as part of an inquiry into whether the White House interfered with how the agency responded to congressional inquiries.

That request has gone unfulfilled, said Issa, who says he's planning to convene a committee business meeting after next week's recess and hold the agency in contempt if the documents are not turned over...

The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency's decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.

Side note: the Pebble Mine project is a controversial proposal to tap into "A particularly significant deposit of gold, molybdenum, and copper—the largest known untapped copper deposit in the world" on the shores of Alaska's Bristol Bay. The risk is that toxic waste produced as a byproduct of the mining process would find its way into the bay, which is home to the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery. The controversy, similar to that surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, revolves around the tradeoff between jobs and energy (or in this case, rare mineral) independence versus potential ecological impact on invaluable natural resources (Bristol Bay in Alaska, the Ogallala Aguifer in the Midwest).

The reason Congress is investigating the EPA over the Pebble Beach project is because the EPA took the rare and aggressive, although not entirely unprecedented, step of invoking what's termed a "404(c)" action that essentially halts the decision-making process. The EPA's action has outraged Alaskans and politicians who believe Alaskans should have the final say over whether or not to allow the mine.

In a statement, Governor Sean Parnell, a Republican, called the EPA’s action “egregious,” “unprecedented,” and “beyond federal overreach. The EPA has not only cut off public input and process, but has also unilaterally decided that they, not Alaskans, know what’s best for our future.” Republican Don Young, Alaska’s House representative, characterized it as the “jurisdictional power grab” of “an agency corrupted by politics, one with no regard for the state or federal permitting processes found in statute”—adding, “The EPA seeks to broaden its reach until their tentacles encumber every aspect of American life.”

So that's the backstory. Now let's return to the lost emails.

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North's hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency's discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.

What is it with federal agencies and crashed hard drives? I've used multiple computers over many decades and have yet to experience a single hard drive crash. In my corporate life I also oversaw IT functions for an international financial organization with hundreds of thousands of PCs. Granted, there were a few hardware failures, but we had appropriate backup procedures in place.

Oh, and by the way, the missing retired EPA employee (Phillip North) whose emails are in question has been found alive and well in New Zealand. That is literally about as far away from Alaska as he could get.

I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for the multiple hard drives crashes of key federal employees, the lack of backups, the difficulty in locating Mr. North, and his choice of a distant and isolated residence.

Surrre there is...