The EPA's unofficial role as Bush administration pinata shows no sign of ending soon. First, the White House refused to open their emails, now the military is ignoring EPA's determination that several of its bases are so laden with chemicals that they pose an "imminent and substantial" danger to living things (which we assume includes its soldiers and employees on the bases).

But, it takes more than three areas of soil and groundwater contamination to get the Pentagon to appeal to the Justice Department to get the EPA off its case and have the White House handle its environmental issues instead. The EPA has also identified 12 Superfund sites created by the Pentagon that the agency refuses to acknowledge (and therefore have to cleanup). With 129 sites already on the Superfund list (more than anyone else!), we can totally sympathize with the already overwhelmed DOD.

We're sure we don't have to tell you that an agency has never taken this sort of action before. Here's another completely unrelated fun fact: Only one Superfund site has been added to the list during the current administration, when the Governor of Puerto Rico invoked some "law" that we assume the DoD couldn't ignore.

Of course, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has the authority to step up and tell the Pentagon what to do ... except the Pentagon refuses to recognize that authority. Other agencies, like NASA and DOE have cleaned-up their messes without fanfare. But, as long as the Commander in Chief of the military isn't telling them to follow orders, the Pentagon is going to continue doing what it does best: fight.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed