Washington Post Notices that the EPA has Become Known for 'Abuse'

The Washington Post chose today to publish an extraordinary editorial. Titles “The EPA is earning a reputation for abuse,” the Post’s editorial board takes notice of two of the agency’s many recent assaults on state sovereignty and industry. Both cases, it’s worth noting, have already run their course.

In a 2010 speech, now circulating online, Mr. Armendariz compared his “philosophy of enforcement” to ancient Roman soldiers’ practice of crucifying random victims in recently conquered territory. The most reasonable interpretation is also among the most disturbing — that Mr. Armendariz preferred to exact harsh punishments on an arbitrary number of firms to scare others into cooperating. This sort of talk isn’t merely unjust and threatening to investors in energy projects. It hurts the EPA.

Of all of the reasons to reject Armendariz’s comments, hurting the EPA should be so far down the list no one can see it.

Mr. Armendariz was right to resign this week, while EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson denied that his comments reflected the agency’s approach.

The Post seems to believe Jackson. No one else should.

Yet the question will remain: Is an aggressive attitude like the one Mr. Armendariz described common among EPA officials?

Having asked the question, the Post does nothing to answer it. Instead it instructs the EPA to keep its opinions to itself.

Maintaining the legitimacy of the EPA’s broad regulatory authorities requires the agency to use its powers fairly and, in so doing, avoid the impression that its enforcement is capricious or unduly severe. Mr. Armendariz’s comments violated the latter principle.

From there, the Post moves on to discuss the case of the Sacketts, who recently won a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court against the EPA.

Earlier this year, Mike and Chantell Sackett brought a case against the EPA to the Supreme Court, challenging a “compliance order” commanding the couple to halt work on a home near Priest Lake, Idaho. The Sacketts pointed out that the land was adjacent to other vacation homes and came with a sewer hookup. The EPA said that the couple was building on protected wetlands and that they couldn’t challenge that determination in court until much later, possibly after large fines accrued.

The justices sided with the Sacketts, granting them — and others in their situation — legal review of the EPA’s judgments. Yet the agency ought to have asked itself years ago whether it really needed to hassle a couple seeking to build a home in an existing subdivision, helping to justify every negative caricature of the EPA that Republican presidential hopefuls peddled during the primary race. Perhaps the agency would have been able to keep more of its regulatory power if it had been more judicious.

Perhaps the EPA should not keep that authority. Perhaps it has overstepped its bounds and needs to be reined in. Perhaps it needs to be cleaned out, or turned upside down, shaken out, and started over from scratch. Or disbanded. The Post entertains none of that — it’s the Republicans’ fault for “peddling” a “negative caricature.” The Post does not ask — what if that “negative caricature” is accurate?

Even in criticizing the EPA, the Post sides with it. This editorial is more love than tough love. The negative “caricature” the Post calls out is based in fact, and in an attitude that one can trace from Armendariz’s unguarded moment to the Sacketts to the MACT rule and the cross-state pollution rule. Neither of the latter merit any mention in the Post’s editorial, but both are job-killing regulatory overreaches that happen to dovetail with President Obama’s stated goal of destroying the coal industry. In the case of the cross-state pollution rule, the EPA overrode its own science to put Texas within the regime at the last minute, and without review. Had that rule been in place during Texas’ heatwave last summer, the state would have experienced rolling blackouts and people may have died. The EPA’s regulations would have gone from job-killers to just plain old killers.

Care to comment on that “negative caricature,” Post? No? Or the possibility that Obama’s EPA is simply doing his bidding, and that’s why Al Armendariz had the Region VI job in the first place?

Of course not. Having published its half-hearted editorial, on a low readership day, the Post can check a box: See, we criticize big government too.