Reaction to EPA Delays

I'm Bob Larson. The EPA's Northwest Administrator Dennis McLarren told the state Public Disclosure Commission he was unaware of a letter-writing campaign, funded by his agency, aimed at convincing legislators to establish 100-foot buffers around all waterways on farm lands until they started receiving complaints last Spring.

But documents released last month, prepared by an EPA staff member months before that, indicate otherwise ...

GERALD BARON ... "But we're also really troubled that the EPA has not followed through on its commitment to that they made to us many many months ago that they would provide all the FOIA documents that we've requested, all the Freedom of Information Act documents relating to What's Upstream. They said they would provide them by December 15, and now they're telling us they won't have all the documents for us until June of 2017. And there's no reason to do that other than there's an administration change coming and, I think, some of these folks that these documents are reveling to have been less than straight forward in their actions on this thing are wanting to evade the public light on this."

Save Family Farming Director Gerald Baron says the EPA claims they need more time because of the volume of records they need to provide ...

GERALD BARON ... "... which is absolutely ridiculous! We've had a few dozen records provided and that covers the vast majority of the activity. So, their reasons for the delay are simply, it's clear they're not being straight forward in terms of their obligation under law to provide citizens the public documents that they request. That's a real problem."

We'll have more of these recent developments tomorrow.