If the government were investigating the EPA for the Animas River Spill with the same enthusiasm it reserves for a private company, a culprit would have already been scapegoated, fined, jailed and ruined for life.
That’s what folks around these parts have been muttering for months, and now a former EPA criminal enforcement agent agrees.
Paul Larkin told the Daily Caller that unless the agency is investigated criminally, we’ll never get a definite explanation for what happened and no one will be held to blame.
“You try to get the person furthest up the food chain in a criminal investigation,” Larkin said. “The negligence is not simply due to the people on the site … but the people further up the food chain,” specifically to the person or people who ordered the work that caused the spill.
Meanwhile, concrete details about the spill are barely trickling out. Environmental Restoration LLC – the EPA contractor involved in the disaster that later profited from the spill – has refused to share information with the public because of an official non-disclosure agreement that may or may not actually exist.
This explains why the investigation already conducted by the Interior Department revealed zip – it’s not an investigative agency and did not conduct a criminal probe.
As far as we can tell, there is no actual criminal investigation of the EPA, just a lot of reviews that confirm the event magically happened under the watch of unknown leprechauns and other fairy creatures who meant no harm.
“The report reads like a high school kid wrote it,” Larkin said, noting that the more than 80-page document mostly includes fluff, but leaves out key details like the officials who prepared the site assessment and the remediation plan, who made the decision to work on the site and who was present at the time.
The inspector general won’t even confirm the nature of its investigation, which matters little because they don’t have the authority to prosecute.
If only there were an agency involved with the power to get to the bottom of what happened, and put someone in jail for it.
Oh wait, that would be the EPA.