The last several months have been bad ones for the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

On August 5, EPA employees blundered into creating one of the worst toxic spills in American history when they allowed three million gallons of wastewater to flow into the Animas River in Colorado. The spill occurred during an attempted cleanup of an abandoned mine, despite warnings that their activity was creating the likelihood of a "blowout."

 

But EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy did offer that she was "absolutely, deeply sorry this ever happened."

 

Later in the same month, a federal court ruled that its proposed "waters of the United States" regulation – an immense grab of new power I wrote about here – was in violation of its congressional grant of authority and promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Judge Erickson therefore ordered a stay on the rule. (Decision available here.)

 

Then, early in October, a report by former Maine senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen showed that the agency had trampled all over the law to kill the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. EPA officials had, he concluded, "orchestrated the process to reach a predetermined outcome." Cohen’s study is available here.

 

On top of all the evidence of incompetence and lawlessness comes a report by Open the Books finding enormous spending by the EPA on a wide array of goodies.

 

Quoted here, Adam Andrzewski, the founder of Open the Books, said, "Everyone is under the impression that the EPA is spending money to ‘clean the environment.’ But, it turns out EPA is running a $160 million PR machine, $715 million police agency, a near $1 billion employment agency for seniors, and a $1.2 billion in-house law firm."