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| Jane Murray addressing panel at EPA meeting following stultifying Power Point presentation by Richard Duncan, on stage left |
In Flohr Hall
of Clark Memorial Library at Shawnee State University, on the evening of
February 12, 2013, the Ohio EPA sponsored an Information Session and a
Public Hearing regarding the draft agreement
reached between the Ohio EPA and the city of Portsmouth. In a display of
bureaucratese, somebody in government
had named this kind of agreement “Administrative
Order of Content.” One of the aims of bureaucratese, as this name illustrates,
is to keep the public in the dark about what is going on. The AOC in question,
to use its acronym, has to do with water. When it comes to two extremely
important resources, namely water and
money, Portsmouth city government has played fast and loose with state and
federal laws and ordinances that are supposed to regulate them.
The
Information part of the EPA evening, which took up the first hour, consisted
almost entirely of a deadly dull Power Point presentation by Richard Duncan,
the city’s man in charge of sewers. Duncan’s Power Point presentation had as
one of its results, intended or not, the paralysis of most of the forty or so
members of the public and city government in attendance. Just as spiders paralyze the insects that fall into their webs, preserving
them for future consumption, Duncan with his mumbling delivery, faded slides,
and hypnotic red laser pointer, rendered the audience stultified for the second
hour of the meeting, the so-called Public Hearing half of the evening, during
which the audience was allowed to ask
questions about the “information” that Duncan had provided in his Power Point
presentation. However, when Duncan finished and the moderator asked for questions, there were none. Tick, tick, tick. She waited and she waited. How
embarrassing. It was like asking the paralyzed insects trapped in a spider web
if they had any questions about the spider’s slide show. Finally, to everyone’s relief, somebody finally came
forward and asked a question.
Emboldened by
that hearty soul, I volunteered to ask a question, but as I approached the microphone at the front of the hall my foot was asleep and so was my cobwebby brain. I
asked the panel about subhead sections F
and G on page 4 of the draft agreement.
The “Respondent” referred to at the beginning of F is the city of Portsmouth or
its chief officer, the mayor. However, although Portsmouth Mayor Unelect David
Malone was in the audience he took no part in the proceedings and asked no
questions, leaving Duncan to twist in the wind. The question I asked the panel on
stage was how come there was no mention during the Information hour of the important statement in
the agreement that charged the Respondent (the city) with repeated violations of the Sciotoville
and Portsmouth permits governing the
city’s handling of sewage water and storm
water, and the violation by the city of the requirements
of Section 301 of the Clean Water Act, the federal law governing polluted water
throughout the United States. What follows is a photocopy of the section of the agreement I am
alluding to:
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| From the draft agreement between OH EPA and city of Portsmouth |
It was Duncan who answered my question why the charges against the city (and him principally) had not been mentioned. He said the part of the draft agreement I referred to was “boilerplate” language and didn’t really mean much. His answer like his Power Point presentation was an effort to deceive and obfuscate. The Respondent referred in F of page 4 of the draft agreement is not just anybody or any city; it applies specifically to Portsmouth, which a number of times, during storms, had discharged raw sewage into the Ohio River. I asked the panel if they agreed with Duncan that it was boilerplate language and didn’t really mean much. The EPA representative, Barbara VanTil, sitting immediately to Duncan’s left on the panel nodded her head in agreement with him and murmured “Yes.” Her response was a revelation to me. I have always assumed the acronym EPA stood for Environment Protection Agency. I did not know it also meant Egregious Protection of Assholes. What Ms. VanTil’s response and the meeting itself revealed to me was the likelihood that the city’s chronic sewer crisis is the result not just of the incompetence and dishonesty of politicians of Portsmouth but of the enabling of the good folks at the EPA at both the state and federal levels. They are, knowledgeable, polite, and even sweet, like chocolate, but they are also the kiss of death, like Duncan’s toxic Power Point presentation. Just today PBS released a report by the Center for Public Integrity, with the title “EPA Contaminated by Conflict of Interest” (click here.) That appeared to be the case at the meeting OH EPA hosted last evening in Portsmouth.
It must be
very difficult to work for an agency like the EPA in a swing state like Ohio.
In very red or very blue state, you would know where you stand. But in a swing
state like Ohio, half blue and half red, the politics of environmental
protection are as polluted as the sewers of Portsmouth. I suspect that OH EPA is constantly trying to
avoid getting caught in the middle, to avoid controversy and, consequently, by
not taking a stand, they become enablers. The water controversy has drug on for
years, as they say in southern Ohio, and will probably drag on, unresolved, for many years more, as the OH EPA enables as it waffles.
It’s the same
with money. While the state auditor in Ohio dilly dallies the crooked politicians
in Portsmouth channel money that is supposed to be used for road, bridges, and
sewers to increase their own salaries and the salaries and benefits of the
public employees who strongly support them. It’s the same with water. Instead of taking decisive action, the EPA treads water, enabling incompetent city employees
like Duncan to discharge raw sewage into the Ohio and paralyze attendees at EPA
public meetings with stultifying Power
Point presentations. It is no wonder
city politicians privately express contempt for the toothless state regulatory
agencies. If former mayor Jane Murray and councilman Steve Sturgill had not
been at the meeting, challenging the bureaucratese and the raw sewage, the rest of us might still be sitting in Flohr
Hall, paralyzed by Duncan’s Power Point presentation.
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. . . the rest of us might still be sitting in Flohr Hall, paralyzed by Duncan’s Power Point presentation.
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