Reports that EPA Staff Was Bullied Regarding the " What's Upstream" Campaign?

I’m Bob Larson. A letter uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request appears to suggest some bullying of EPA staff in our state on the part of What’s Upstream leaders … in order to use federal grant money on an ad campaign focused at getting lawmakers on board.

 

Save Family Farming director Gerald Baron says according to emails in the latest release, What’s Upstream leaders got upset when the EPA regional administrator shut down their website after receiving numerous complaints about its content …

 

GERALD BARON-CX-1 = 17 sec … “That’s when Larry Wasserman, the tribal environmental policy director, went to Dennis McLerran very, very angry, the notes very clearly show. When he went to Dennis McLerran, the first question he asked was whether or not he was ‘invested’ in this or whether or not it should be ‘elevated’.”

 

Baron says that statement alone immediately sent up red flags ...

 

GERALD BARON-CX-2 = 26 sec … “Now the question we would ask of this is ‘Who would it be elevated to?’ As far as we know, it would either be to EPA Director McCarthy or beyond that. And we’re really curious as to why Mr. Wasserman was so belligerent with the EPA Administrator and why he had such confidence that if this issue was elevated, that he would be successful in securing the approval of higher-ups to keep spending public money in this illegal fashion.”

 

Baron says there’s now many more questions that need to be answered and that the EPA and What’s Upstream should be given the time they need to put together an acceptable response.

 

The state Public Disclosure Commission gave them until October 17th. No word yet if that will be extended.