FOIA Request From EPA on What's Upstream Pt 1
I'm Bob Larson. A pro-farming group established to rebuff an attack by the What's Upstream campaign had to wait 16 months for the EPA to release documents, requested through the Freedom of Information Act, but finally gets confirmation of many suspicions.Save Family Farming director Gerald Baron says the FOIA delays were incredible ...
GERALD BARON ... "First, they were going to charge us several thousand dollars to produce them and then when we indicated that was not consistent with how they were treating other people they said they would produce them but it was going to take a lot of time because there's voluminous records of these. As it turned out, there's about, less than 15-hundred documents and most of those are duplicates so there's probably only about six or seven hundred actual documents. And, so their rationale for delaying it to this point is highly questionable at best."
And, Baron says, there have been no real changes at the EPA since the new Administration took over ...
GERALD BARON ... "No, we haven't seen any change that way. We're really frustrated that EPA Region 10 and our region still does not have a director or administrator appointed. And so, we're dealing with people who've been in their bureaucratic offices for a long time, so it's pretty much business as usual as far as we can see at the EPA right now."
Baron says they have yet to see any change of attitude about enforcement at the Attorney General's or Governor's office.
Listen tomorrow to find out more on what the EPA knew about lobbying activities and when they knew it.