FOIA Request From EPA on What's Upstream Pt 2
I'm Bob Larson. After 16 months, Save Family Farming's public records request has been answered, giving them documents that confirm suspicions they had about the What's Upstream campaign using over a half-million dollars in tax-payer money for anti-farming lobbying efforts.Director Gerald Baron says some of the documents are very telling ...
GERALD BARON ... "There's a few in there that are pretty significant. One of them is one of the EPA officials that was dealing with this situation, in an email said, basically, 'I don't care what the lawyers say, referring to the What's Upstream campaign, this is lobbying'."
Baron says in spite of the denials, there's evidence is pretty clear ...
GERALD BARON ... "In other words, it was very obvious to people within the EPA, even though their lawyers were going through all kinds of contortions, to say that this wasn't lobbying for one reason or another, it was obvious to people within the EPA that it was indeed lobbying. It was further strengthened by an email from the Swinomish director who was running the campaign, Larry Wasserman, who urged the EPA officials who were reviewing this to hurry up and get the review done because the legislators were in session and he needed the information to put pressure on the legislators for approving what they what they were want to. If this is not lobbying, we don't know what is."
Baron says they're now likely to request further action from the AG's office and perhaps an independent review.
The What's Upstream campaign is calling for 100-foot buffers between farm land and any waterways in Washington state.