EPA Cracks Down On Employee
Who Dared Criticize Agency

ATHENS, Ga. — The U.S. Environmental Protection agency has mobilized an "ethics" charge to punish an employee who dared criticize its heavy-handed regulatory tactics. The attack may have backfired, however, by attracting the wrath of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who holds the agency’s purse-strings.

Gingrich and two other Georgia Republican congressmen have come to the defense of the Athens-based researcher.

Gingrich and Reps. Charlie Norwood and John Linder said in a letter to assistant EPA administrator Robert Huggett that the investigation launched against David Lewis of the EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory in Athens appeared to be an attempt to silence his criticism of the agency on its environmental policies.

"We want EPA officials to clearly understand that any attempts to punish Dr. Lewis for speaking out on these issues, or to impair his fundamental rights of free speech, will receive our full attention and immediate action," the letter pledged.

Lewis wrote in an Oct. 1 commentary in the Athens Banner-Herald that the EPA's environmental policies are misguided.

"Federal regulators assume that everything humans do will ultimately harm the environment," Lewis' guest column said. "Therefore, they promulgate regulations aimed at making it extraordinarily difficult and expensive to do anything that changes the environment in any way."

The agency’s retaliatory "ethics" complaint contends that an editor's note at the top of Lewis' guest opinion column "mentions Mr. Lewis's EPA position in a manner that appears to emphasize this position (particularly in view of the fact that the article concerns EPA programs, policies or activities) and does not provide several other biographical details."

The editor's note mentions Lewis' EPA affiliation first, and subsequently identifies him as a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology.

The complaint says an EPA employee may include his agency affiliation in "outside writing activities," provided that the affiliation "is given no more prominence that other significant biographical details."

EPA spokesman John Casper declined comment, calling the situation "a personnel matter."

"This is not about standing behind me personally, but about supporting what I've been saying as an environmental scientist," Lewis said of the letter from the congressmen.

According to the letter, Lewis will have some role in helping formulate environmental policy in the next Congress. The letter said Gingrich and other members of Congress are arranging a joint meeting with Lewis during freshman orientation next month.

Touche’, EPA.