Guyana EPA

Jan 27, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Many Guyanese shrink and shudder when they read, think of, have to deal with another development from this country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Rather damagingly to the interests of this nation, the local EPA is a lost sheep, a castrated bull, a toothless guard dog.

It is neither incompetence nor indifference nor negligence of the people in the executive, managerial, and other ranks of a deboned and defanged State agency that has led to this weakened condition. It is about the means and measures, the attitudes and objectives, of destructive politicians who are the worst of leaders, the most horrible decision makers that could be found anywhere, possibly at any time.

In the United States, a nation advanced in learning, the tools of technology, rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and with layers of oversight, the EPA there was induced into a comatose state. The US EPA toiled under the crushing weight of “depleted staffing levels, persistent funding challenges and a previous administration that left the agency neglected and scientifically compromised” (“Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ E.P.A struggles with its mission” -New York Times, January 23^rd). Without a doubt, shortage of the right people in key positions, shortage of money to initiate and deliver on key programs, and shortage of leadership backing, are all guaranteed to cripple any government entity, any business, regardless of the endeavor, the responsibility. Any one of those three would be traumatic to an organization, but to have all three at work at the same time is enough to paralyze even the best institutions.

All three are what occurred during President Donald Trump’s time at the helm of the US Government. More than 1200 scientists and policy experts left the EPA during Trump’s time. The inevitable disastrous result is that America’s EPA is struggling to recover, crawling on its hands and knees to get back on its feet, however unsteadily. The EPA’s workload is overwhelming, and as the NYT noted, the agency’s enforcement unit is “prosecuting few polluters than at any time in the last two decades.” The reasons behind these troubling circumstances are clear cut. Per the NYT article, “Mr. Trump tried each year to slash the E.P.A budget by at least 30%; it is a funding state that no organization can cope with successfully. This became particularly unmanageable after a 2016 law significantly increased the agency’s duties, but Trump did not approach Congress for the accompanying resources that were urgently needed. What then President Trump did was that he “dismantled science advisory panels, disregarded scientific evidence, and weakened protections for pollution.”

Somebody, some subgroup, in Guyana’s PPP/C Government has done a good imitation of Donald Trump, through what has been inflicted upon our own EPA. Guyana’s EPA is not even a shell of what could be called a self-respecting State agency, but a caricature of the kind of genuine environmental sentinel that this country needs immediately and completely. We can speak at length of the long and sorry record, as recently compiled by Guyana’s EPA, and hammer its management and people for their glaring failures. But that would be barking up the wrong tree, and wasting energies in the wrong direction. The truth is that the EPA has been converted into a crippled creature of the PPP/C Government, so that its parties in crime can be given free rein.

What the PPP/C Government has done in outstanding fashion is clear the regulatory way, and remove any human obstacles, so that ExxonMobil and its offshore partners can run whatever rackets they please out of sight. Moreover, with a gutted and paralyzed EPA politically hobbled and prevented from taking charge of its crucial duties, ExxonMobil’s downstream, land-based corporate vendors, are given the greenlight to construct and operate whatever hazardous facilities may be necessary. After all, such materials and such facilities are an integral part of the upstream offshore oil beast that has to be fed.

We recognise that Guyana’s EPA has become a national punching bag, but it is not of its own making. The local EPA has been muscled into that battered state by a scheming, possibly compromised, PPP/C Government, and the covert political dirty work that is its handiwork, and what now characterizes Guyana’s oil management.

Editorial, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ExxonMobil, Guyanese, New York Times

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Guyana EPA

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Guyana EPA

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