One Step Forward, Two Steps Back - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 84

enforcement by Jay Shimshack , an economist from Tulane University, found that while
EPA is allowed to fine polluters up to $50,000 per day for illegal discharges, actual fines
were much lower. Between 2001 and 2008, the median amount of EPA penalties for
water pollution was $3,000, and these fines often targeted multiple violations over sev-
eral months. “Environmental monitoring and enforcement has been falling over time,”
Shimshack wrote.
The most basic problem for the EPA, though, is a lack of public support for pollution
control. While most Americans support the idea of environmental protection in the
abstract, many resist—sometimes fiercely—government oversight of their water use.
People who tell pollsters they are in favor of reducing the human “footprint” on the en-
vironment are often unwilling to pay for cleanup and conservation measures. Where
the payer (the current generation) is not the same as the beneficiary (future gener-
ations), “the American people are ideological liberals and operational conservatives,”
wrote former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus in the Wall Street Journal.
Even when state governments enact tough environmental laws, they don't always ap-
propriate enough money to enforce them, while local courts often refuse to prosecute
water contamination cases as fully as they could. But, then, legislators and courts simply
reflect the public's will.
As he campaigned for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama vowed to reinvigorate
the EPA. Upon his election, he announced a new era of “scientific integrity,” “rule of
law,” and “transparency” at the agency—implicit rebukes of the Bush administration's
poor environmental stewardship. He backed his words by raising the EPA's annual
budget from $7.7 billion in 2008 to nearly $10.5 billion a year in 2010, the largest budget
in the agency's history. And in January, 2009 he swore in Lisa P. Jackson as the first
African American woman to head the EPA.
But even before Jackson's swearing-in, the EPA was faced with a crisis.
At 1:00 a.m. on December 22, 2008, a massive dike at the Kingston Ash plant , a Ten-
nessee Valley Authority (TVA) facility, ruptured, unleashing a toxic wave of some 1.1
billion gallons of coal slurry and water. Of the 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash re-
leased, about 3 million cubic yards flowed into the Emory River, polluting it and down-
stream rivers. The ash also destroyed three homes, disrupted electrical power, ruptured
a natural gas pipeline, covered roads and railroad tracks, and caused dozens of people
to be evacuated. It was the largest coal ash spill in US history, and the cleanup will cost
an estimated $1.2 billion.
EPA investigators found that the ash spill had swept numerous poisons—including
arsenic, cobalt, iron, and thallium at dangerous levels, as well as naturally occurring
radioactive materials, such as radium—into the Emory River. But the agency does not