For most Republican politicians, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bureaucrats are "damned if they do, and damned if they don't".
The GOP routinely accuses these bureaucrats of overregulating industry, yet in the next breath, doesn't hesitate to denounce them for failing to fulfill their regulatory responsibility. That contradictory dichotomy was on display in the Republicans' scathing criticism of the EPA's recent botched reclamation of an abandoned Colorado hard rock mine. The agency's mishandling of the project led to a spill that contaminated the Animas River, an important source of drinking water and recreation for the region.
The EPA mishap was an accident, but that did not deter its enemies from implying that the incompetency was representative of the agency's entire operation.
In the eyes of anti-big government Republicans, the EPA is a bureaucratic overreaching economic scourge that needs to be drastically scaled down if not dispensed with altogether.
Republicans could be accused of shedding crocodile tears for the public impacted by the Colorado spill. That is because the GOP's ideologically-driven focus has been on demonizing (and dismantling) the EPA, not on addressing the nationwide problem that the Colorado mine mishap typifies. No GOP critic bothered to mention the estimated 160,000 shuttered hard rock mineral mines scattered around the country, many of which are potential pollution hot spots that no one is even monitoring. To make matters worse, Republican critics made no reference to updating the federal 1872 Mining Law that allows abandoned mines to fester and is devoid of any cleanup funding mechanism. GOP lawmakers' Silence can be attributed to their keeping a bill to amend the 1872 law bottled up in a congressional committee at the urging of the mining industry.
The hypocrisy of some Republican politicians in dealing with the EPA is breathtaking. They berate it for messing up the Animas River, yet they are the very ones who have substantially cut the budget to scale back the Agency's regulatory authority.
A Republican presidential contender is even getting into the act big time. Ever an opportunist, Dr. Ben Carson visited the site to condemn the EPA for polluting the river and coming forth with a "weak response". This is the same guy who recently wrote in a Facebook entry that the "EPA should be a research and technology coordinator, not an armed police force."
One more thing. The EPA has a good operational track record but it does make mistakes, just like everyone else. The distinction is that when it does, the ensuing degradation is an accident. By contrast, the contamination that results from industrial polluters' violations usually is the product of premeditated discharges.