Editorial: The EPA and Accountability

The Environmental Protection Agency apparently believes it isn’t accountable, at least not to TT, our many readers, the trucking industry at large or the American public.

On the front page of this issue there are further disturbing allegations of EPA misconduct — allegations that draw into question the agency’s desire to improve the nation’s air quality, its fairness in dealing with the diesel engine manufacturers and its veracity in reporting its activities.

And still all we have in response from the agency and its commissioner, Carol M. Browner, is silence.

We now have several engine makers who claim EPA knew early on that its air pollution certification for diesel engines was seriously flawed and didn’t accurately measure emissions from their products. And we have documents that seem to support those claims.

A reasonable person might conclude that the EPA’s well-publicized action in late October to slap the engine makers with $1 billion in fines, retrofits and recalls for “cheating” on those same tests was a disingenuous sham. It might well appear to that person that the EPA was trying to make itself look good at the same time it was hiding its own culpability in the fiasco.

The manufacturers, after a long, public drubbing by EPA, agreed to pay $185 million in fines for violating the flawed tests they had warned the agency about. They also agreed to retrofit any engines they rebuild to improve their pollution performance and to redesign their engines to cut emissions levels by one-third.

When we first reported a claim by an official at Volvo Truck Corp. that EPA was informed of a problem with its test in 1994 (TT, 11- 23-98, p. 1), EPA refused to comment.

Now, after TT informed EPA that officials from Cummins Engine Co. and Detroit Diesel Corp. have made similar claims, EPA has refused to comment.

And, after being informed that TT has obtained a copy of a report that was allegedly given to EPA and others at a 1994 meeting in Switzerland, EPA still has no comment.

One can only wonder what is more important to all the people who occupy jobs at EPA than defending its actions and its honor.

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