The wide gap between the cavalier attitude toward businesses and personal property rights and their own squeamishness to hold themselves accountable demonstrates that institutional – rather than environmental – protection is playing a decisive factor in EPA decision-making.

If EPA chooses to protect is own, rather than holding employees accountable, can we accuse Director McCarthy of a “lack of integrity”? To what standard will she be held?

The contrasting way the EPA dealt with BP and its own damage at the Animas River demonstrates that agency motives are not always entirely pure. They are quick to demand others pay and give them power, using the environment as a lever. But when their own funding and power is questioned, they minimize the environmental damage and cost. Director McCarthy even had the lack of awareness to tell the people of Colorado not to worry because the “EPA is here.”

The bottom line is that while the EPA has done much good, it has come to associate environmental protection with its own aggrandizement. Now is the time to make it clear that environmental protection, not a self-serving power grab, is what the public wants.