US EPA IG and critic of White House air policies to leave agency

Washington (Platts)--26Jan2006

US Environmental Protection Agency Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, who
has been highly critical of the Bush administration's approach to regulating
power-plant emissions, Thursday said she will leave the agency by March 3.   

     Tinsley gave no reason for her decision in a one-page resignation letter
to President Bush. In the letter, Tinsley said she was proud to serve in an
office that "help[ed] to make the air cleaner, the water purer, and the land
better protected."

     Asked why she was resigning, her spokesman said: "She just thought it was
time for her to retire from federal service." 

     Tinsley, who was nominated to be EPA's inspector general in 1997 by
President Clinton, has nearly 35 years of total federal service under her
belt. Tinsley's spokesman said her departure is "absolutely not" connected to
the clashes she's had with the Bush administration and the
Republican-controlled Congress over clean-air policies. 

     Last year, for example, Tinsley ignited a firestorm with a report on
EPA's rule to regulate power-plant mercury emissions. Tinsley said she found
evidence that EPA manipulated data in order to show that a "cap-and- trade"
regulatory scheme--a controversial approach favored by industry and the White
House--would be just as effective as requiring pollution reductions at all
plants.

     Environmental groups cited Tinsley's report as evidence that the Bush
administration was jeopardizing public health to benefit utilities. But
industry groups and Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (Republican-Oklahoma) attacked Tinsley
as a partisan official, who lacked the necessary expertise to function
properly as EPA's inspector general. 

     Environmental groups said they are sorry to see her go. "She was the sole
voice at EPA willing and able to publicly criticize the worst public health
and environmental abuses of this administration," said John Walke, an attorney
at Natural Resources Defense Council. 

                    ---Brian Hansen, brian_hansen@platts.com

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