EPA's racist, blood-soaked hands

The time for meaningful change is here

Puerto Rico is what paradise should look like. Its tropical environment is delicate, and deserves utmost respect and protection.

As a United States territory, federal environmental statutes are suppose to apply in the island. Region 2 oversees the EPA’s “Caribbean Environmental Protection Division” (CEPD) that purports to operate in the island, but only serves to pay expensive rent for deserted offices and hefty salaries to indifferent bureaucrats that “work” from home.

I dare assert that the island’s environmental quality ranks as the worst among U.S. Jurisdictions. EPA Region 2 in New York is supposed to oversee the CEPD that plays footsie with the local corrupt government, covering up their outrageous polluting practices.

Furthermore, Region 2 discriminates against Puerto Ricans, disregarding the rampant corruption in the island’s permitting and the high incidence of environmental crimes, such as the construction and expansion of illegal structures in a federal wetlands reserve and a bioluminescent bay known as La Parguera.

Nothing to see here: houses built on the navigable waters of the United States…

EPA and the US Corps of Engineers are the agencies vested with the obligation to protect this natural reserve. Yet, they casually look the other way, allowing the free-for-all that has characterized the local government’s permitting practices. The supervising federal agencies rubber-stamp or ignore the island’s desecration, such as the government’s mismanagement of the garbage problem that prompted the controversial joke during Trump’s campaign.

Aside from the outrageous corruption that permeates every aspect of the government in Puerto Rico, there is an openly criminal situation going on that the Assistant United States Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow has not even acknowledged. It is serious enough to warrant for President Trump to ask for his resignation.

Federal environmental statutes provide for the delegation of programs to jurisdictions that meet the minimum regulatory requirements set forth by each agency, published in the Federal Register.

One clear example is the delegation of the Title V program under the Clean Air Act to Puerto Rico, granted on February 26, 1996. EPA’s delegation statement expressed:

“The EPA is promulgating full approval of the operating permits program submitted by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico for the purpose of complying with Federal requirements which mandate that States develop, and submit to EPA, programs for issuing operating permits to all major stationary sources, and to certain other sources…”

[since]

…the PREQB has demonstrated that the program will be adequate to meet the minimum elements of a State operating permits program as specified in 40 CFR part 70.”

EPA concluded that the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board “demonstrated that they have sufficient legal authorities, adequate resources, the capability for automatic delegation of future standards, and adequate enforcement ability for implementation of section 112 of the Act for both part 70 sources and non-part 70 sources.” EPA delegated the programs based on Act 9 of 1970, the Environmental Public Policy Act that created the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board (PREQB).

EPA’s delegation of regulatory programs to Puerto Rico were contingent on Act 9, the PREQB, the agency’s specialized divisions, and the regulations that the agency adopted in compliance with the environmental statute at stake.

All of these requirements no longer exist, and neither EPA not the US Department of Justice have done anything about it.

In 2018, the ousted former governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello eliminated Act 9 and the PREQB. Since 2018, EPA knows that the PREQB disappeared and along with it all of its divisions and programs that had been delegated to the local government: programs that regulated, licensed, supervised and enforced the myriad of environmental statutes geared at protecting the integrity of water, air, and land for the protection of human health: underground storage tanks, water quality, toxics, erosion and sedimentation, toxics and garbage management, air permits, etc.

EPA has knowingly failed to comply with the law and carry out its obligation to take back the administration of programs it once delegated to the island and are no longer in place.

Stated another way: both the EPA’s CEPD and Region 2 complicitly turn a blind eye to the environmental crimes perpetrated every day by the government of Puerto Rico that grants permits without complying with minimum mandatory federal environmental requirements and fails to enforce the federal statutes it agreed to.

As an honest Puerto Rican that profoundly loves her island (and got targeted for her environmental activism to protect it), I urge President Donald Trump to make the eradication of corruption in Puerto Rico a priority. In so doing, he must nominate righteous and courageous federal officials that will not be afraid to enforce the law and prosecute the criminals that have perpetrated so much harm to the frail and exquisite environment of such important U.S. territory.

The President must get rid of the woke/DEI EPA staff in Puerto Rico and Region 2 that still thinks there is a climate emergency going on, while looking the other way of the real emergency happening: the uncontrolled spewing of pollutants to the island’s delicate ecosystem in violation of all the federal statutes the agency is called to enforce.

My beautiful island and its people desperately need it.