Prof. Richard Painter Interviewed by New York Times About Fired EPA Official

Professor Richard Painter, S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law, was interviewed by the New York Times about the firing of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official who objected to a change to a fish farm permit. The EPA wanted to require the fish farm owner to monitor the farm for microplastics, the tiny particles that have become a rising environmental and health concern. But EPA officials said that mandating any company to track microplastics could set a cumbersome precedent for other industries. So the agency ordered the requirement struck from the permit, and when an EPA official filed a memo laying out his objections to that, he was fired. He said his managers’ orders to remove the microplastics monitoring requirement were “unscientific, politically motivated, unethical, an abuse of authority.” Prof. Painter said of the action that it would be “highly inappropriate for agencies to suppress any scientific gathering data in order to protect industries from regulation,” adding that if the EPA official’s claims hold true, it would be “a very troubling development, not just in terms of the politicization of science, which is very dangerous, but also for the protection of the civil service.”