Many reporters have dived pretty deep into the legal and regulatory changes wrought at the EPA in the last eight years and into the scientist-administrator Stephen Johnson who imposed them at the behest of the George W. Bush administration. Juliet Eilperin at the Washngton Post comes to mind immediately. She has paid close attention to the minutiae of the EPA’s efforts to balance the common good with industry’s desires – and with the administration’s intent to ease regulations that hinder commerce.

But no other newspaper that the Tracker knows of has torn into the agency with as thorough, focussed and full-hearted a pummeling as seen in the Philadelphia Inquirer for four days this week. Reporters John Sullivan and John Shiffman led the way, with science writer Tom Avril pitching in on the fourth installment of the series. The package has its own website, Smoke and Mirrors / The Subversion of the EPA. (NOTE: The pieces are long and fragmented with jumps, but each installment has a “single-page” button for reading it in one scroll.)

Sometimes it’s good to let one’s anger show and these reporters do. The pace, enthusiasm, and rhythm of the prose is like that of a flogging of a misbehaving crewman in an old Royal Navy sailing ship. Whether it’s all true is not easy to estimate from a quick read this morning. One wishes this take-down had run, say, two or three years ago when the tenor of the EPA’s new culture was coming into focus. The series, given such efforts as the book “The Republican War on Science” a few years ago by Chris Mooney, offers few big surprises in theme. But it overwhelms with voluminous and colorfully reported detail. Plus, the reporters do something best avoided at most dinner tables. They discuss both politics and religion, fingering not only the administrator’s conservative politics but also his devout version of Christianity as a factor in his knuckling to White House direction. And they got much of their ammo first hand: in one of the few in-depth interviews – and at his home yet – that the EPA chief has granted to major media.

Its message in brief: The EPA broke the law.

-CP

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