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Dick Kemp (Question)
Ms administrator Jackson I’m from the WIC newspapers we have a number of newspaper in the west its been a major concern of the impact of the rapping of swan cc supreme court decisions which have paralyzed enforcement related to the clean water act. And I was wondering whether within your budget you had earmarked any money that would be trying to come up with executive action that can take place until congress is able to come forward, reintroduce the clean water restoration act. And then related to that, whether the administration would be actively supporting, the legislation similar to that, that would introduce a 110th congress? Also my nine year old daughter wants to know what your favorite animal is, and I promised I would ask?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
I am a dog person with respect to cat people everywhere. Ah we have a golden doodle. And to answer your question about clean water, there is not specific funding set aside to deal with the impact and I agree there have been significant impact on both our permitting and our enforcement programs as a result of the supreme court decisions under swank and replicano’s, and we are working actively to evaluate any administrative options or regulatory options that we might have the might offer some clarity on the jurisdictional issues. I have in the past and I will keep here that I do believe that ideally and ultimately a legistrative fix will be necessary to restore the full might of the clean water act and its full reach.
Juliet from Washington Post (Question)
Hi there miss administrator, I just have a very typical question. You talked about 30 positions for civil and criminal positions enforcement and 12 targeted at poor and disproportionally impacted communities. Is that 12 additional or is that 12 out of the 30 will be targeted at low income and disproportionally impacted communities?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
It is 12 of the 30 Juliet.
Juliet from Washington Post (Response)
OK, that is all I need to know.
Michael from Eco Plum (Question)
Good day administrator Jackson and thank you for this opportunity, and by the way congratulations on your post, I worked at New Jersey DEP and EPA and I know your working for two great organizations. My question really pertains to the American clean energy security act. Although waste energy technology has been recognized worldwide as an important technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also as a renewable energy source, the draft legislation fails to recognize the benefits of waste energy plants. Are there any environmental concerns here, or is there a reason why it really doesn’t talk about waste energy plants?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
Well you know for any, you say first of all are there environmental concerns. Certainly there environmental concerns with technologies including certain renewable and waste energy spans again that obviously from the old days for me which was classic consideration which spurred many, many communities concerns and I think has had a separate path than our country and community to new and emerging ones and so while ACIS Act and the draft that being discussed didn’t particular single it out as a renewable technology I do know that the Secretary of energy and the energy department as a result of ARAR (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act) have looked at waste energy as one of the primary for potential investment as we look towards to changing our energy profile. Your comment is a valid one, I think that we should make sure that promising technologies, promising low polluting technologies don’t fall through the policy cracks.
Michael from Eco Plum (Response)
Well thank you so much miss administrator Jackson.
Steven Cohf with the Cleveland Planned Steeler (Question)
Hello, and thanks for taking our calls. This pertains to the 475 million dollars proposed to the great lakes clean up, and I told that is a first year program. So I hoping you can maybe talk about what is to come and put that in the context of a boarder program. The president proposed a 5 billion dollar cleanup program over 10 years during the campaign. So is the administration indeed committed to that or is there something else with this?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
Well certainly this is a first year effort and I think that the president smartly decided to the thing to do was to come up with a plan and begin to implement it and form a team around making real progress on the great lakes. The areas that we will be investing in are restoration, invasive species control, mitigation of non point source pollution, and protection of critical habitat. And in order to make a successful effort that means partnership, that means federal, state, local, our Indian nations and probably need a lot of communication and partnership with our neighbors to the north in Canada. One of the things I am proud of is that the program in setting about development of work plans has worked very, very closely with our sister agencies and stressed those projects that will show meaningful improvements in that water body sooner rather than later. It is not to say that we won’t need funding over a long period of time, but I think we owe to the American people that this first slug of money will be invested in a way that will show some meaningful results.
Steven Cohf with the Cleveland Planned Steeler (Response)
Will there be a request for the same sum of money next year?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
Well I certainly hope we will have earned the trust and support of the American people that we can. But I think they will rightful to be skeptical and see and let us do a little bit of work before we answer that question.
Steven Cohf with the Cleveland Planned Steeler (Response)
Thank you
Administrator Jackson (Response)
Thank you
Rory Carroll from Point Carbon News (Question)
Hello administrator Jackson thanks for taking time today. Has there been any shift in funds to help prepare for regulations of green house gas emissions under the clean air act? And also how far along are you in the process of developing the regulations for that?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
We have taken a lot of action so far that are preparatory and that pave the way to getting the kind of information needed to adjust green house gas emissions. The most important is the probably the green house gas registry rule proposal, that is still out for public comment and the agency is certainly anticipate finalizing that before the end of the year so that we can begin our registry.
We also obviously have a proposing endangerment finding out for public comments. In terms of the budget, certainly the budget addresses the growing threat of climate change and EPA’s response is to make some pretty key investments. $17,000,000 in the green house gas registries for data reporting and implementation, data management systems and development of materials that will guide the progress of that initiative as well as the investment in our ANR labs, and there is also $2,000,000 for EPA to continue to reduce it own green house gas emissions 3 percent a year by increasing our own green power purchase and upgrading our labs.
Doug Obe from Inside EPA Publication (Question)
Hi, my question was mostly answered I just wanted to follow up briefly and ask do you have any money specifically set aside besides the offset language for helping congress and providing technical support to congress in developing its climate legislation?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
No just the money that we outlined us.
Avery Palmer from Congressional quarters (Question)
Hi, I would like for you to talk about what areas you are proposing to cut from this budget to make room for other programs and what would the reason for these cuts be?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
The news here is that EPA after having suffered 27% cumulative budget cut over the last eight years has been awarded a budget and the president’s proposal is 10 and half billion dollars. So I won’t try to act as if that is an austerity budget perhaps the last 8 years where our austerity. So this budget, although there are increases, and in fact it is the highest budget in real numbers it is important to note that a lot of money passes right through EPA on its way to the state especially in the form of the state revolving fund. The clean up work we do in the superfund doesn’t go directly to states, but it certainly makes it way out into communities, and we are looking to bump up a category that has not been bumped up in quite a while, and those are the state and tribal categorical grants because we know and I certainly know based off my background that state environmental programs right now are suffering just as are many are around the country.
Bob Kincave from H.O.R.N. America Liberal Voice (Question)
Thank you administrator Jackson, my question relates to funding for permitting issues. EPA has delegated permitting authority for mountain removal operations under the clean water act to the West Virginia department of environmental protection and West Virginia government continues to fail to adequately staff its DEP with a massive ongoing shortfall of inspectors and the governor claiming he has no intentions of filling those jobs. First question, is there money in the EPA budget to permit you to deal with permitting issues for mountain removal in West Virginia in light of the West Virginia department of environmental protection failure as an agency, and secondly if you can also field this one, are there monies relating to childhood health and safety to address health threats for children in the Appalachian coal field who have to live and go to school next to coal prep plants and toxic multibillion gallon flood impoundment?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
Thanks bob, just a couple points of clarification the actual mining program the surface mining program is run by the department of interior and I do believe that the state of West Virginia is delegated to run that surface mine permitting program. EPA has independent and separate authority from the state of West Virginia to review field permits, when there is mining the left over field has to go somewhere and that field material is regulated under section 404 of the clean water act and EPA has previously announced that we are exercising the regulatory authority we have to review the mountain top mining 404 field permits which had stacked for a while due to pending litigation and that we have been reviewing, so there have been some pretty well publicized cases of EPA’s reviews resulting in some fairly significant concerns about a number of permits. We will continue to do that work, we will continue to fund to the extent that we currently do, and the extent that we work with the state and their core permitting and inspections programs for air, water and waste and childhood health and safety in general. To generalize your question a bit is certainly a focus that I have indicated that I want to spend more time on and I do expect that we will potentially direct some additional resources into that area. Right now, with respects to children safety in that office we have a newly appointed director from inside the agency Peter Gorvat, and he is accessing needs, and I have asked him to come back to me with a resource assessment when he is ready.
Vincent Sullivan from New Orleans Agenda (Question)
Welcome administrator Jackson, I have a question particularly about the illegal dumping that takes place in the industrial district in eastern New Orleans. Is it solely the role of the Louisiana department of environmental quality to address those issues or can we expect federal government to step up in monitoring this dumping that is going on?
Administrator Jackson (Response)
I think this is a just a larger policy issue, obviously that is a issue that literally hits close to home. I did not grow up to far from the area you are referring to, and if there are concerns or allegations that there illegal activities going on either criminal illegal or in violation of statue which means there are civil enforcing cases, we would we be eager to be made aware of those.