Notes from Underground: The Frack Dance This blog, along with our previous post regarding pipelines, provides an impression of key topics at the intersection of environmental protection and accountability at the start of the Biden administration. The new United States administration has already shown an inclination to go beyond merely undoing the deregulation of the [...]
Notes from Underground: A New Landscape The change of US administration is set to significantly impact federal environmental policy as well as government transparency, both of which were particularly problematic during the Trump administration. This post provides a view of the state of affairs for pipelines under the Biden administration, as it ties to overall [...]
Controversial Chemical Used in Oil Spills, Banned in Many Countries, Can Be Used in Narragansett Bay This article features Government Accountability Project and was originally published here. A chemical dispersant that is linked to making thousands of members of the Coast Guard as well as clean-up workers sick in the Gulf oil spill of 2010 [...]
Notes from Underground: The Pipeline Pipeline (Part 2) This series assesses the current state of the pipeline industry, with consideration of future prospects for pipeline development and the potential downsides they represent. Part 1 provided an overview of the role of public opinion in the development of infrastructure projects. Part 2 will look at the courts and whistleblowers as [...]
Notes from Underground: The Pipeline Pipeline (Part 1) While recent court decisions have stopped or slowed construction on major pipelines, the industry appears to have no intention of capitulating. In a collaborative four-part series between Government Accountability Project’s Environment, Energy & Climate Change (EE&CC) program and Food Integrity Campaign (FIC), we will look at the present and future of pipeline production in [...]
KEVIN CHMIELEWSKI Kevin Chmielewski was a high-level Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appointee in the Trump administration who took issue with former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s chronic abuse of taxpayer dollars. With legal representation and programmatic support from Government Accountability Project, Chmielewski took his grievances public, backed them up with solid evidence, and gave several [...]
WILLIAM SANJOUR William Sanjour had been a hazardous waste specialist at the EPA for 24 years when he took legal action against the agency in 1994 in order to protect his First Amendment right to free speech. Sanjour frequently spoke out about his deep concerns regarding hazardous waste problems at the US Department of [...]
JEFFREY MISSAL Jeffrey Missal is a federal employee with the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), charged with ensuring regulatory compliance by offshore oil exploration drilling companies operating in the Arctic waters surrounding Alaska. He disclosed systemic corruption and chronically lax oversight intended to circumvent NEPA requirements, raising the [...]
JOEL CLEMENT Joel Clement is a PhD biologist who was serving as a Senior Executive Service-level advisor to the Secretary of the Interior on the adverse impacts of climate change when, in the summer of 2017, he was arbitrarily reassigned as an act of retaliation by then-Secretary Ryan Zinke to the office that collects [...]
Rick Piltz Rick Piltz was best known for blowing the whistle on the George W. Bush White House over political interference in federal climate change science programs. As a senior associate for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) for ten years, in 2005 he sought whistleblower protection representation from Government Accountability Project and [...]
