The Obama administration intends to close an EPA program heavily promoted by the Bush Administration that rewards voluntary pollution controls by hundreds of corporations with reduced environmental inspections and less stringent regulation, according to EPA sources and internal emails.
EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is expected to sign a memo terminating the Performance Track program, possibly as early as this week, senior EPA officials said Saturday.
Performance Track offers regulatory perks to corporations that pledge to save energy and reduce pollution. Entry into Performance Track, EPA's premier voluntary "Green Club," is supposed to be reserved for companies with sterling environmental records, but has been denounced by environmentalists as a public relations charade.
EPA's decision to close Performance Track comes three months after an Inquirer investigation found the program lauded companies with suspect environmental records, spent millions on recruiting and publicity and failed to independently confirm members' environmental pledges. The program became so desperate to find new members, The Inquirer found, that it turned to gift shops and post offices to pad its numbers.
A senior EPA official said Saturday in an interview the Inquirer's findings played a role in Jackson's decision.
The Inquirer's investigation of Performance Track came as part of a four-part series, published in December, on the Bush administration's subversion of the EPA, the federal agency charged with safeguarding human health and the environment.
The Inquirer found the Bush administration's antiregulatory bent drove down funding, regulation and employee morale as senior political appointees censored the agency's own scientific findings in ways that consistently benefited corporations.
The series detailed how the Bush Administration circumvented Congress to rewrite air pollution rules to benefit business, and how a conservative-leaning court later declared a dozen of those rules illegal, invoking unusually caustic language. The Inquirer analysis also found that in nearly 50 pollution lawsuits filed in Washington, the EPA settled 80 percent of those brought by industry, compared to just 15 percent of those filed by environmental groups.
Inquirer reporters investigated plants across the country as part of its investigation of Performance Track.
Voluntary programs, such as Performance Track, and partnerships between EPA and corporations can work, said the senior EPA official, who was involved in the decision to kill the program.
But, the official added, "this one wasn't doing what it was created to do." Ultimately, the official said, Performance Track benefited business more than the environment.
Although the Performance Track program is small, it was symbolic because it represented a big part of Bush's environmental strategy. Top Bush officials promoted Performance Track to fight global warming by encouraging companies to reduce greenhouse gases, rather than forcing them to do so.
During the Bush years, the program doubled its corporate membership to 548 and increased its budget fourfold to $4.7 million.
Critics, however, said the program did little more than burnish green images for corporations.
"Performance Track is Exhibit A for why voluntary environmental programs will never be as effective as strong laws, faithfully enforced," said John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Performance Track now joins eight years of failed Bush administration voluntary global warming approaches as mistakes we must not repeat."