NY Department of Environmental Conservation -- a "Captured" Agency

What is happening with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation?

The DEC has been sitting on its hands in regard to a 50-acre sand-mining operation in Noyac—called Sand Land—barely above groundwater. Last month, despite the ruling of New York State’s highest court, its Court of Appeals, annulling the mining permit of Sand Land, mining had resumed at the property, charged State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor and Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End.

Also last month, Newsday reported that “more than 1,400 household products that contain a chemical classified as a likely human carcinogen have received temporary waivers from the state, allowing their manufacturers to avoid new standards that went into effect four months ago.” The agency? The DEC.

The DEC, said Thiele in an interview, has become a “captured” agency—captured by the industries it is supposed to regulate. “The DEC while it has broad authority for protection, on a day-to-day basis is undermining its mission. It is more interested in protecting industry than protecting the public—and groundwater.” It is a “captured” government agency, said Thiele. And it’s not alone. “We see captured agencies on the state and federal levels.”

“What’s Going On?” was a headline last month of an editorial in The Southampton Press, The East Hampton Press and The Sag Harbor Express. “It’s time to ask the question directly: What is going on with the State Department of Environmental Conservation and its steadfast refusal to get out of bed with sand mines on the South Fork? It’s gone from confusing to baffling to aggravating watching the DEC fiddle while state court orders are treated as inconsequential…”

“Where is the DEC?” asked the editorial. “A department tasked with protecting the environment appears willing to sit on its hands in a case with clear implications for the groundwater, which potentially would be impacted by continued mining at the site….Simply put, the sand mining at the site should not be done—period.”

As for the DEC allowing cancer-causing substances to continue in a host of household products—including shampoos and cleaners—the Newsday article by Lisa Colangelo quoted Judith Enck, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and now president of the organization Beyond Plastics. She said: “The New York Legislature did an important thing by adopting this protective law [banning the use of these substances] but it’s outrageous that New York DEC is offering close to 1,500 waivers.”

The definition online of “regulatory capture” is that it’s “a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group.”

The New York State DEC is not a singular example.

Consider the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission which approves virtually every application from the nuclear industry that comes before it. Those who need to constantly challenge the NRC say its acronym really stands for the Nuclear Rubberstamp Commission.

Or take the Federal Aviation Agency which bows to the aviation industry time and again—including often on safety as well as aircraft noise.

The list of “captured” agencies goes on and on.

File Photo

And this has been going on for a very long time. I wrote a book about this, titled The Poison Conspiracy, which featured the case of Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a physician who became the chief chemist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture 1882. Along with Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, he played a large part in causing Congress to pass and President Theodore Roosevelt to sign the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906. The U.S. had undergone a transition from being rural to becoming largely industrialized with businesses developed to market processed food, usually doused with dangerous chemicals.

Dr. Wiley, who the U.S. government honored in 1956 by issuing a postage stamp with his likeness, and who government literature describes as the “father of food and drug regulation,” was put in charge of enforcing the new law as head of a government entity that was the forerunner of the Food and Drug Administration.

In 1912, as a matter of conscience, Dr. Wiley resigned from government service. Intent and reality had become two different things. Inspection was limited, penalties were light. And Dr. Wiley wrote a book, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law. The law had become “perverted to protect adulteration of food and drugs,” he wrote. He declared: “There is a distinct tendency to put regulations and rules for the enforcement of the law into the hands of industries engaged in food and drug activities.”

Captured government agencies, including the DEC, need to be un-captured—and be fully committed to the purposes and missions for which they were created.