Ethics Newsline®

“It’s a really inadequate situation that we’ve allowed to continue. We have a regulation where, as far as I can tell, there’s no effort to enforce it.”

– Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, speaking last week before hearings into the reported failure of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “curb the export of discarded electronic products containing hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries and harms the environment and public health,” according to the Washington Post. The EPA was criticized last week in a report from the Government Accountability Office, which cited widespread agency failure in enforcing new rules requiring the EPA to control such hazardous exports. The EPA says it’s making progress.

Source: Washington Post, Sep. 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 22, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 15, 2004 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3, 2003.