Back in May, Mary Gade found herself unceremoniously ousted from her post as Midwest regional administrator of the EPA.
According to an excellent Chicago Tribune article by Michael Hawthorne, Gade had been locked in a battle with Dow over the chemical giant's massive, long-standing dioxin mess in low-income areas of Michigan.
Hawthorne reports that Gade crossed a line with her bosses in Washington when "she sent contractors to test soil in [one] neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one ... yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable."
Said Gade after her firing: "There's no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."
Evidently keen to keep sure such confrontations with powerful industry players from happening again, the EPA has named Lynn Buhl as Gade's replacement. The agency's press release paints Buhl as a diligent career public servant. But as this vintage 2003 Daily Grist entry shows, Buhl is a long-time industry stalwart.
Buhl's ties to the Michigan area go back decades. Starting in 1988, Buhl worked for 10 years as "senior staff counsel for environmental legal affairs" for car giant DaimlerChrysler Corp. In that decade of cheap oil, Detroit launched a highly profitable SUV craze -- a trend from which the planet may never recover.
After that, she went to work for in the Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality for then Gov. John Engler (R), a notorious environmental scoundrel.
Full Story: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/21/134650/419?source=daily
