Never let it be said the law applies to the EPA. The NAACP filed an environmental civil rights complaint against the state of Mississippi a year ago yet the agency still has not ruled on the complaint even though the law required it to do so within 180 days.
The NAACP filed a Title VI complaint with the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights against the state of Mississippi on September 27. The complaint charges the state intentionally deprived Jackson of the money it needed to ensure its citizens had safe drinking water.
The civil rights organization represents several Jackson residents in the complaint. The plaintiffs are NAACP President Derrick Johnson, former Mayor Harvey Johnson, Frank Figgers, Gwendolyn Burt, Dr. Akemi Stout, Ed Sivak, Deidre Long, Charles Jones, and Jane Doe. The defendants (#6) are the Governor, DFA, Health Department, MDEQ, and the State Treasurer.
The plaintiffs claim the defendants engaged in "a long-standing pattern and practice of systematically depriving Jackson the funds it needs to operate and maintain its water facilities. State agencies did so by diverting federal funds meant for Jackson to majority-white communities.
The NAACP claimed the Health Department only issued, three, yes, THREE Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund loans to Jackson in 25 years, obviously a case of blatant, bold, and brazen discrimination.
However, the state had a great response to the complaint. Jackson only got three loans because it only asked for three loans. Earlier post with supporting documentation. The Health Department could only approve what was requested. MDEQ approved every loan as well. JJ reported on January 18:
MDEQ administers the Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund (WPCRF) loan program. EPA reviews the program every year and never found any violations. Director Wells stated "Allegations are MDEQ has denied funding to Jackson through the WPCRF program are untrue."
MDEQ approved twelve loans to Jackson from 1992 to 2018. The total amount of the loans are $84,403,304. Jackson repaid four loans while eight loans are in repayment. The remaining balance due is $47,772,824. Jackson has one active project in progress. The design of the project is underway and construction is estimated to start in July. The loan amount for the active project is $31,683,000.
Thus, MDEQ has approved a grand total of $116,086,304 in WPCRF funding for Jackson's wastewater infrastructure projects.
The response states Jackson's population is less than 5% of the state's population yet it received 27% of the loans in the program. It received 49% of the loans issued in 2021 and 54% of the loans issued in 2018.
The EPA was supposed to rule on the complaint by April 18. However, the agency claimed it needed more time because it did not know how to open, wait for it, a zip file. Apparently knowing how to right-click on a file is not taught in Federal Gummint 101. WLBT reported in May:
Part of the problem, according to correspondence from MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells, is the EPA’s inability to open files submitted to it as part of the investigation.
The four-page letter outlines the EPA’s failure to open zip files submitted to EPA by MDEQ and its failure to inform MDEQ in a timely manner that it was unable to open them.
He says that the EPA’s failure to communicate with MDEQ shouldn’t delay findings in the investigation from being released.
“Had EPA advised MDEQ sooner that it was having difficulty accessing the files, MDEQ could have helped offer a solution,” he wrote. “It cannot be said that EPA’s failure to meet its regulatory deadline is MDEQ’s fault.” WLBT article. You can't make this up.
The EPA still has not ruled on the case even though the complaint was filed 378 days ago. Some governments are apparently more equal than others.
Kingfish note: The EPA will probably drag this case out as long as it can. The state approved every loan application. The EPA buried the various state agencies in document requests. There is little to support the complaint and the EPA knows it.
16 comments:
Too darn funny. Can’t open a zip file but has no problem charging fines! That can be now used in others arguments with EPA.
Who, exactly, at EPA is driving this particular bus?
Could it be that someone is showing favoritism toward Plaintiff Derrick Johnson, perhaps because of a personal/professional relationship?
EPA is trying to play both sides. They had 10 years to drop the hammer on Jackson. The irony of NAACP having Harvey Johnson among the plaintiff is not lost on me.
If I'm not mistaken, not too long ago most govt offices would not accept .zip files claiming folks could embed nefarious stuff that could get into their systems. May have changed now? Certainly suppose it's possible and reasonable to make that position though.
.zip files are dangerous because the compression masks the contents from virus scanners. There are also self extracting executable files.
Now, KF is mentioning a Zip drive. That is a completely different animal. A Zip drive is a magnetic media created by Iomega corporation back in the 1990s. It connected via SCSI or Parallel (LPT) port.
While the Zip drive was a popular consumer backup method at the time it was released, the unreliable 100mb proprietary format was released very shortly before rewritable CD-RWs hit the market and they were very quickly made obsolete.
So if someone actually sent a Zip drive in the 2020’s then I could understand how it may be difficult to read the drive or know how to use it.
Are you confusing a Zip drive with a flash drive than uses NAND flash memory and connect by USB?
The national media narrative is all about Mississippi's racist government depriving a majority black city of drinking water. That has not finished playing out. The EPA bigwigs have great hesitation about going against the liberal status quo, especially the NAACP so this is a hard call for them. When they run out of excuses they will finally bite the bullet.
But don't hold your breath.
.zip files have been scannable by most anti-virus programs for over 20 years - don't know where you goobers have been living.
Zip files can be encrypted and password protected as well. Still doesn’t make sense that they didn’t notify anyone of the issue if they couldn’t access the requested files. It sounds like someone didn’t do their job and were searching for something to blame.
3:17, Iomega Zip drives were great until you experienced a couple of “clicks of death” (ka-thunk, ka thunk, ka thunk) letting you know you had just lost all of your data and you never wanted to see one again.
I thought all those plaintiffs were in jail.
I'm not surprised about the zip file. I know a guy that doesn't know how to manage access on a file in sharepoint.
Man, I loved my Iomega Zip Drive. This brings back memories. But, even today zip files are still worrisome, especially as email attachments, to IT security people. See zip file of death.
MDEQ provided the files to EPA in a compressed file using Sharefile. When EPA said they could not access the file, MDEQ provided the files on a thumb drive in uncompressed format. MDEQ provided the same compressed files to multiple parties in response to requests for records, according to the letter to EPA, and nobody else complained about opening the files. I have gotten multiple records from MDEQ which they provided via Sharefile, some of which were compressed and some which were not, and I have never had a problem opening the files.
We are from the federal government and we can't help you.
As interesting as the .zip file discussion has been, this obviously has absolutely nothing to do with opening files.
Thanks, 7:34, for helping us refocus.
Welcome to the world of administrative law. The jokers who run the process make up the rules as they go. “Deadline? We, the deciders of such things, have invented a reason for the deadline not to reply.”
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