Number of environmental cops decreasing

Number of environmental cops decreasing
http://www.onelocalnews.com/duntonsprings/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=137607
Staff and agencies
26 July, 2007

By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
Fewer U.S. environmental cops are tracking criminal polluters these days, their numbers steadily dropping below levels ordered by Congress. They are pursuing fewer environmental crimes in a strategy by the Bush administration to target bigger polluters.
An internal memorandum from one of the agency‘s top lawyers, obtained by The Associated Press, said the EPA is violating the U.S. Pollution Prosecution Act of 1990, which requires the agency to employ at least 200 criminal investigators.
In the legal memo, criminal office counsel Michael Fisher said Congress intended to increase criminal prosecutions under pollution laws by setting minimum staffing levels. Fisher wrote the memo to Assistant Administrator Granta Nakayama. Fisher did not return telephone calls and e-mails from The Associated Press over two days.
Schaeffer heads an advocacy group, Environmental Integrity Project, that compared five-year averages of the Bush and Clinton administrations and found a significant decrease in the numbers of criminal pollution investigations and civil lawsuits and the amounts of fines assessed under President Bush.