An hour with EPA Lisa Jackson

the head of the us environmental protection agency was in lawrence this past week i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr presents epa administrator lisa jackson president obama appointed lisa jackson to have the epa in two thousand nine she's the first african american to serve in that position time magazine named jackson one of the one hundred most influential people in the world in two thousand ten and two thousand eleven she was also named one of the most important people of two thousand ten by newsweek magazine jackson spoke at skinner hall at the university of kansas on march twelfth two thousand eleven where she made a brief opening statement and then answered questions from the audience this event was moderated by j christopher brown director of environmental studies at the university of kansas and now here is epa administrator lisa jackson thank you so much dr rowe congratulations on a stunning growing environmental studies program here at

you for i spy show ira hello to the folks are having enemies in the audience wednesday we have a congressman kevin yoder realty representatives of his office here state representative tom sloan i wasn't an actor reading braille little the chancellor i don't believe could make it that i'm grateful for her our willingness to host me today as well listen i just want to spend a little bit of time before we start what i hope will be the conversation between as talking about what ai has been and continues to be for the administration that i work on a defining issue for us and that of course is the american economy are continuing to strengthen it and i was anti one how you pa and our environmental mission is a part of that work since taking office president obama and all of his administration and my colleagues have been focused on the urgent need to strengthen our economy and create jobs after the collapse of the economy in two thousand and eight nothing

was more important than making bees sure that businesses could get up and running and making sure that families can get help in making sure that critical industries like the auto industry could stay afloat not only because we wanted to sustain jobs in one place like throwing up because we wanted to sustain the companies along the supply chain for those industries that make their revenues sending materials and component to automakers but the president has called for more than just an increase in jobs numbers when outlining an economic vision for the future of our country in january at his state of the union address he put forward his blueprint he got a blueprint for an economy that is built to last that blueprint is founded on several columns revitalized american manufacturing a new era of american energy innovation and production more affordable education and a fair shot for american workers and a renewal of the american values that have made us both a land of opportunity and an economic superpower

this is essential mission we have today we must build and in many places rebuilt parts of our country and our economy but when we do it we have to make sure that everyone gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share and that everyone plays by the same set of rules unfortunately there's been a move away from some of those fundamental values in the way our country has worked for years now in economic security for the average american family and middle class has been eroding long before last recession good jobs in manufacturing began leaving our shores hard work stopped paying off for too many americans wages stayed flat for relatively low cost a relatively everything that wages paid for from housing to madison says everyone here knows education have gone up so we have come to what the president is called a make a break moment for our country's middle class and for all those who are trying to reach what

is at stake is the basic economic and american promise that if you work hard and do well enough to raise a family own a home put a little bit away from retirement will be just play they took office president obama has been clear that we need to do more to create jobs and foster that growth under his leadership and thanks to actions taken by this administration the economy is growing again the us has added a total now of three point nine million jobs over the last twenty four months american manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the late nineteen nineties and the american auto industry is indeed coming back while developing fuel efficient vehicles to say drivers money and from my perspective even as important to cut pollution from our skies we've also agreed to cut the deficit by more than two trillion dollars and the president signed into law new rules to hold wall street accountable a good start but we have to do more to ensure we keep moving ahead what we can't do is move back in our economy

to an economy based on outsourcing or bad debt or phony financial profits so the president outlined his four pillars in his economic vision i want to talk about them because i think the relevant and i bet you're going to come up in the discussions later the first is american manufacturing president obama has not laid out a number of proposals for how to bring about a new era of american manufacturing to keep those kinds of new manufacturing jobs here attract new jobs from overseas make products stamped made in the usa we need our facilities to be efficient and give american companies incentives to keep tabs on our show the second pillar which i know will discuss today's american energy the president wants to move our nation into a new era for american energy ragtime use powered by homegrown and alternative energy sources that will be designed and produced by american workers many say that this is much more than solar panels or increased use

of cleaner natural gas while those things are certainly very important one good example is our work with the auto industry to make vehicles more efficient last year the epa to court and sending clear national standards for fuel economy and carbon pollution emissions and american vehicles that effort will cut our oil consumption by billions of barrels allowing us to import less it will also keep pollution out of the skies and say drivers more than a trillion dollars at the gas pump those historic fuel economy standards that the administration put in place will nearly double the efficiency of vehicles we drive over the next decade the state will save american families one point seven trillion dollars at the pump oil consumption by twelve billion barrels and cut billions of metric tons of seo to pollution twenty stay on this point for a moment because this is one of the most important steps we can take to address the spike in gas prices that we are seeing now and that we seemed to see

him sometime high gas prices are painful for the middle class and for fans and as a result that means the painful for entire economy and the fact is that there's no single silver bullet to answer those questions and bring prices down in the short term anyone promising they can do that is simply not telling the truth and the president has said many times that this administration is not going to get into a phony debate and false promises only way we had to deal with a problem that's significant is the most sustained serious all of the above approach to developing new domestic energy sources that means safety and safely expanding oil and gas production but it also means reducing overall reliance on oil through food fuel efficiency and renewable energy along with our fuel economy standards we have also called for a repeal of the four billion dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies that are

handed out oil and gas companies each year the changes we're making in addition to saving drivers money have also sparked innovation through the auto industry from companies developing components to innovators who are making advanced batteries give you just a few examples a north carolina company called cell guard is making advanced batteries and recently hired two hundred employees and now says adela hire two hundred and fifty more they're one of many companies operating in the us that have dramatically increased our global market share for advanced batteries another example is the company alcoa not exactly cutting edge but they're investing three hundred million dollars in an aluminum rolling facility in davenport iowa why because if you want to make more fuel efficient cars and make them lighter than aluminum is a good model for that choice than to create a hundred and fifty new jobs i saw another example in seattle as a company car and their key to their working on innovations in energy storage that will have applications in multiple industries in

february i visit a company called mission motors that bill's really fast motorcycle components of their hybrid electric these green manufacturing techniques at their facility and recently announced that they're doubling their local workforce in california there's moments these are just some of the companies are creating new products and new opportunities in their example of why the president made american energy a pillar of our long term growth the third pillar is a fair shot for american workers the president offered new ideas for ensuring that our students and workers get the education and training they need some of the plans the outline including connecting acknowledges to the industries in need of new workers and helping small businesses get up and running he also proposed extending support for students paying down their student loans and urging congress to reform an immigration system that allows immigrants to come to the us and get educated and then tells them they can't stay once they have it

finally and most importantly the president called for a return to american values values of fairness for all the responsibility for more it is critical to our economic c'est success that everyone gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share and that everyone plays by the same set of rules now and all of this epa has a very important role to fill our mission day in and day out as protecting the health of the american people by keeping pollution out of the air daily brave toxins out of the water we drink keeping harmful chemicals out of the hands of the lambs where we build our homes and our factories and our communities and our churches and other words the work we do each and every day is focused on ensuring that our economy works for the american people it is consistent with american values to say that industry should not be allowed to dump untreated sewage into our waters waters where we drink or swim

winnie for agriculture it is consistent with those values to say that automobile should meet standards that key dangerous lead pollution out of our ear and that as a rule the epa finalized late last year says power plants should have some limits placed on their emissions of mercury and neural toxin that affects brain development in children it's consistent with american values to say that the food we put on our plates soon be coated with harmful chemicals at that now how are the health of our children his first president obama has said we won't back down from protecting our kids for mercury pollution for making sure that our food is safe and i wanted this clean no right now there are two ways we can go on these issues there are really two visions dominating the conversation today glenn says the sea lion science and i rhyme annul laws in innovation to protect our health and the environment and grow a clean sustainable economy the alternative vision says that moving forward economically

requires rolling back standards for clean air and clean water it says we have to increase protection from big polluters while reducing safeguards for us you only have to turn on the news to hear the consistent drumbeat against environmental protections and that has real consequence it's less you're republican leadership in the house of representatives orchestrated a total of one hundred and ninety one votes against environmental protections but that happened in response units and misleading information about bpa in its work to give one example there was an assertion made by lobbying industry groups that the epa was putting forth a trainwreck of regulations that will hobble our economy that claim was repeated in major news outlets on the floor of the us congress in fact one of the bills restricting our clean air protections was called a train act the only problem is there was no train wreck the claim was founded on an american

legislative executive council report and included a number of regulations that epa never proposed the fact is we can create an economy that's built to last by putting our nation in a race to the bottom for the week is health protections and the most loopholes in our environmental policies those of you born after nineteen seventy would be the first time in your lives at the health and environmental protections that you grew up with or not steadily improved but deliberately weekend the result will be more asthma more respiratory illness more premature death with a wallaby is any clear path to new jobs no credible economist links our current economic crisis what any economic crisis to clean air clean water stand it in fact our experience indicates just the opposite in this country americans have seen two hundred percent growth in our gdp over the forty one years that we've had an epa after all that time in all that growth it is clear

that we can have a clean environment better health and a growing economy all at the same time the president reaffirmed his commitment to the idea when he said in his state of the union that we don't have to choose between iran and icon bella me be clear accomplishing both things at once does require diligence and common sense president obama has directed federal agencies to review the regulations to eliminate unnecessary burdens for businesses and ensure that vital health protections remain intact i think that's a great idea but streamlining regulations is not the beginning and the end of a plant it's not the only idea we have to face the broad range of economic challenges ahead of us fellini proactive measures to in source jobs that should be created here in america the grasses strength the steps to strengthen our manufacturing sector new ideas to make sure workers have a fair shot and strong support for the kind of innovations

that happened in places like aig i'm proud to serve a president who said that we should and we are really proud to know that epa is health protections are vital to the american people and that the choice between our economy and our environment is a false choice and i'm proud to be part of building an economy that should last we can't settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do well while most americans get by but we can build a nation where everybody gets a shot and this snake a great moment for the middle class we have great opportunities to serve the american people but also says three students frank in the future strategy to grow our economy by doing less is not sufficient it's not how we're going to meet the needs and the challenges that we face i'm here today because so much of what i do every day is really about your future when you have the power to influence the direction we

go president talks about that often especially true we talk about the work that is happening here in the environmental studies program our economy and i'm by metal and health protection efforts are more intertwined than they have ever been before markets continue to grow in alternative energy development an innovative environmentally friendly the product's cities across the country and around the world are indeed pouring billions into urban sustainability efforts the most prominent example is the city of rio de janeiro which is expecting up to two hundred and fifty billion dollars and sustainability investments in the next few years as they get ready for the twenty fourteen world cup and the twenty sixteen olympics those investments put people to work but they also protecting the environment they also help people save money by cutting energy costs and reducing the stress on traditional infrastructures and they're going to be opportunities in a

field for you we're leading the way in environmental studies and in general more more sectors of our economy are focused on going green as a standard part of a profitable business the market is indeed at work and it's building momentum for a truly green economy in the years ahead so all of you the future's sustainability engineers and water quality specialist and their pollution control technologies and policymakers have a very important role to play in the significant issues of our time so i can't say enough about what it is to hear your voices to lend your voice is to the discussions we're having and starting with the discussion or about to happen and thanks very much and the epa administrator lisa jackson chris brown director of environmental studies at the university of kansas now as questions of the audience first one comes really about the idea that environmental justice

in the way our government works the way our efforts to have clean air clean water emily come from a justice for an airport perspective can you talk a little bit more about the way in which you see the work that thing that is really one of the environmental justice sure i can while they're there are two ways then epa works in communities first off you know each of the fifty states i was the state environmental commissioner before i became epa administrator so each state has you know the firemen a helper department of environmental protection from in a natural resources that does a lot of work in their states but epa sets national standards and the reason that still stand as important there's actually two reasons one's really easy care doesn't stay in one state and the water doesn't stay in one stream out water flows downhill in and the wind blows away so for many issues it's an issue of basic fairness and economics leveling of the playing field everybody should play

by a single settles now some states go further and some states go faster and oftentimes they do that because it's the second piece of our job which is that when most businesses want his business isn't native people they don't really want to be done with environmental protection they want a set of rules and they want to know what the rules are and oftentimes states believe that there's actually an economic advantage especially around clean energy and green economy and getting their rules if they're gonna be tougher out sooner because they're trying to create a home grown so the market and demand for cleaner products and goods and innovation they want those kinds of people come in and doing business in their state that happens a lot or they may be addressing us a civic issues so on the larger issue of justice and environmental justice the national standards that epa sets oftentimes we look at a couple of things children who are particularly vulnerable to pollution i met the other day with a children's health hospitals and they said you know we think you're an environment justice court all on our

own as kids can read the same amount of pollution but because of their body weight in the respiration it's actually they're getting disproportionately expose so children are important but also we think about the differences that might be faced by communities for example in many urban communities one of the major issues is diesel exhaust the suspect comes out of the back of diesel engines which are positive to premature death and respiratory and pulmonary problems a child or even in adults in another corner there may be exposed to really high levels of pollution and so we also have to look in our rulemaking to ensure that as our rules are developed were thinking about communities that maybe disproportionately impacted the second thing i think a city but i really was a theory of the second is just unfair enforcement of our environmental regulations it truly is unfair if we put a regulation on the books in some people try to comply and do the right things and others do not it's especially

not fare f as i believe has happened in the past there tends to be lax enforcement in certain communities because they're poor and so we're working hard mainly with states are to try to ensure that there is fairness in application of obama lost the last reason for alarm of justice and i think it's a really important one is that it is in some cases the unfinished business of of environmental issues so i'll give an example about ninety plus percent of americans drink water that meets all federal health standards the ban means not quite ten percent depends on the number of the game it down to seven or eight delta seven or eight percent of our country who don't have access to clean water is a significant on tribal lands rural communities that oftentimes don't have enough people to deal with concerns that maybe we've gotten something like arsenic that's naturally occurring so we have work to do to try to make the resources available

to communities to try to continue to meet those requirements we have older cities that maybe don't have the population anymore to bring their water and sewer plants up to speed and as a result they're still discharging raw sewage into many of our nation's street so we still have high quality unfinished business whether it's air pollution pockets where we have very unhealthy air especially on hot summer days or places where people still don't have clean water i think there's still important work to do for our next question comes from the tawny rings in public administration is your questionnaire about studies showing a lack of minority participation in mainstream environmental movements and organizations so what's your take on that and how would you if you could change that and if you have what steps have been taken cuts and thank you a couple of things come easily to my edge of i am the first african

american to head the epa and if you indulge me i'll be a little personally my answer i grew up in a city you heard new orleans i grew up in the ninth ward in new orleans my mother actually i lost her home in the hurricane and now is a proud resident of the state of kansas crazy visit my breath on any us embassy are of course i would be dead meat call your mom's all of you and i am by it i want to tell a story just because i think it's important so it is true that oftentimes people say well communities of color to do silly you know don't find themselves in this movement is thought of as a movement for people love big open spaces maybe they're wealthy enough to be able to you know visit the national parks but the average person king gets in national parks that are located to faraway if there's not one in their community and they don't really we have a feel for the environment and i'm here to say that that's not true i think what it is what it means is that we have to talk differently and

what are our goals and epa is it's a mouthful but expanding the conversation on the environment who we talked to and what we talk to them about because communities cared deeply about environmental issues they just may or may not see themselves in the same issue as someone who's in a different type of community here has a lot more money or more or something of that nature so for me as a young engineer it to be an engineering student at tulane i saw myself in that what i call the brown sided a moment stopping the pollution side of the movement the impacts to the mississippi river from discharges up and down this war ii air quality issues around the plants that line the mississippi river i saw that and when i was going to school there was a big the superfund site it we'd inevitable the law then but love canal was all

anyone talked about which was solid example of what happens when not necessarily for entirely bad reasons we neglected what to do was sort of this waste comes from our industrial processes so i say all that to say you're talking to the head of the environmental protection agency who comes to environmental issues from a very different place in someone who might say a sort of a teddy roosevelt model you know i grew up loving the land and loving and be unable to participate in our fishing and hunting or camping or hiking elysees people i'll sleep outside a do not do an hour but i really believe is my job to make sure you can still have a good time when you do solid communities of color do care deeply they care deeply about injustices when they believe that they get all the pollution but not necessarily the month long awaited jobs and promises but they've also become pretty smart and realize that there's huge economic opportunity in thinking about these

issues that you know you know when to stop something from happening if its economic growth he just wanna make sure that there's somebody it should be government he's making sure that my family's health is protected or that workers are protected you know or that larger community and i will say this i think that we're going to continue to see an icy this often and i would bet you see it in your classmates those of you were students as it is an incredible awareness of our countries need to think differently about these issues there is you know the green movement if you will which is kind of diffuse some hard to explain but it's it is my personal belief that that's not a fad that's not passing as ned it's generational in a very good way i think that you're being talk to think of these issues as opportunities as much as they are problems and maybe whereas i was motivated to be in of our most bizarre to stop a set of bad problems you're motivated perhaps because you like the idea of solar systems thinking that let you deal with environmental issues along with energy

issues along with economic issues along with sustainability issues and i think that those kind of leaps forward are going to be pretty transformative in the next decades or here's a question a water quality and pharmaceuticals is the epa testing for pharmaceuticals in surface waters in public water supplies what are what are the results what should we know about this kind of water testing from your perspective in epa increases to get covered under that just give a little background in cases someone's eye pharmaceuticals in my drinking water so obviously pharmaceuticals we all take them and some amount of them pass through our bodies and user and metabolize and those are are starting to show up in trees small amounts and most water bodies that we can detect them but they're below any levels that money together we can detect them and they're very small and minor amount that we're starting to see some indication that they're having impacts

on other than humans along the food chain right as eugenic effects is and i sees this change in the famine is aisha know certain species who are live in the water because of a certain secretion sort of certain drugs that might have a hormonal impacts of one kind or another or genome so it's a area of concern epa is doing a study i don't know off the top of my head i mean many years as i was briefed on it for budget hearing to look at china get more occurrence information on this on these chemicals as well as it's not enough to say they occur but what are the impacts and what are they cumulatively which is pretty hard to know and what that means in terms of needing to do something from a health perspective it is not issued any regulations are standards for pharmaceuticals in particular in drinking water and in fact still when we looked at every think to her two for years epa puts outside of its priority list of things to look at next

as though the savings to worry about next when it comes to water and they're not as high as you might think because there are still some pretty outcome an organic chemicals that might come from more traditional sources like discharges that may be unregulated now that could show up at higher levels in the water so there's something that i think the man's demand not just northern demand further study and one of the things that i think will help that process along we called computational toxic toxicology the ability to learn what makes things toxic and do really rapid bio assays so that it doesn't take its use to assess risk but maybe one year instead of many many years one other and the prowler science is that by the time we know something's bad for you and can prove it without i said oh doubt are enough to stand up to regulation we usually have three or four things to come in behind so it is an issue how far the

pharmaceutical take back programs or are fine and good and voluntary and in some cases i think mandatory but not at the federal or there an indication that people are concerned but what we don't know yet i believe is whether that's in it handle most of the problem because we think was the problem is actually passing through our bodies to our wastewater treatment systems are not removed on these pharmaceuticals in the end a much or you know let's move on to something about drilling offshore drilling for questions and and i know that this issue touches you personally being from the golf with the increased pressure to drill offshore how do we how well what can you tell us about how safe that going to be based on anything that's change since the bp spill well yet his personality you know first off you don't realize when i went to school

i was enough to land was really a touch of chemical universities are as tell people are my shallow company they paid my way to school so and i work in the summers is an oil and gas engineering is an awesome awesome experience and greeted me to go to school i believe that the president has insisted and met deo i am what is now what used to be the minerals management service and is now beau now my guest bureau of offshore energy regulation and management i get the ethanol forgive me it has consciously you know first there was a time out too well the spill was happening in in the months after to ensure that that kind of a situation where we went weeks and weeks watching this gusher han si and no one could figure out how to stop and that we wouldn't be faced with that again i think that's crucial to people's willingness to re embrace if you will oh i'm deep water drilling and i think we

take for granted but i know i know i've loved talk to folk about this because that time was taken i think it does make it easier for us to re embrace the idea of going back into deep water and hidden those resources because we now know we have our i kept that will work with you we have another blowout so i believe at the time taken on that was important and that as a result the changes made in the department of the interior have been incredibly employed you know one of them point one of the interesting things about been a regulator an epa as a regulatory agency idea why when it when it when we talk about offshore drilling is the primary regulator for a lot of that work is that whenever tragedy happens people go where were you why why were you doing the research to make sure that we didn't get better a drilling there we got at stopping a blowout at four thousand feet wide

where where were you a question i get often in terms of finding dispersants that we knew would be more sustainable are less harmful to the food chain in the deep ocean where where where you get to those questions and so i think the hardest thing is to always stand when people want to sort of move on and make sure that that science gets invested in and that those questions get asked and answered mainly by industry cause they know much more about it and i think that that's happening i think it's extremely important that it happened i think that like all tragedies there were huge lessons learned and in the case of the bp spill then it you know as we move towards the foresman aspects of the case and just last week there was movement in the us senate important movement on rededicating spill penalties and fines back towards the restoration of the gulf something that the president talked about in his oval office address i think all

that make a share some of that money and some of the jesus titian and work goes back to finding those dispersants and investing in technology is part of what scarlett karen kasler you want to do that work because it's incredibly important the president says we need the energy we absolutely do need to keep up the pace so that we can keep domestic production of oil but will still only have about two or three percent of the world's resources and so it's worth it to take a little time to make sure we do that right because well it only takes one column a few if you sat in those knees and look around the table of the selfish or pee and like fission envision and then when they were both i had people who made a living off third novel aspects of god and the fee or that was in their faces when they realize that they might lose the golf period was presley very hard for me and i think we owed them even when it's difficult the answers to the question and a knowledge that their government is about more than just stay in

jail but instead drill safely ensconced greetings on to land and talk about fracking doesn't that you have you have the moderates the christian so so that was the idea then olivia what to what what are going to be the big challenges that they face from a regulatory point of view with all the concerns that serve people have about fracking so the glasses are there many and when it comes to regulation you wanna make smart regulation and you want a nation or an unintended consequences and you want to know that there are resources to do it and enforces regulations and i've been pretty vocal because i was people make a lot of assumptions about what position and imitate i've said all along that when you do it something like frack king which has been done for years but has been done much more extensively to get these non conventional deposits of course it should be regulated

but i've also said is don't assume when i say it to be regulated i think epa should epa for the most part does not regulate oil and gas developments country state states have for centuries we've been a country you know when you think about well and gas development you're talking about potentially thousands of wells been put in over the space of a few years i can tell you know that there's nowhere in epa going to be the resources to regulate that at the local level state governments are much better hopefully resource and equip that's the governor's decision but that's an important one to be able to oversee the process would epa can do is participate in adding to the information based on fracking so we're in the middle of a two year study of the impacts of hydraulic fracking and drinking water resources and the presence of white thirteen budget proposal which i'm in testifying i did the house will be doing the senate soon includes more money for epa to

do additional studies on ecosystems and air quality impacts and surface water and paths with people like us to yes in the department of energy so what the president's saying is we should be investing in getting the science to find out whether there are things we should be thinking about and aren't thinking about now so we're not behind it all on the developments technology an interesting thing happens when you do that and it's really the backbone of our system companies who want to do this work when i make a lot of money and probably higher alert you to do it and then invest into it right will we end up worrying about oftentimes are companies who are smaller might be you know the proverbial fly by night folks who did it in the past when there was little awareness and recognition of how fast it was going they are starting to step up that doesn't mean i think we should be on the trust me system i think what companies do is they foresee regulation coming and they try to get in front of that as well because if i'm company a and i can

figure out how to do it without fracking chemicals or with very benign equipment i'm going to have a competitive advantage over my competitor be who does it the old fashioned way and the people were in a demand that that happen are actually the citizens and what we see happen in this country even in communities there say and in general we want exploit this resource we know it means potential jobs we know it has if you're an environmentalist has you know when you burn it half the carbon emissions when you really dependent on making sure you know wasted it can be beneficial from a carbon pollution standpoint from a greenhouse gas climate change standpoint not to mention mercury that's mentioned search not to mention small if you do it all smartly but what's happening is i think we're in the middle of some pretty compress growing pains that at that industry is starting to realize ok we won't be here where atta so people that were not be in

dallas we're not you know we're not bp pre pre horizon deepwater horizon were an industry that recognizes were going to be operating news around this country and what happened there is that the technology has just suddenly literally unlocked over the last decade or so the potential for gas has been there all along we just need to make sure that in the process of getting it we'll destroy a drink more or let's move our attention away from specific environmental issues to something perhaps more about politics since a supreme court ruling regarding citizens united which allows unlimited contributions from corporations to politicians how do you see that the effectiveness of regulatory agencies could be potentially affected by the ruling i you know i never thought of that really brought in even a little bit more cause i don't really have an answer for that particular case i can't say sitting in the chair i do that i've seen a difference than me where we see the difference in iran and i re sits right in there elections but

i have been very vocal on something different and that is the influence of industry and out i'll call a lobbyist because i want to be very specific about why in the sec and in terms of what it is that happens in washington and home how that impacts environmental regulation in particular i've been pretty bogle about these mercury roles i mentioned i'm in my talk so i use an image as an example the mercury standards i think sixteen or seventeen states had some mercury standards for coal fired power plants before epa started on its standards so states that already recognize not a good thing to burn call in particular is mostly call and not have standards in place for mercury recruit goes up the stat comes down and precipitation ends up in our water and ends up in a fish and then goes up the food

chain we carried our bodies women can give it to their children across the placenta and children can we can we can measure impacts on iq points for mercury contamination along with mercury comes set and sulphur controls and goes on the chemicals that cause smog pollution which is ozone and which is directly related to asthma and other respiratory illnesses so they have good morals there are rules that for every dollar spent by the industry to comply we see up to ten dollars in health benefits they're rules that our job creating i was reading the wall street journal on the way here and they were talking about a plant in pennsylvania that has no controls on its about forty years old they know that i don't go higher at least six hundred workers says she is planning to put controls on that plant and that shut it down because it's

still that useful life and that they were talking about that only really small hardly ever run plan to people determined making that decision the media were put the investment and that the community was anti we would love this to six under their workers means our hotels mrs johnson all of our small businesses will get that benefit as well as a short term so we know that those rules work and yet we're facing attack after attack against mercury standards for our country and we know that most people think it's generally a good idea even the people in this article were saying you know i'd like to plan to stay but i'd like you to do better some people and yet you would not know that inside the washington beltway and i think that that is the influence of lots of money by specific issues there's something like i forgot the numbers by one point there were dozens of lobbyists per congressperson senator and congressmen or woman to stop air pollution will spur

member there's just a whole industry of people who get paid to just constantly talk about some as not clear that what that's what the american people were water standards are good a good example to the number one environmental issue for most americans is water as almost every american can talk about a place or i'll be able to enjoy your fish that now has some impairment and they care deeply about their legacy about that legacy and passenger kids and yet we try to do guidance to make it clear where the jurisdiction of the clean water act ends to try to protect our weapons so important in terms of flooding in our country very important as climate change is going to lots and lots of pushback there and i don't think i'm that this is essential issue in in washington right now that i have political system doesn't always reflect the people and that says that may not be citizens united but i think that that's a real concern is we start to go more and more in the renewable energies like wind farms like kansas is a

great place for women to have you've had a chance to experience that it and that our art a big concern in kansas is the proud the environmental effects of those wind energy itself that were unintended and the concern one of the concerns is the effects of windmill farm development on habitat species like prairie chickens again and a few lone prairie chicken but this is an issue as a lot of people are concerned about and so as the as we as a country move towards you're trying to get more and more renewable energies they also have their unintended consequences and what role do you see for the epa in and helping the country deal with those tradeoffs known as the halfway joking among only because in general most of the species issues especially endangered species issues i handled through the fish and wildlife service and our partners over at the department of interior so epa does do on

some i'm on a consultation on citing issues we certainly win and yet as has been done because it's a big problem a project that either is on federal land and as a major federal partner you have to do under the national environmental policy act whenever a seminal environmental lawyer to do an environmental impact statement an epa has a special role in environmental impact statements to review them and sometimes says if they're really really inadequate to say that their two inadequate for decision making and send them back we can do that once a week we've seen that for any number of projects that is not as renewable energy as well you know in all of this there are reasonable steps i think that mitigate concerns and in some cases the idea and an ep is if you can't first you identify with the concerns are and then you determine what mitigation can be done and if you can't mitigate it probably indicates until the concern that's really significant and maybe need to rethink rethink the er

that you know whatever the project might be so we do that job and then we sort of turned over a lot of our concerns on the endangered species or really re signed to fizzle out like service or camino out depending on what the species isn't the events of saltwater fish and there isn't issue right here in lawrence it's very important to remember people and an on all sides of the issue and that's the developments the planned development of a wetland near town the baker wetlands which on it has sacred spaces for native americans and they can you tell us a little bit about the epa and in its signing process for internal impact assessment that the role climate justice issue what role does is there in the process for recognizing the importance of particular spaces for spiritual point of view for particular people are

traveling on iran i'm not going and building answer that specifically but the main idea here is on the idea of protecting these sacred spaces and just learned she had any thing to say about that particular issue so you know that if you have a cultural significance and culturally significant spaces comes up often in the need of contacts i have no idea whether there's an environmental impact statement been done for these weapons parts and yeah so it's gonna come up here and you know tribes are given special roles in consultation process is an uncertain governance process is an uncertain end environmental laws and how they're carried out for example its side sovereign seventh avenue ants can be given an argument treatment the same as the state government is under many

of our clean air act last and so i think it's extremely important to president recently signed think he signed an executive order reaffirming a one talking about the importance of consultation with charts an epa is just finished its consultation guidance on what kinds of issues tribes soon be consulted on from an environmental perspective and this would surely be one of the feeling of our wetlands that has in fact whether or not if it's on tribal land in there and have special standing on and their consultation is going to be as a government we would consult with them as we would consult with the governor of kansas on an issue indian state borders and would probably have to consult with both of them dependent on the issue so you know i think it's extremely important i think when you talk about science then it form for many many you know decades now have felt as though they they don't have the opportunity to move or maybe i'll be mobile and their cultural sites are

extremely important for those reasons it's a month if not others finding out what those issues are is what the law says we should do and again it asked the other mitigation other issues that can be addressed we had a tough case in i think it was mission or use michigan where we had a tribal resource that way what they want the mine and after the irs was done epa was actually on the side of the industry alone because we thought that they had done enough to mitigate their concerns so these are not these are not easy and they're not you know slam dunks in either direction slam dunks march madness think that delay sands oil is in iraq robert stone as it could tell because he's recused they covered stone is the syrians then they oh good luck so anyway so these suicide bombings and they are they can be very very complicated i will say one other

thing about well it's just cause i i feel it in my eye you know wetlands play incredibly important roles in a number of areas one of the ones that they don't get nearly enough credit for it his flood prevention well as age i know i'm a sponge is that mother nature put there to help deal with water when we get the peaks of water flow in certain time and she gave his extra reward she gave his all these cool species and critters that tend to hang out there as well and so listen you know i grew up in new orleans where we just called us wants and all we thought happened there was mosquitoes and you know either unfortunate things but we missed the lonely and have no where we didn't have on to break the impact of hurricane katrina we missed him tremendously and i tell a story about my mother who when i walked in and said you know astronomy be a doctor i was a good student like all of you and tune and i said

on to be a doctor and then i went to this two lane program and i came out when i signed on to be an engineer my grandmother said you want to work on trial and my mother was slow like qwerty be a doctor and an engineer so far few years ago there was an engineering pre med but that's the joke irony that organic chemistry two words it but so you know i thought i thought about a long time isn't why i made the decision to use stay in the environmental fields my mother never quite got it helped a little one of as a nice dude cousin of you judges are bad that all in tampa but i am she really got it after the hurricane because communities there came to understand that went out there really understanding in or blessing and the blessing it at an illinois louisiana loses like an acre of football field every few hours i mean a football field of the well and very few hours still do subsidence and filling it's part of the way the gas and one gas lines have

been put through the well and so that has allowed saltwater intrusion and she realizes that that resource the loss of it which happened on most you know quietly literally just subsided away is part of new orleans' incredible vulnerability part of the reason she had no home there anymore and i think you know those are the kinds of questions i can be hard to tease out when you're sitting in a room as a regulator and somebody says but this is starting construction jobs but it's flooding and its own habitat and in this case it's more than that and so he deserves it deserves those questions because we're losing we're still you know what our efforts haven't quite gotten to the goal of no net loss of wetlands almond that's a really important issue is the climate changes our thinking very much limited this is a brief moment here to think everyone again for your questions and for your presence today and let's make administrator jackson for sharing your thoughts

you've been listening to rethink jackson the head of the us environmental protection agency jackson with in lawrence march twelfth two thousand twelve where she spoke at snyder hall at the university of kansas this event was moderated by j christopher brown director of the environmental studies program at k u audio engineering was provided by chubby smith i'm kay mac entire k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas why are we transfixed is a tragedy where is the outbreak identified with harry truman for many reasons the pundits always told him during his first term he was finished curator kate avoided here to take an individual and to educate a girl which you take the community one of the great myths of american history is a weekend spent his lifetime celebrating his humble

origins that he spent a lifetime the state today you'll be ninety seven if you had lived and we would all the missile from presidents two pilots are thirty two ambassadors k pr percent is a way to listen in on some of the most interesting speakers they come to northeast and you think of kansas and kate mcintyre twenty eight o'clock every sunday evening for katie our prisons kansas public radio's weekly public affairs program featuring guests from the university of kansas dole institute of politics and the hall center for the humanities kansas state university is landon lecture series and other venues as well as locally produced programs and interviews from the k pr studios it's always someone interesting on katie our prisons eight o'clock sunday evenings on kansas public radio and if you've missed akp are present you'd

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