Dennis Lee Forsgren, a former lobbyist recently tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency office in charge of water safety, has deep ties to a fossil fuel advocacy group engaged in the promotion of the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as controversial offshore drilling efforts.
The appointment signals a victory for industrial opponents of clean water regulations. The department that Forsgren will now help oversee, the EPA’s Office of Water, is in charge of implementing the landmark Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts passed in the early seventies. In that capacity it studies the toxic effects of fracking on groundwater safety, the downstream consequences of industrial pollutants, and the environmental impact of oil spills.
Before arriving at the EPA, Forsgren was an attorney for HBW Resources, a fossil fuel lobbying firm known for orchestrating campaigns on behalf of industry clients.
The public-facing side of Forsgren’s lobbying firm is the Consumer Energy Alliance, an astroturf advocacy organization managed by HBW Resources that works aggressively to build support for contentious oil and gas projects around the country.
CEA portrays itself as the “voice of the energy consumer,” providing “sound, unbiased information on U.S. and global energy issues.” However, tax filings show that the organization shares office space in Houston with HBW Resources, HBW’s staff simultaneously serve as CEA’s staff members, HBW is registered to lobby for CEA, and CEA transfers the bulk of its funding to HBW for “management” fees.
Moreover, the group relies heavily on funding from the corporate interests which benefit the most from their advocacy. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the trade group for the nation’s largest oil refineries, provided significant financing to CEA. Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for building the Dakota Access pipeline, is listed as a corporate member of CEA.
CEA played a significant role in the energy industry’s attempt to build support for the Keystone XL, sponsoring a study on the economic benefits of the pipeline, providing draft letters used by members of Congress to endorse it, and setting up a special website to mobilize thousands of petitions to pressure the State Department to approve the project.
Similar tactics were deployed by the CEA and HBW to win support for offshore drilling efforts stalled because of public backlash. Letters filed with regulators in support of Shell Oil during its bid to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic used language provided by CEA. In another case, metadata from a letter signed by several governors in support of drilling efforts in the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard revealed that a staffer with HBW had authored the document.
Over the last year, CEA and HBW have worked to build approval for the Dakota Access pipeline, which would bring fracked oil from North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
In 2016, the group launched a campaign called “Pipelines for America,” which included grassroots events and advertisements designed to push back against growing opposition to the Dakota Access. The group also appeared in the media to sharply criticize protests at Standing Rock, the encampment for activists opposed to the Dakota Access. David Holt, the president of both HBW and CEA, was quoted last fall claiming that Standing Rock protesters have no interest in “protecting the environment” and are instead motivated by an interest in “shutting down the American economy.”
In response to the decision by President Donald Trump to approve pipeline projects delayed by the previous administration, Holt issued a statement stating, “CEA has strongly supported both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines for many years and we enthusiastically applaud President Trump’s decision today to move ahead with these long-delayed projects.”
The deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Water, the position awarded to Forsgren, does not require Senate confirmation, meaning that he can start his job right away. The announcement was made through an EPA staff email obtained by The Intercept.
As we’ve reported, the EPA under Administrator Scott Pruitt has become the perhaps the greatest nexus for industry influence in the entire Trump administration.
The official tapped to lead the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Nancy Beck, is a former chemical industry lobbyist. Susan Bodine, nominated to lead the EPA’s enforcement office, previously worked as a lobbyist for industrial paper and forestry clients cited for hundreds of EPA violations. Justin Schwab, appointed as a senior attorney at the EPA, previously worked for utility industry interest to oppose the EPA’s climate change regulations. Even the EPA’s new legislative outreach staff includes a former industry lobbyist who worked previously for a power plant trade group tasked with repealing the EPA’s Clean Air Act rules.
The EPA did not respond to a request for comment about whether Forsgren has signed an ethics waiver, and if he will recuse himself from any issues related to HBW or CEA advocacy.
In recent months, the EPA’s Office of Water has been busy dealing with the lead-poisoning water scandal in Flint, Michigan, as well as complying with President Trump’s executive order to help find “existing regulations that could be repealed, replaced or modified to make them less burdensome.”
Top photo: Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their supporters opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) confront bulldozers working on the new oil pipeline in an effort to make them stop near Cannon Ball, North Dakota on September 3, 2016.
This situation clearly illustrates the problem with our laws, departments, and attempts at oversight. This agency, the EPA, can be dismantleled by any neophyte that is appointed to head up the department.
Our public protection laws are weak. Why can’t they be permanent laws requiring the peoples vote to eliminate them.
trump has a goal of dismantling our government – most republicans also – it started with clinton and is gaining momentum.
The only answer to our situation is for Americans to get their heads out of their asses and vote wisely, that is if we have the right to vote in the future.
This is about my family’s ancestral land( although it’s not the real territory) . Thank you so much, it has personal meaning to me that you care.
I am a progressive, like many that read real journalism. We argue in these comment section’s w/ some of the best informed readership. I love it. I have one argument to make that opposes my own philosophy and politic’s. When a controversial topic is revealed in some way by the journalists of this & many other independent media, often times the debate comes down to this w/the other side( the non-establishment right). Government cannot be trusted with fairness and trusted to do the right thing.
This is where many of us on both sides agree. Until the election process is scrutinized and corporate lobby $ squelched, the Libertarian’s have a BIG point.
Our gov’t as it now stands and as it stood under the previous 4 president’s cannot be trusted, in fact, it should be counted as an enemy of the people, rather than a representative democracy.
So debate on issue’s like EPA, Universal Healthcare, foreign & domestic tampering, and Election’s(primaries, state, & local) are all bound by corruption. Money, power, and influence have rotted the floor boards.
Change cannot come without outside influence in the removal of and vetting of all the system’s. Too big a task for any one group. My feeling is that two issues need to be taken up with zealotry, but which could all of us get behind?
Fair Election’s & Massive campaign finance reform are my choices.
We should be working together to not let media & both parties (really one) set this agenda. We will never stop the EPA ( really Corporate Protection Agency) if we don’t secure these two thing’s.
Lee Fang on Democracy Now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4DvQsNhAbQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF0v5fafW-s
Trump appointments are actually anti-appointments. When he makes you head of something, that means head of demolishing that particular institution. Dismantle it, poison it from the inside and make sure it’s dead. Rotten son of a bitch.
Yep, that’s it in a nutshell…disgusting.
Thxs for report Mr. Fang !
Like an invasion.
A basic requirement for being the head of or even working for a government agency should be that you support the agency’s stated purpose. If not, you have no business even working for the agency, let alone heading it.
But hey, we have the best government money can buy!
At what point is Lee Fang going to figure out that the antifracking movement is chock full of misinformation and that the tribe was presenting a false narrative about dakota pipeline? The judge only stated that in his decision on the dakota pipeline last september.
Is this reporter bad simply because he used to work for Think Progress or is he just that clueless about what reporting actually is.
At what point is Karen Orlando going to figure out that simply attacking a journalist and providing misinformation isn’t going to convince anybody.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/02/14/after-fracking-… Proxy Highlight
14 Feb 2015 … Karen Orlando is an internet troll and guest blogger on a well known pro-fracking website funded by Energy In Depth, the oil and gas industry …
LMAO. AGREED. folks get triggered too easily or do they. Yes Karen, lets pretend the issue at hand is the tribe leaders fault because they sure do have a history of oppressing US activities.
huh? Your built-in racism is showing. You need to read the history of the GHOST DANCE.
Good, Pipelines are by far most environmentally friendly method of moving oil
So, is this story supposed to be shocking? This all fits in with Trump’s agenda. The U.S. has become N.Carolina, and if you don’t know what that means, check out what’s been going on there for the last few years.
Do we web search “what’s been going on in N.Carolina the last few years”?
Please help out here.
Try googling – water pollution NC, christians attack gay man in NC church, Transgender rights NC, Duke Power dumping into NC rivers, NC toxic drinking water – just for a start
Another factor here, this guy has ties to GE as well as to nuclear industry, both major polluters:
GE and clean water? Ouch, there’s the infamous PCB water contamination issue. I recall that from the 1990s – GE managed to cut government funding for any academic lab that dared to do PCB analysis (polychlorinated biphenyls, a toxic carcinogenic electrical insulating fluid widely used by GE for decades):
See this bit on this continuing debacle:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/06/10/western-mass-name-mud/EGtltgEKLrU8LIP3E7tuYI/story.html
That, of course, is the pre-Trump EPA, now being gutted even more than it already was.
Similarly, the nuclear contractor Babcock & Wilcox has links to the Hanford plutonium waste disaster site, which is leaking a giant radioactive plume into the regional groundwater with long-term risks for Washington state river water. Here’s an intro:
Great reporting on the other aspects of this appointment; it’s a wholesale destruction of the EPA mandate across the board – although to be honest, the EPA has been pretty weak for many years now. Flint Michigan, the BP Deepwater disaster – EPA was hands off all the way, it’s just a lot more blatant now, under Trumpy. Sad!
Just like most federal agencies
Just like most federal agencies that have been cut in the name of smaller goverment. Inspectors are spread so thin that they have to cover all of the U.S. with just a hand full. This is seen in the aviation industry also.There is only hindsight and very little proactive oversight.
GE makes nuclear weapons and is thus part of the nuclear industry. Saying he has ties to “GE as well as to nuclear industry” implies otherwise.