Six years into this grand
experiment called the Bush-Cheney administration, it’s easy to be
blasé about how drastically morale has fallen within the
offices of federal agencies. It’s with respect, then, and not
flippancy, that I write these words: The political system that
destroys the careers and lives of environmentally minded civil
servants is about to lay claim to another victim. This time, it’s
an economist with the Environmental Protection Agency who has just
been diagnosed with cancer and who likely has but a few more months
to live.
His name is Brad Crowder, and I met him in 2004,
when I was interviewing Weston Wilson, a 30-year veteran of the EPA
in Denver. Wilson was blowing the whistle on the agency’s refusal
to regulate hydraulic fracturing, the process by which gas drillers
inject a mixture of water, sand and gas into underground coal beds
to release natural gas.As Wilson and I left a downtown restaurant,
I assumed we’d go our separate ways. Instead, he invited me back to
EPA’s Region 8 headquarters to meet with a few other staffers.
It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving; the office was
empty except for those waiting for me. As the staffers told me
about the challenges of their increasingly politicized jobs, I
remember being struck not so much by their frustration as their
dedication to the agency and their individual projects. Brad
Crowder stood out from the group as he told me that his work
reviewing projects that fell under NEPA- the National Environmental
Policy Act- felt “futile.” His only consolation, he said, was to
“make a terrible proposal a little less terrible.”
Crowder’s situation at the agency worsened over the next year or
two, as he spoke out about the environmentally destructive projects
he saw passing through the office. After being reprimanded, filing
a grievance, and being denied an arbitration process, Crowder chose
reassignment out of the NEPA division. He found little to do in his
new position but managed to stay busy: It’s thanks to him that
activists, journalists and Congress found out about the agency’s
plans to bypass Congress and rewrite the Endangered Species Act.
Brad Crowder and I corresponded over the years about
specific EPA projects and policies. We also came to recognize one
another as friends with similar tastes in music (Bob Dylan), books
(Ed Abbey and Charles Bowden) and terrain (mountains and deserts).
A month ago, I heard from him again: Diagnosed in June with
advanced pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver, he told me
and other friends that he had only a few more months to live.
The sad news made me think about the work our civil
servants do for all of us, and the values that led them to those
jobs. In almost every case, when the work involves the environment,
I think it’s because these people are passionate about protecting
wildlife and the public lands we all own. The work they do every
day, which benefits us all in the form of safe drinking water and
still-wild places, is important, but it’s taken a friendship to
remind me that their personal lives almost certainly suffer because
of their work.
That’s easy to forget or perhaps ignore.
I’ve heard plenty over the years about how demoralized many
employees feel within agencies including the EPA, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and
even the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s easy to dismiss the stories
as just one more jab by anti-Bush folks at the establishment. But
now I wonder what that demoralization means for the people who
experience it, day in and day out; how it must grind them down.
They carry home the burden of knowing they could be doing far
better work if the political climate were different. It’s also
disheartening to think about what that political constraint means
for the country.
The other day I got a card from Brad. It
told of his chemotherapy and how an outpouring of love from friends
and family has made all the difference in what will likely prove to
be his final months.He ends the note: “I cry constantly from joy.
In raging against the machine, I wish I’d found so much love
before. Maybe I would not have let the bastards kill me. Take the
lesson, please.”
I want him to know that I hear him, and
that I take to heart the lesson he taught. By fighting back and
speaking out, he really did make a difference.
Laura Paskus is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She writes in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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