The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) watchdog will scrutinize a variety of topics this year, ranging from investigations of how officials monitor air quality to the broad implications of a senior executive’s conviction for pretending to be a CIA agent.
The EPA’s inspector general (IG) reported its planned and continued investigations for 2016 on Monday. The watchdog’s work includes a mixture of required and requested inspections and examinations the IG determined were critical based on factors like a program’s risk for fraud and the potential benefits of a report.
One project titled “Capping Report on Internal Control Audits as a Result of John Beale Investigation,” which began in December 2015, will round-up the improvements necessary to prevent another official from exploiting taxpayers — as former senior EPA executive John Beale did.
Beale was sentenced to 32 months in prison in December 2013 for stealing nearly $900,000 from the EPA by missing nearly two and a half years of work over a 10-year period pretending to be a CIA agent.
“Since the Beale investigation went public in August 2013, we have or will have issued 10 reports in connection with internal controls within the EPA,” the IG’s 2016 work plan stated.
The watchdog will also continue investigating the cause and the EPA’s response to the Gold King Mine disaster, which spilled three million gallons of waste water into the Animas River in August.
Part of the EPA’s response to the disaster was paying the contractor that caused the incident nearly $2.7 million, The Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. It’s also likely that many details surrounding the disaster will be kept secret without a criminal investigation, partially due to the contractor’s likely false claim that it’s sworn to secrecy because of a hush agreement with the EPA.
Additionally, the IG will scrutinize how the EPA monitors air quality “which could identify deficiencies in that data and recommend improvements” that would ensure “EPA funds are better spent” and that “proper decisions are made to protect public health,” the watchdog’s plan said.
The IG already found one EPA region couldn’t accurately monitor air quality, and a previous DCNF investigation reported the agency can’t evaluate its grants’ effectiveness in decreasing pollution.
The watchdog is also continuing an investigation it began in December 2014 of the EPA’s process to preserve officials’ text messages. Congress was previously engaged in a saga to retrieve text messages and cell phone records from the agency.
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