Energy

EPA Actually Investigated ‘Bake Sale’ Pastries That Made An Employee Sick

(REUTERS/Aly Song)

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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America can rest easy now that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) solved the case of the odd smelling baked goods.

EPA investigators looked into goods sold at an agency bake sale after one employee reported falling ill. The employee reportedly ate baked goods that “smelled odd,” the inspector general’s office reported.

The IG’s office “investigated whether another EPA employee had intentionally provided tainted baked goods for the bake sale,” but found that wasn’t the case. What happened was the “employee who had provided the baked goods had inadvertently melted the bags containing the baked goods while affixing decorations with a hot glue gun.”

The employee, who’s apparently not that great at baking, “removed the items from the bake sale once it was realized that they were contaminated,” and “[n]o evidence of malicious activity was found.”

That’s just one of dozens of EPA IG investigations not disclosed to the public from late 2016 through March 2017. The IG’s semiannual reports to Congress list summaries of investigations on EPA employees, contractors and grantees that weren’t previously disclosed to the public.

Aside from the bake sale incident, EPA investigators also caught yet another employee who “viewed pornographic material on a government-issued computer,” according to the report. That employee was given “a 45-day suspension without pay.”

Employees watching porn on the taxpayer’s dime has been a huge problem in recent years. An NBC Washington investigation found nearly 100 federal workers admitted to watching porn for up to six hours a day while at work.

EPA has had its own problems with employees spending all day watching porn.

In 2015, the EPA investigator Patrick Sullivan told Congress the agency gave monetary awards to an employee who was caught viewing pornography at work.

The employee got “several performance awards, which included monetary awards ranging from $600 to $2,000 and a time-off award of 16 hours,” Sullivan told Congress.

In 2014, another EPA employee was caught viewing porn on a government computer “during work hours by a child who happened to be visiting during the EPA’s ‘Bring Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day.'”

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