Holding their feet to the fire - it works

The Environmental Protection Agency is a perfect example of Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Another Federal organization - The Office of Inspector General - took a good look at the EPA and they just published this report (22 page PDF):

EPA Has Not Implemented Adequate Management Procedures to Address Potential Fraudulent Environmental Data
The EPA lacks a due diligence process for potential fraudulent environmental data. The agency has three policies and procedures that address how to respond to instances of fraudulent data, but they are all out of date or unimplemented. Our survey of EPA regional offices disclosed that a majority of respondents were unaware there was a policy, and approximately 50 percent expressed the need for such policies and procedures. The EPA plans to issue revised policy by fiscal year 2017. Until then, unimplemented and out-of-date policies and procedures—and lack of EPA staff awareness of those policies that do exist—create risk that EPA staff will fail to properly communicate the information regarding fraudulent data to appropriate program offices and data users; review and analyze the data for potential impacts to human health and the environment; or review and amend, if possible, past environmental decisions that were based on fraudulent data. According to staff of the federal agencies and states we contacted in this evaluation, they also do not have formal, written due diligence processes.

Further, the EPA does not consistently notify the states when laboratory due diligence activities can begin during or following a fraud investigation that affects state environmental programs. The agency does not have a policy on communicating case information with the states and other regulating parties during investigations, due to the sensitive nature of investigations which could be jeopardized, and because rights of innocents could be threatened  and suspects could be unfairly maligned in an ongoing fraud investigation. As a result, laboratory fraud cases may not include a due diligence review. In such cases, potentially negative impacts to human health and the environment due to fraudulent lab data could go undetected.

Recommendations and Planned Corrective Actions
We recommend that the agency incorporate a process to respond to instances of fraudulent data into its current policy until the revised policy is issued. We also recommend that the agency state the details of a laboratory fraud due diligence process in its new policy. Further, we recommend that the agency develop guidelines outlining the response when fraudulent laboratory data is discovered in ongoing criminal investigations. We recommend training on laboratory fraud due diligence processes and procedures for all relevant staff. The EPA agreed with our recommendations and we agreed with the EPA’s proposed corrective actions.

Looks like someone is reading the writing on the wall and instituting some culpability. They have been operating on ideology and political agenda and not Science for the last twenty years.  Time to get back to their core competency.  It would not hurt to have them defunded by 80%.