The Incredible Shrinking Career April 10, 1999

[Guest guest]

(if this article won't make you wonder who the good guys are and who the bad

guys are, nothing will. worst or all, it's our money being used for this

travesty!)

http://www.westword.com/1998/020499/feature1-1.html

EPA Scientist Rimar just wanted to keep doing research, but his agency

found him too toxic.

By Gayle Worland

Rimar, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, thought

his assignment seemed simple enough: Monitor a herd of sheep through the

southern Colorado grazing season, then dissect and analyze their livers for

possible copper poisoning.

What Rimar didn't know was that the project would take his own career to

slaughter.

A year after he began the sheep study at the request of Superfund

scientists, Rimar became the subject of a secretive criminal investigation

by the Office of Inspector General, the internal investigative arm of the

EPA. Over the next two years he would be grilled and badgered by federal

agents, yanked off his own study and forced to watch his field samples

wither before they got to a lab for testing -- all, he thinks, because the

initial results of his study weren't what officials wanted to hear.

Thanks to Rimar's case and others, Congress has singled out the EPA for

investigation by the General Accounting Office; a report on the agency's

treatment of some of its own researchers is due out this month.

And if he appears before a congressional committee later this year, as

expected, Rimar, 42, will explain how the agency railroaded his promising

future as an ecotoxicologist, contradicted its own mission and mishandled

one of the most distressing chapters in the history of Superfund cleanup

sites -- in this case, Colorado's infamous Summitville mine. Others will

testify how the EPA has quashed scientific logic or has shown them the door

after they blew the whistle on waste or abuse at the agency. Although the

EPA is loaded with some of the country's best scientists, its management

practices may be drowning in hazardous waste.

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" The way I like to put it, " says Sara , a water-quality expert and

co-chair of a Summitville citizens' group, " Rio Grande County got the mine

and Conejos County got the shaft. "

Located 250 miles south of Denver, prosperous Rio Grande County is home to

the Summitville mine site, touted as Colorado's worst environmental

disaster. Downstream lies Conejos County; with a per capita income of

$12,673, it's one of the state's poorest counties. Its farm fields and main

river, the Alamosa, had to swallow the mine's toxic runoff. For the moment,

the river is dead.

The 1,400-acre Summitville site sits atop a whacked-off mountain towering

11,500 feet above sea level. Gold was mined here as early as the 1870s, but

it was a foreign mining company that 120 years later created a catastrophe

whose cleanup could cost taxpayers up to $175 million.

Summitville was a chemistry lesson in disaster. In 1985, with the state's

permits and blessing, the Summitville Consolidated Mining Company, Inc.

(SCMCI), owned by the Canadian-based Galactic Resources Ltd., began mining

for gold using an " open-pit heap-leach " method. More than 10 million tons of

ore were dug from deep pits, crushed and piled up to twelve stories high on

a lined pad, then sprinkled with a sodium cyanide solution. The liquid

percolated down through the heap into a pond below. Gold was then extracted

from this cyanide soup. In its six years of operation, SCMCI recovered about

eight tons of the precious metal. In early December 1992, the company

declared bankruptcy and abandoned the site.

On December 16, 1992, at the state's request, the EPA moved onto the site

and found a pool brimming with cyanide and a variety of metals, ready to

gush over the side of the mountain. SCMCI had underestimated the amount of

snowfall and overestimated the amount of evaporation at that high altitude;

moreover, the heap-leach pad had leaked its lethal brew from the start. The

EPA's emergency response saved the day, says Victor Ketellapper, the

agency's most recent Summitville project manager.

But the emergency first aid was only the beginning.

In 1994 Summitville was declared a Superfund site. Since then, countless

trucks loaded with earth and construction equipment have snaked up the

eighteen miles of steep dirt roads in an effort to plug the flow of

metal-laden waters from the mountain. Contractors are filling in the vast

mining pit, creating a new " topsoil " by mixing lime and compost from local

mushroom farms and replanting the area's fragile alpine vegetation. One

hundred acres of the site were " reclaimed " last summer, and another 300 are

left to go, says Angus of the Colorado Department of Public Health

and Environment, which is overseeing the reclamation and footing 10 percent

of the cleanup bill. The EPA remains responsible for the mine's

water-treatment plant, which cleans 1,000 gallons of water per minute at a

cost of $2.5 million per year and, the state predicts, could be required to

run until the end of time.

EPA attorneys have filed a civil suit to recover the full cost of the

cleanup from Friedland, the flamboyant Canadian multimillionaire who

is widely considered the driving force behind Galactic's mining at

Summitville. Galactic had posted a $4.5 million bond to cover the cost of

reclamation, but total costs are expected to be more than 39 times that

amount. Other efforts to force money out of Friedland have failed; last year

a Canadian court rejected a U.S. Justice Department freeze on $152 million

of Friedland's assets and ordered the government to shell out $1 million to

cover the mining magnate's court costs.

And now Friedland has filed a $150 million lawsuit against the U.S., two

Justice Department attorneys and Denver EPA attorney Mangone, claiming

libel, abuse of the process, injuries to his reputation and other charges.

In interviews with the Denver press, Friedland has likewise protested the

" villainization " of his name. He was last spotted doing business in

Australia and Singapore.

In December, two former mine managers were convicted in the disaster. Their

sentence: fines of $20,000 each and six months in an Arizona halfway house.

Federal prosecutors, citing a lack of evidence, have decided not to pursue

criminal charges against any other individuals in the case.

But Summitville remains a very messy place.

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Wightman Fork, named for one of the first men to pan for gold in the area,

skirts the northern boundary of the mine site and flows into the Alamosa

River about 4.5 miles south, taking with it the mountain's highly acidic

runoff. The Alamosa then rolls into the Terrace Reservoir, the main

irrigation source for some 45,000 acres of neighboring farmland in the San

Valley.

This can be hostile country. More than half the year, powder swirls atop the

mountains edging the valley, sometimes creating white-out conditions with

zero visibility. Roads drift shut within minutes. Thick banks of snow quiver

on slopes, poised to avalanche.

But even at high altitudes, the Alamosa River in winter is a non-threatening

stream, wending through snow paths tinged with a rusty-colored crust. It's

in spring and summer that the river gains its sometimes torrential might.

Only a decade ago it was rich with trout and, in essence, served as the

area's community recreation center -- for swimming, tubing, picnicking.

Today farmers continue to irrigate their crops with river water containing

heightened levels of metals, which poses no danger to human health but could

have a long-term effect on the productivity of the soil. (See sidebar,

below.) Livestock and wild Rocky Mountain sheep graze the riverbanks and the

broad, scrubby plains along the Alamosa.

It was here that Rimar began his fieldwork for the EPA.

Rimar had already worked for the agency for five years, monitoring landfill

regulations in Region VIII, which covers Colorado, Montana, North and South

Dakota, Utah and Wyoming and is headquartered in downtown Denver. Raised in

Buffalo, New York, Rimar has a master's degree in geography with an emphasis

in wetlands ecology. During a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, he helped

set up a 50,000-acre wildlife refuge for jaguars, monkeys, rare birds and

other species in eastern Guatemala.

At the EPA, Rimar was developing a reputation for good work and sound

science, as well as a keen interest in ecotoxicology, the study of

contaminants in the environment. In 1995 he was invited to become the

technical coordinator for a sheep study in the Alamosa River valley, home to

many ranchers. Residents there were pressing for an investigation into

whether elevated levels of copper in the soil could affect sheep, which are

highly sensitive to the metal. (The study was also designed to include

ducks, but Rimar's crew would find no nesting ducks on the Alamosa --

probably because the dead river has no waterbugs, which constitute 90

percent of the birds' diet.)

Soon after Rimar signed on to the study, he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in

ecology -- intending to specialize in ecotoxicology -- at Colorado State

University. The EPA agreed to pay for his coursework, as it frequently does

for staffers hoping to develop a scientific expertise that could further the

agency's work. Rimar also hoped his experience on the sheep study might pay

off when it came time to do his dissertation, though that was still a long

way down the academic road.

After a number of funding delays, in late June 1995 Rimar headed down to the

valley with a truckload of four-month-old lambs and a small crew hired by

CSU, the contractor previously chosen to carry out the study and lab

analysis at a price tag of $300,000. The lambs would graze along the river

for 120 days; a control group would remain north of the valley in an area

unaffected by the Alamosa.

The crew also cut into the earth with augers to pull out soil samples (sheep

eat a lot of dirt). With stainless-steel clippers flush to the ground --

imitating the way sheep uproot their dinner -- the workers cut clumps of

grasses, weeds and clover and bagged them for analysis in a CSU lab. By

summer's end, the lambs would be rounded up and sent to the university

teaching hospital for eventual autopsy. Researchers analyzed tissue from all

over the lambs' bodies, but especially their livers, which tend to " rust

away " if the animals eat too much copper.

The study was complete by January 1996 -- and the results were alarming.

" What we finally found was that at the exposed site, the amount of copper in

the forage plants was 27 times greater than at our control site, " says

Rimar. The livers of sheep in the exposed area held twice as much copper

than those from the uncontaminated site -- a concentration that could have

been toxic.

" The question was, why weren't the sheep dropping dead in the field? " Rimar

asks. " The answer is, we don't know. We needed to do further study. It was

very clear. These levels were very dangerous -- at least to the ranching

industry down there. I'm not saying they were dangerous to human health. "

Tests found the lambs' meat, as well as crops such as alfalfa and barley,

perfectly safe. " The problem was in forage vegetation that the sheep eat, "

Rimar says. " These results were all hot. "

The logical thing would have been to follow the 1995 study with a similar

one the next year, says Rimar, who had put in eighty-hour weeks during the

fieldwork. Only " time-series data, " collected over a multi-year period,

would show whether the high copper levels would affect sheep reproduction

and a new generation of offspring.

But in early 1996, " rumors and innuendo " started circulating in the hallways

at EPA. One evening a colleague phoned Rimar in tears and said she'd been

" badgered " during aggressive questioning by OIG investigators who told her

Rimar might be bound for jail. Rimar was under criminal investigation for

" ethics violations " and had no idea why. " All I could do was guess what the

charges were, " he says.

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Many of Rimar's former colleagues agree that the OIG investigation seemed

overzealous. They say they don't know why his work might have been

threatening to the EPA. Rimar, however, speculates that his copper study

might have endangered state efforts to lower water-quality standards on the

Alamosa River, and his insistence on further study called attention to

problems with the cleanup.

The United States Office of Inspector General was created during the

administration to investigate waste, fraud and abuse at federal agencies.

Historically, its jurisdiction has included trying to protect whistleblowers

who were being punished for exposing scandals in their agency.

" Whistleblowing is a tool of last resort, " explains Bruce Pederson, a Denver

attorney who specializes in defending whistleblowers and who later took that

role in Rimar's case. " It's a symptom that the patient -- in this case, the

agency -- is seriously ill. " Often, whistleblowers are regarded as

tattletales or snitches: " Some people think of the term 'whistleblower' as

derogatory, " says Pederson. " I consider it a badge of honor, myself.

" Unfortunately, in practice, what has happened at the EPA and other agencies

is, the IG [inspector General] is used by the head of the department or

agency to punish the whistleblower, " Pederson says. " In other words, a

trumped-up charge will be created against the whistleblower and given to the

IG, who then dutifully investigates it, puts a black cloud over the employee

and, if they're lucky, finds something they can nail the employee with,

thereby eradicating his credibility as a whistleblower. "

In April 1996, Rimar, who at this point was not yet an official

whistleblower, contacted the OIG and demanded to meet with Lee Quintyne and

Craig Clinton, the two investigators flown in from Atlanta and Chicago to

peer into the anonymous charges against him. Rimar would later learn the

basis of their investigation: his graduate work at CSU.

Although Rimar's job on the sheep study had been to conduct fieldwork and

crunch the numbers on lab results, he had no power over spending money or

hiring the CSU contractors for the project. But the OIG claimed Rimar had

used the sheep study as a way to weasel into his Ph.D. program. As Max

Dodson, head of Superfund for Region VIII, put it in an ominous 1997

disciplinary " letter of warning " to Rimar: " The appearance of a conflict of

interest occurred as a result of you appearing to have overall EPA

responsibility for the risk assessment.

" Future discipline, " Dodson continued, " could be severe. "

" Right after [Rimar] began to come up with troubling scientific findings --

boom -- a charge was filed against him anonymously that he had engaged in a

conflict of interest, " Pederson explains. " And later, when they couldn't

prove that, they investigated him for the appearance of a conflict of

interest, which is the biggest catch-all you could ever hope to use. "

Rimar vehemently insisted his graduate work had been okayed by the entire

EPA chain of command. In June 1996, when the follow-up fieldwork on his 1995

sheep study was to begin, Rimar was booted off the project. He was

reinstated in August -- too late to begin the seasonal work.

The same thing happened in 1997: Rimar was removed from the sheep study in

June. He responded by shooting off an official " whistleblower memo " to the

head of the EPA, administrator Carol Browner, and Acting Inspector General

Nikki Tinsley. Claiming whistleblower protection under federal law, Rimar

outlined how the OIG's " unfounded 'ethics investigation' " had halted his

Summitville work -- a study that had " resulted in excellent science " for

less than a third of the $1 million a private contractor would have charged.

Rimar also noted that without 1996 and 1997 numbers, his original 1995 data

was now practically worthless and charged that despite $100 million poured

into the overall Summitville cleanup, " adequate risk data does not currently

exist. "

" I wrote thinking, of course, that I'd get some kind of reaction from them, "

Rimar says. When Browner and Tinsley didn't respond, he tipped off National

Public Radio and the local daily newspapers. After the resulting press

coverage, EPA put him back on the study.

By now it was August -- but Rimar went out into the field anyway to collect

soil and plant samples. The soonest he could actually take samples, he says,

was in late October -- when a fierce snowstorm hit. " We were using brooms to

sweep snow off the ground so we could get our samples. "

Rimar says he tried to get the soil and plant specimens sent to the CSU lab.

Instead, they sat on a shelf at the EPA -- despite agency requirements that

samples be analyzed within six months to be considered scientifically valid.

They were finally sent to a lab somewhere in Texas. " So we've got samples

that are too old, going off to a lab that I'm not familiar with, to a lab

that had nothing to do with the study, and my question for EPA is very

simple: 'Why didn't you get them analyzed immediately, and why didn't you

send them to CSU?' " Rimar asks.

But Jim Hanley, Summitville's project manager at the time, says the delay

was part of a " comedy of errors " that unfortunately occurred after the

fieldwork, and the samples were still scientifically reliable. In the

investigation of Rimar, " it seemed that everything that could go wrong did, "

says Hanley. " I think he's a pretty good scientist. He's really into the

state of the art as far as biology and physiology and toxicology. " But,

" he's much more a pure scientist than he is a bureaucrat, I guess. " Rimar

fell short on some administrative duties because he " probably lost some

heart as a result of all the things going on at the time, " says Hanley.

When Dodson sent Rimar his official letter of warning in November 1997,

Rimar decided it was time to take further action. He contacted the

Washington, D.C.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility,

who referred him to Denver PEER attorney Pederson. Rimar's case was

exceptional, Pederson says, because most whistleblowers who file suit have

undergone far more blatant abuse, such as being demoted or fired. Rimar's

career had been sidetracked, he had put his graduate work on hold, and his

reputation was being squandered by the actions of a " rogue agency, " the OIG.

But Rimar's main outrage, says Pederson, was that the EPA was not doing good

science.

" The last thing I want is people to think that I'm some sort of a

paranoid -- like those guys who think the CIA is trying to talk to them

through an implant in their head, " Rimar says. " I was just a bureaucrat, a

scientist who had an excellent career record at EPA, doing my job, doing

what I was supposed to do. I never started out trying to stir up any

trouble. " Before the OIG investigation started, Rimar simply ignored office

politics, " because it didn't affect the science. I was interested in what

were the contaminants and how were they affecting the species I was

interested in. That was it. "

When he finally filed a lawsuit against the EPA, he says, " I firmly believed

that the agency could do the right thing: move ahead with the studies,

exonerate me personally, and we could kiss and make up. I could go back to

work, and everything would be fine. "

Instead, the matter went to trial and turned bitter. Rimar handed over all

his related papers and even paid for a lie detector test. " But we had to

fight tooth and nail to get [the EPA and the OIG] to turn over documents, "

he says. " It was almost like Mason. " Several witnesses on the stand

testified about documents that the agency had failed to provide to Rimar

during discovery, he says. " OIG blatantly withheld statements from EPA

employees that were extremely supportive of my case. "

One particularly damning memo was from Superfund chief Dodson himself. In

his January 1998 internal memo to the OIG, Dodson expressed " concerns " about

the agency's investigation of Rimar and noted that a " paucity of evidence "

had forced EPA Region VIII officials to dismiss several allegations against

the scientist. Dodson referred to " allegations of intimidation from some of

[the] interviewees " and the " discarding " of information that would have hurt

the EPA's case. Further, he noted that he was " troubled " by the efforts of

an OIG agent to " inappropriately influence management, i.e., pressure to

take Mr. Rimar off the Summitville Ecological Risk Assessment project. "

But the " troubling " OIG investigation was also the EPA's justification for

taking him off the study, Rimar says.

After a trial that stretched over a week and a half, just prior to closing

arguments, EPA agreed to settle. Rimar won an undisclosed sum and agreed to

leave the agency. November 7 was his last day on the job.

EPA refuses to talk about the case. " There is still continuing litigation on

that matter, " says labor relations officer Brady, " and therefore, it

would be inappropriate for us to comment. "

In a telephone interview, Dodson also noted that he was legally bound not to

discuss details of the case. But, he added, " significantly more individuals "

than just him made the decision to take Rimar off the study.

In a highly unusual gesture, EPA attorneys have insisted that Rimar turn

back all documents dealing with the OIG investigation. " I have never seen

that before in a whistleblower case, " says Pederson. After all, " the genie's

already out of the bottle. " Likewise, the identity of the " informant " who

sparked the OIG's investigation is supposed to remain confidential -- but

court documents reveal him as a middle manager who, after reporting Rimar,

abruptly took a medical retirement from the agency.

" What I don't understand is sacrificing the people who work for you, " says

Rimar. " What if I had not fought these charges? I don't know what kind of

person would use this information to tear down my reputation ten or twenty

years from now. "

Later this month Rimar will ask the U.S. Department of Justice to join the

fray in his whistleblower complaint. He points to court testimony that he

says is proof that Dodson, Quintyne and the " informant " committed perjury

and other crimes in the case. " The big question is, why engage in almost

three years of lying, covering up, withholding of evidence, possible

perjury, possible witness-tampering, possible obstruction of justice? " he

asks. " Why would an agency actively engage in those things for such a long

time? I can't help but think it's something very serious. I don't think they

would be going through all this just because they don't like me. "

Throughout the ordeal, the EPA " lost two years of valuable research, " Rimar

says. " I know there's politics, I know there's give and take, I know there's

compromise. That's totally understandable. But there's a huge gap between

recognizing the scientific reality and compromising with that, and trying to

silence scientific reality and persecuting those people who are trying to

tell the truth. "

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" What happened in 's situation is fairly widespread. The thing is, not

many people fight it, " says Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER. In the

government workplace, subtle things can happen that push scientists off

their career paths -- like being left off memos or not invited to

conferences. " It may sound petty, but if you're a scientist in a particular

field, it's the difference between being a star and being mediocre, " says

Ruch. " We call it 'death of a thousand paper cuts.' "

's experience was not so subtle. The respected Atlanta

microbiologist and nearly thirty-year employee of the EPA has become one of

the agency's most vocal critics.

, who is now embroiled in his third lawsuit against his employer,

charges the EPA with " an insidious problem where science takes a backseat to

politics. It's not a new situation, " he says. In fact, a 1996 survey of the

EPA's Office of Research and Development noted that a " major source of

frustration [and insecurity] to ORD employees is that the research direction

and even the very existence of ORD is determined by politics. "

The EPA was likewise skewered in a May 1998 report by the right-leaning

National Wilderness Institute, which accused the agency of " corrupting

agency ethics rules to silence whistleblowers, " among other charges.

" EPA should be the one setting the example of encouraging whistleblowing, "

says 's Washington attorney, Kohn. " Instead, they're the worst

offender. " The EPA is more often charged with violating its own policies

than any private company or other government agency, says Kohn.

Despite environmentalists' initial elation when the outwardly green Al Gore

became vice president, " the brain drain at EPA has accelerated in the

Clinton administration, " says. " That is the inevitable outcome when an

agency deigns to disregard the expert opinion of its own scientists. "

The rising persecution of EPA whistleblowers started in 1993, says ,

when Representative Dingell (D-Michigan) put pressure on the EPA's OIG

to more aggressively prosecute unethical and criminal behavior within the

agency. experienced the whistleblower's fate firsthand after he

eulogized the demise of sound science at the EPA in a June 1996 commentary

in the journal Nature. Two years later the conservative Washington Times

published a letter signed by , Rimar and eleven other scientists

charging the EPA with harassing and intimidating whistleblowers. The letter

spurred U.S. House science committee chairman Sensenbrenner

(R-Wisconsin) to request a full investigation by the General Accounting

Office.

If the GAO report -- whose conclusions remain secret until its release later

this month -- sparks congressional hearings, Rimar plans to travel to D.C.

to tell his story. His testimony might include what he was thinking during

the OIG investigation: " This is Kafka, this is star chamber, this is the old

Soviet Union. This is not the United States of America. "