Trails Critic Claims Epa Official Threatened Him

A Harrison resident is accusing an Environmental Protection Agency official of threatening him.

In an affidavit filed this week, Lewis Rogers Hardy claims EPA’s regional Superfund director approached him in a menacing manner at an August hearing in Coeur d’Alene hosted by the EPA’s national ombudsman.

The affidavit was filed with the ombudsman’s office and U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, was notified.

Hardy alleges that the EPA’s Mike Gearheard was angry at comments he made during the hearing. A member of Citizens Against Rails to Trails, Hardy criticized local EPA staffers and urged the ombudsman recommend “moving staff and replacing them with new people who are less tied into local politics and self-promotion.”

He charges in the affidavit that during a break in the hearing, Gearheard took him to task over the statement, said “I am not going to forget this” in a menacing tone, and “inadvertently (I think) stepped on my foot when he said it.”

Three of Idaho’s four congressional delegates this week sent a letter asking EPA’s top official, Carol Browner to investigate the incident.

Sen. Larry Craig did not sign the letter, because he felt the situation was a personnel matter that first came to Crapo’s attention, a spokesman for Craig said.

But an aide to Crapo on Wednesday distanced the senator from Hardy’s accusations against Gearheard, a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent three years in Nepal in the 1970s.

“I want to stress we don’t know what happened, it’s pretty much one person’s word against the other’s,” said Crapo staffer Lindsay Nothern. “We’ve had good dealings with Gearheard. It’s not really about him.”

Crapo is more concerned about what he views as efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice and EPA to gut the ombudsman office, Nothern said.

Gearheard on Wednesday acknowledged he “did take issue with personal comments” Hardy made about EPA staffers in North Idaho “who live and work in the area, and work hard on trying to build a consensus approach.

“But I in no way threatened or intended to threaten him,” he continued. “Frankly, I feel bad if he felt that.”

The ombudsman’s office was expected to forward the affidavit to federal investigators for criminal review.