EPA official leaving regional post

Fri., June 9, 2006

Karen Dorn Steele Staff reporter

Michael Bogert is leaving his post as regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to work for his former boss, ex-Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne.

Kempthorne was recently confirmed by the Senate to head the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Bogert is going to work for Kempthorne as his lawyer.

In an e-mail Wednesday, Bogert said he notified the White House that he’ll resign from the EPA on July 8 and start his new job on July 10.

One of his last deeds as EPA administrator was to announce a controversial deal with Teck Cominco Ltd. that allows the Canadian company to sidestep U.S. Superfund cleanup laws and contribute $20 million plus oversight fees for a “voluntary” study of smelter pollution in the upper Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam.

As part of the agreement, EPA withdrew its formal 2003 Superfund order to Teck Cominco to study the damage it caused in Lake Roosevelt by releasing millions of tons of smelter slag and heavy metals into the river.

The EPA-Teck Cominco agreement, announced last Friday, is silent on who will pay for actual cleanup of the Columbia – a task that the Washington Department of Ecology says will take years and cost over $1 billion.

Bogert was a short-lived administrator in the EPA’s Seattle office. He took the job in 2005 after the resignation of John Iani, an Alaska fisheries businessman and the first Bush administration appointee who quit to go back to the private sector.

Bogert initially recused himself from any decision-making role for the $359 million, 30-year Silver Valley cleanup of mine wastes from Mullan, Idaho, to Spokane.

The reason: As Kempthorne’s staff general counsel from 1999 to 2004 and as the Idaho governor’s private lawyer in 2005, Bogert helped Idaho fight EPA’s plans for an expanded Superfund cleanup beyond the 20 square miles of the initial Bunker Hill smelter cleanup at Kellogg.

But this year, the EPA ruled Bogert could serve on a commission overseeing the Silver Valley cleanup after an ethics review at agency headquarters.

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