Subject: RE: Labor Day
Dear John,
Thanks so much for the note regarding Labor Day - you have always been timely with these, unlike some of your predecessors.
You and I are going to part ways today. I had a great "gig" here in
the regional office - I had a great boss, great co-workers, I was still
learning a good bit, and the good days were always outweighing the bad
days. I was pretty certain (after my first 5 years) that I could
outlast any administration the governor could appoint. I had no problem
with the Martin administration - he was a man of science and no
extremist.
Between your inappropriate mission statement, the dismantling of the
Division of Water Quality, and HB74 (along with a few other gems from
this session's NCGA), I see no reason to continue here - because my own
mission - to assist all citizens and protect those that don't have a
voice, would be compromised.
I was a good regulator - I had a bit of distrust for both sides of
the aisle - which made me regulate evenly and with common sense and fair
judgement. Over the past 24 years I've had the privilege to have worked
with some of the most intelligent, articulate, and respected
environmental scientists and engineers - I'd put them up against my
friends in the private sector any day of the week. But the disdain for
them (and me) by this administration is too much to bear.
When you pushed our reasonable, right-leaning WQ Director out, I knew
we were in trouble. When you guys (and they are mostly guys...) pushed
out a very thoughtful and judicial Environmental Management Commission
chair, I knew we were moving into a sand pit that we weren't going to
dig out of easily. When you, along with your "great Tom Reeder",
decided to cleave off the stormwater programs and move it to Land
Resources, who have never been trained for such..nor do they much care
about WQ, I knew it was time to leave. I'm sure the 401 Water Quality
program is next (especially since you said we should be more like TX and
SC).
I'm all about customer service (as the majority of employees in DWQ
are, and have always been), but that just seems to be a smokescreen for a
very extremist republican agenda.
Likely there will be some uptick in the business environment in the
next few years (mainly because the economy has started to recover from
the disaster your friends on Wall Street created). But when the hot
summers and the drought years come back, and we get fish kills again,
and maybe there's fracking going on in the sandhills - it will be the
fine folks at DENR who will get blamed for the chaos. The politicians
and their appointees, that did the dismantling and created the chaos,
will be long gone. We know the drill.
For my brothers and sisters in the Division of WATER QUALITY (the so
called "seat warmers") who don't have the option to be able to move on,
due to various obligations and a destroyed economy, let me leave you
with a video I pilfered from the internet 'cause I didn't have the tools
to make my own.
You can view this while I gather up my toothbrush and grab my loincloth to start heading out the door.
Here is a link to the article about this letter and the women behind it.
No comments:
Post a Comment