Last month we told you about the prime speaking spot that the EPA was affording to Ann Maest of Stratus Consulting at this week’s EPA Hard Rock Mining Conference. Dr. Maest and Stratus are being sued by Chevron, under federal racketeering laws, after Maest was caught on video appearing to agree to doctor data in a way that would exaggerate environmental damage and inflate multi-billion dollar damage claims in a long running environmental case in Equador. After Wizbang and others publicized Maest’s participation in the conference she abruptly dropped off the program. The EPA has confirmed that Maest dropped out of the conference.
The Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity is protesting the conference this week as they (rightly) believe that the taint of biased science remains as long as Stratus is still on the program. The group believes EPA’s original attempt to showcase Maest, and any continued involvement of Stratus, highlights the agency’s willingness to use and embrace biased, agenda-driven science in order to justify its overregulation of America’s resource industries, energy sector and economy at large.
“Ann Maest and Stratus Consulting are poster children for the kind of questionable, agenda-driven ‘science’ that federal regulators and their green allies outside government use to block energy production, increase consumer costs, kill jobs and smother the American economy in unnecessary red tape,” said AFP-CO State Director Jeff Crank. “We hope this Give Red Tape a Rest Rally will remind the rogue regulators at EPA, and their masters in the White House, that the American people are losing patience with, and just can’t afford, this regulate-everything, costs-be-damned attitude at EPA.”
Kudos to AFP and Resourceful Earth for organizing the campaign against Maest and Stratus; to Wizbang readers who wrote to the EPA; and other blogs who re-publicized the original Wizbang story on Maest.
