Concerns Arise Over Bush's Pick for EPA Job (Asbestos lawyer!) [View All]

[Liberty Belle]

CONCERNS ARISE OVER BUSH’S PICK FOR EPA JOB; LAWYER WORKS FOR FIR THAT REPRESENTS W.R. GRACE, OTHERS

Seattle Post Intelligencer (6/25/05) -- President Bush has nominated Granta Nakayama, a partner in a law firm whose clients include W.R. Grace, BP, Dow Chemical and DuPont, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency's far-flung enforcement division.

Selecting a lawyer and an engineer with one of the nation's largest corporate law firms, whose clients have deep and occasionally controversial relations with the EPA, triggered concerns that Nakayama would not be able to aggressively enforce environmental laws.

Foremost among those concerns is W.R. Grace, which is under federal criminal indictment on charges related to the operation of its vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont. Hundreds of workers and Libby residents contracted lethal asbestos-related disease -- a situation that gained national attention after a Seattle Post-Intelligencer series in 1999…

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/230047_epa25.html