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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,091 posts)
Sat Jan 19, 2019, 09:34 PM Jan 2019

How One EPA Lawyer Is Struggling Through the Shutdown

How is the shutdown affecting the lives of federal employees? And can we extrapolate from their experiences to gain a wider understanding of the shutdown's impacts on our country? I sat down with a furloughed environmental litigator at the Environmental Protection Agency to try to figure that out.

This partial shutdown of the federal government—now in its 25th day—is the longest in the country's history. Eight-hundred-thousand federal employees are going without pay (including 13,000 at the EPA), as Congress and President Trump attempt to resolve a dispute over funding of the proposed border wall. It’s easy to focus on that wall and forget that this feud is having real impacts on real people’s lives. And because these are government employees we’re talking about, we’re also talking about people who work for the public good.

The lawyer, whom I'll call Josephine (she asked that I not use her real name out of fear of losing her job), is one of those people. After graduating at the top of her class from a big-name law school, she went into public service, deciding that doing a little good for the world was more important than the mid-six-figure private sector jobs that would have been her alternatives.

“We prosecute violators of environmental laws,” she says. “We also provide compliance assistance, so if a company is trying to figure out what it needs to do to comply with one of those laws, we can help them through that. People pay attention to the penalties, but it’s mostly about enabling people to come into compliance, so we work with them to come up with a package of equipment they can install or a program they can implement.”

She was worried about describing the exact impacts of her work at the EPA for fear of identifying herself, so I asked her to sum up what she achieves, when she’s able to actually do what she was hired to do. “There’s definitely less air pollution from places like power plants, oil and gas operations, and refinieries because of my work,” she says. “I also help make sure kids don’t get poisoned or get developmental issues as they grow up.” And yet this is someone who is currently considering selling her couch in order to cover bills.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2382861/how-one-epa-lawyer-struggling-through-shutdown?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WYM-Saturday-01192019&utm_content=WYM-Saturday-01192019+CID_d0ce54acf72bd13928ddbcc7954a49ed&utm_source=campaignmonitor%20outsidemagazine&utm_term=currently%20considering%20selling%20her%20couch%20in%20order%20to%20cover%20bills

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