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EPA Accused of 'Covert Propaganda' for Social Media Campaign Behind Clean Water Rule

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law with its social media campaign to promote the >Clean Water Rule, according to a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruling from earlier this week.

By Hannah Furlong | Published 8 years ago | About a 4 minute read

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law with its social media campaign to promote the >Clean Water Rule, according to a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) ruling from earlier this week. The GAO said the EPA engaged in “covert propaganda” and “grassroots lobbying” — both of which are prohibited for federal agencies — in its use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Thunderclap to counter opposition to the rule, which is intended to protect small streams and wetlands from development and pollution. The campaign reached at least 1.8 million people.

The EPA said in a statement that it disagrees with the auditor’s assessment, calling the use of social media in public education an integral part of its mission.

“We have an obligation to inform all stakeholders about environmental issues and encourage participation in the rulemaking process,” the EPA wrote. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities.”

“At no point did the agency encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature,” said spokeswoman Liz Purchia. She asserted that the EPA’s social media activity simply directed users to a general webpage about the Clean Water Rule and provided a link to outreach materials, e-mails, and presentations. Users were also told the deadline for submitting public comments and how to do so.

The Thunderclap message was ruled ‘covert propaganda’ due to the possibility that people who saw the campaign’s default message on social media may not have known that it was written by the EPA. The agency claims it sent out the original Thunderclap message, thereby hardly hiding its role. The GAO also cited two blog posts that linked to advocacy groups that support the rule - the Surfrider Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The hyperlinks violated laws against ‘grassroots lobbying.’

The GAO decision emerged just as Republican leaders moved to block the Clean Water Rule through an amendment to the enormous spending bill expected to pass in Congress this week, reported the New York Times. Those in opposition have cited the act as ‘a flagrant case of government overreach.’ 18 states are challenging the rule, which caused its implementation to be put on hold in October amidst a legal battle.

Republican Senators James Inhofe (Oklahoma), Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and M. Michael Rounds (South Dakota) sent letters to the EPA requesting documents and information about the agency’s use of social media earlier this year, to determine whether violations of Congressional prohibitions had taken place.

“[The] GAO’s finding confirms what I have long suspected, that [the] EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda,” Inhofe — chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future — said in a statement.

“[The] EPA’s illegal attempts to manufacture public support for its Waters of the United States rule and sway Congressional opinion regarding legislation to address that rule have undermined the integrity of the rulemaking process and demonstrated how baseless this unprecedented expansion of EPA regulatory authority really is,” he added. “This opinion from GAO also bolsters our oversight of EPA in other areas, as we continue to investigate and raise questions about the process EPA used to develop the Clean Power Plan and its coordination with environmental activists groups.”