Smith demands copies of missing text messages, policy documents from EPA

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week, demanding that the agency turn over documents related to its preservation of text messages as required by the Federal Records Act.

Smith’s committee has been asking the EPA for several months to provide copies of e-mails, text messages and policy procedures. In February, some documents were turned over, but text messages and policy procedures from 2009-12 were missing.

“Documents provided by EPA demonstrate a continued lack of transparency at the agency,” Smith’s letter said. “EPA responded two weeks after the committee’s due date with information that appears to be already publicly available. The EPA failed to provide the committee with e-mails from high-ranking officials, including Administrator Gina McCarthy, discussing text messages relating to official agency business.

“If (the) EPA continues to withhold emails, text messages, and other documents from the Committee, I will have no alternative but to consider the use of compulsory process to obtain the requested documents and information,” Smith wrote, adding a demand that the EPA produce all materials requested by no later than Friday.

Smith’s letter comes in the wake of a number of allegations concerning transparency at the EPA. Earlier this month, a federal court issued an opinion indicating problems with the EPA’s response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The opinion stated that “the agency either intentionally sought to evade the FOIA request in order to destroy documents or demonstrated extreme apathy and carelessness.”