By Jay Sekulow
The left's outrage over the IRS turns to a plea to 'move on'
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
More than a billion gallons of stormwater and sewage flow into the District of Columbia's rivers every year, and there is a belief that George Hawkins is the man to fix it.
Five weeks after he accepted national awards in his role as director of the D.C. Department of the Environment, the agency's former chief Christophe Tulou arrived in a downtown office building for a gathering where there were many familiar faces from the city government and environmental community.
The former environmental chief for the D.C. government says he was illegally fired after raising concerns to federal regulators about a plan to delay at least part of a massive public works project aimed at reducing water pollution in the District while the city's water utility tests an alternative plan.
Former D.C. Department of the Environment Director Christophe Tulou, before his firing last month, had cautioned the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and local officials about a plan pushed by the District's water utility and backed by Mayor Vincent C. Gray to delay construction of one or more giant underground tunnels aimed at reducing the flow of pollution into the city's dirty rivers, records show.
Not long after the sudden firing of the District's top environmental official, Christophe Tulou, last month, employees from the city's Department of Environment were told to report to a hastily arranged meeting at the D.C. government offices on Fourth Street Northwest.
There's no doubt the Anacostia River remains far too dirty. Government warnings state that D.C.'s waters are not fishable or swimmable because of a legacy of pollution and toxics.
Mr. Tulou said his agency wasn't told of the mayor's letter.
Even as the agency's interim director sat quietly listening in the same room, Mr. Tulou told city environmental leaders of what he said was a move afoot within the Gray administration to chill the "volume and the nature of the regulatory actions" at the department.
