Jeff Ruch, Pacific Director for PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) worked for over a decade as a committee staff attorney with the California State Legislature and with PEER for over thirty years. PEER was in fact responsible for bringing the fact of the secret negotiations into the public view in early 2021. Ruch opened his comments saying: “During those three decades working in more than 40 states, I never encountered a document resembling this proposed MOU.” Ruch said that PEER could not find any document like it “in the annals of this Regional Water Quality Control Board, nor any other Regional Water Quality Control Board, for that matter.” A former US EPA attorney whom he queried said that it looked to be “completely contrary to long-standing EPA guidance governing permitting.” Ruch sharpened the point: “Suffice it to say, this MOU is an unprecedented concession to an industrial polluter.”
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