New EPA grant tightens oversight to prevent another What’s Upstream

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded Western Washington tribes another $25 million for Puget Sound projects, but with stronger instructions to collaborate with others, a response to congressional complaints that one tribe misspent EPA funds to malign farmers.  The new grant to the 20-tribe Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission extends for five years a federal program that financed What’s Upstream, a media campaign directed by the Swinomish Indian tribe portraying farmers as careless and unregulated polluters. EPA staff members had concerns about the project’s tone and accuracy, but the EPA’s Northwest administrator, Dennis McLerran, stated in a letter in May to a lawmaker that the agency couldn’t control the grant-funded campaign. The EPA did, however, sever ties with What’s Upstream when confronted on the national level by angry federal lawmakers