From the Los Angeles Times comes our latest occasional reminder that the country would have been better off had it elected a marmoset to be president* in 2016. Back in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey tore through Texas all the way up to the petro-and-chemical mini-state of Houston, many people in the storm's path worried about what might be unleashed into the air and water if Harvey blew into the huge network of industrial plants to which Houston is home.

Some of those concerned people, it seems, worked at NASA. Very few of them, it seems, worked in the upper echelons of the EPA.

Fifteen hundred miles west in the high desert city of Palmdale, NASA scientists were preparing to fly a DC-8, equipped with the world’s most sophisticated air samplers over the hurricane zone to monitor pollution levels. The mission never got off the ground. Both the state of Texas and the EPA told the scientists to stay away. According to emails obtained by The Times via a public records request and interviews with dozens of scientists and officials familiar with the situation, EPA and state officials argued that NASA’s data would cause “confusion” and might “overlap” with their own analysis — which was showing only a few, isolated spots of concern.

One would think it impossible for officials to have their heads simultaneously in the sand and up their asses, but this is Scott Pruitt's EPA and Greg Abbott's Texas, so there we are.

“At this time, we don’t think your data would be useful,” Michael Honeycutt, Texas’ director of toxicology, wrote to NASA officials, adding that low-flying helicopters equipped with infra-red cameras, contracted by his agency, would be sufficient. EPA deferred to Honeycutt, a controversial toxicologist who has suggested air pollution may be beneficial to human health.

People walk down a flooded street as they evacuate their homes after the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Getty Images

Translation From The Original Weaselspeak: we have the data we need to support our downplaying of this potential public-health disaster. G'wan outside and breathe deep the gathering gloom, y'all.

NASA scientists say that, had the DC-8 been deployed, it would have provided the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of air quality in the region, allowing for a more thorough understanding of the situation. “It’s totally possible we’d have found nothing at all to be concerned about,” said Tom Ryerson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher who had previously been part of the Deepwater Horizon mission. “But at least we’d have known that,” he said, “without a doubt.”

“This is a very clear illustration of the politics of knowledge,” said Scott Frickel, an environmental sociologist at Brown University, referring to the rejection of the NASA jet. “The EPA Region 6 and Texas authorities don’t want to know, so they are passing on something really important about urban-scale disasters.”

And, as always, the people living in the blast zone knew better.

Despite EPA claims that pollutants were “well below levels of health concern,” residents and rescuers complained of the fumes. Clouds of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals floated over the city, according to analyses by environmental groups and news reports. As those reports spread, researchers with NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography Mission program thought they could help.

As the team watched the disaster unfold, Paul Newman, chief scientist of NASA’s Earth Science Division, suggested they divert their test run and fly over Houston. The timing was serendipitous. The DC-8 was fully equipped and ready to go. “We agreed this would be a good opportunity to support the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort,” Lawrence Friedl, NASA’s director of Applied Sciences wrote in a Sept. 8, 2017 email to the agency’s then-acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot and others. Indeed, NASA’s press shop was touting its coordination with the hurricane emergency response.

There's the customary retroactive buck-passing and ass-covering now; EPA says it was the state that declined NASA's help. The state says it was acting on information provided by the EPA, but the general consensus of the responsible agencies in Texas and Washington was that some information was enough. When and if the cancer cases start turning up in a few years, I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the citizens of Houston.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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