Departing EPA boss: Big regret is rural relations

Jackson on a farm tour in Iowa

Outgoing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson's "deepest regret, she said, is that she failed to reach out to rural, often conservative regions of the United States," Reuters reports. "As a result, she said, opponents were able to generate politically damaging rumors of looming regulatory crackdowns, such as a fictitious EPA plan to treat bovine excretions as dangerous pollutants."

Jackson told the international news service, "If I were starting again, I would from day one make a much stronger effort to do personal outreach in rural America. Had I known that these myths about everything from cow flatulence to spilled milk could be seen as 'The EPA is coming to get you,' I would have spent more time trying to inoculate against that." (Read more)

Zack Colman of The Hill, a Washington, D.C., publication, reports, "Clashes with rural GOP lawmakers characterized much of Jackson’s time in Obama administration, but Jackson has lamented what she says are inaccurate claims about the scope of EPA’s agenda."