Next DNR director has mess to clean up
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, December 12, 2008
(http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Dec/20081212Comm002.asp)

With a whimper, not a bang - so ends the reign of Department of Natural Resources Director Doyle Childers.

He has submitted his resignation and, as reported in The Kansas City Star, will be gone by Jan. 12. Chances are that he will be gone before that - most likely by the end of this month - but the exact date of his departure is unknown.

One thing is for sure: DNR has been politicized as never before.

Doyle Childers became sort of a hit man for Gov. Matt Blunt. Past DNR directors said it was usual for the director to inform the governor when a controversial action was about to be taken - and the governor could allow, disallow or modify such action, depending upon various considerations (including political ones).

But Gov. Blunt carried this one step further by asking the DNR director to take action on issues. While, no doubt, Director Childers informed Gov. Blunt of proposed controversial actions (such as awarding an operating permit to a 65,500-chicken operation near Roaring River State Park), there is also little doubt that the governor was calling the shots on the Boonville lift bridge controversy, which pitted our attorney general against the DNR director and the governor.

In other situations, Childers challenged Attorney General Jay Nixon on non-environmental matters - such as the amount of money Nixon had "wasted" on unsuccessful lawsuits. There is little doubt that the governor preferred that Childers take the lead on such issues.

The governor even went so far as to call upon DNR’s legal counsel - Kurt Schaefer, now our state senator - to defend the sexist actions of Fred Farrell, the director of the Department of Agriculture, who called his secretary a "show dog" and said she should enter a wet-T-shirt contest. State Treasurer Sarah Steelman refused to cut a check for the negotiated settlement, saying the taxpayers shouldn’t pick up the tab for a "get out of jail" card for Farrell’s actions.

The bottom might have been reached in this politicization when Blunt and Childers had a meeting with the editorial board of the Joplin Globe, a newspaper in southwestern Missouri. It seems the Globe had taken an editorial stance against concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and, in particular, the aforementioned chicken growing operation near Roaring River State Park. Blunt and Childers saw CAFOs as economic development tools, and the meeting with the Globe editor and reporters was held in an attempt to get the Globe folks to change their position.

In the words of one reporter present at the meeting, "We listened politely and then continued doing what we had been doing." What is remarkable - and probably unprecedented - is that the governor and DNR director traveled more than 180 miles to speak with the editorial board of a second-tier city newspaper to tout their pro-CAFO position.

While there is little doubt that CAFOs pollute, are economically ruinous and are harmful to humans - many credible scientific studies have documented this - the DNR director knew of these studies and chose to ignore them and to advocate for more CAFOs.

Clean air? Clean water? Land stewardship? All of these suffered mightily during Childers’ tenure as DNR director.

The statutory duty of DNR is to protect our state’s natural resources. In his zeal to protect those who would foul the air, water and land to externalize costs, Childers failed in this duty, and he failed mightily. The legacies of the Blunt/Childers years: more impaired water bodies, air in Kansas City and St. Louis is more foul and rural lands across the state are subjected to pesticides, herbicides, over-fertilization and erosion.

It will take many years for our natural resources to recover. Whomever Jay Nixon nominates to be DNR director will spend much of his or her time cleaning up after Childers.