Executive Watch: Former DEQ Secretary van der Vaart ‘Retires’
Good riddance to the ‘fox guarding the henhouse.’
Donald van der Vaart, former DEQ secretary under Pat McCrory, has submitted his letter of retirement to the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Van der Vaart had earlier been placed on investigatory leave by the department in November.
DEQ’s action followed the appearance of an article co-authored by van der Vaart in a national publication, calling for elimination of a long-standing major legal protection for clean air. The law, referred to as Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD), protects cleaner air areas (especially in rural communities) from being targeted for the location of polluting facilities which would significantly downgrade the healthiness of those communities’ air.
In the publication, van der Vaart and his co-author were prominently identified as policy leaders within DEQ’s Air Quality section and DEQ. His position in the article tracked his anti-environmental advocacy on behalf of DEQ under former the McCrory Administration, but were in opposition to current DEQ positions under the Cooper Administration. Environmental law experts commented that the van der Vaart position in favor of eliminating PSD protections was “an extremely radical view” that was inconsistent with efforts to protect the health of disadvantaged communities.
In a special irony, van der Vaart in his resignation comments complained that his views were being suppressed on the basis of politics. However, observers of van der Vaart’s tenure as DEQ Secretary under McCrory note that he personally politicized his role and DEQ policy to an unprecedented degree: “While it’s common for agency chiefs to support the governor who appointed them, van der Vaart seemed to take that to an extreme. Even routine media releases sounded like cheerleading for Gov. McCrory.”
Among other steps, then-DEQ Secretary van der Vaart took to the media to personally attack then-Attorney General Roy Cooper’s refusal to challenge the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. His harsh attacks were widely understood to be aimed at Cooper as McCrory’s expected challenger in the 2016 campaign for governer.
As one former North Carolina environmental advocate now working in Washington observed on social media, “Don van der Vaart complaining about the politicization of science and law is a level of hypocrisy only possible in a Trumpian world.”
It is hardly coincidental that Mr. van der Vaart was reported to be under consideration for a high political position (potentially even chief at EPA) under the Trump Administration. He has since been appointed to the EPA’s scientific advisory panel, after current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt cleared the panel of genuine scientists not allied with regulated polluting industries.
Following McCrory’s concession of the 2016 election, but prior to Cooper’s assuming office, van der Vaart demoted himself from DEQ secretary to a “non-political” position within DEQ. This practice is often referred to as “burrowing in” by a political/policy level official who knows that he/she will not be retained in that role after an administration change. The policy-level official is arranging to put themselves into a “non-political” job which is protected by law from dismissal at the discretion of the incoming administration.
Van der Vaart aggressively promoted anti-environmental policies throughout his tenure as DEQ secretary, and it was widely assumed that he would be dismissed as soon as Cooper (with his very different policies on key environmental issues) took office. As noted by one North Carolina environmental policy analyst, “it was simply farcical and outrageous for someone whose driving professional mission had become to undermine environmental protection laws to remain employed by an agency that’s supposed to craft and enforce such laws. Having [van der Vaart continue to be] employed at DEQ at public expense was, in the truest sense of the phrase, like paying the fox to guard the hen house.”
It is to the benefit of North Carolinians’ health and environment that Mr. van der Vaart is no longer in a position to influence the administration or reputation of North Carolina’s environmental laws or programs in any way.
Next: U.S. Senate passes its anti-clean energy tax reform bill. Now what?
