I’m agreeable with that comment. There’s probably only one such team in all of the EPA. You can figure it’s their one and only SWAT team....with at least $15,000 worth of gear for each member.
Yeah, they probably flew up on $4,000 ticket....carrying the gear with them. They needed to show some action, to write the report that would show the necessity of them being there for a week.
If you ask them....they will likely admit they went to only one mining claim....one simple show. And it’d be curious to have the trip report made public. Perhaps...some Senator would be bold enough to ask for that one trip report?
Final words....whoever hired this EPA SWAT team....needs to stand up in a congressional meeting and justify the cost to this. I’d say this is four-star cut material, and likely saves the organization at least two million a year on salary and operational cost.
The other element is the need for an agency to demonstrate the need for their SWAT team once they’ve gotten into their budget.
So they have to go looking for ways to use it in order to continue justify it’s budget.
I’m also betting that the sequester prompted them to stretch the boundaries in looking for justifications, because if there is anything that needed sequestered out of existence it is an EPA SWAT team.
That “use it or lose it” mentality in federal budgets is probably the number one cause of stupid decision making and wasted tax dollars in every agency at every level of government.