A Republican state senator is calling for an outside investigation into the Department of Natural Resources. We think it’s a good start, but it probably won’t accomplish much.
Sen. Brad Lager, who is part of the Senate committee reviewing delayed reports of unsafe E. coli levels at Lake of the Ozarks, alleges that there has been an “organized cover-up.”
The efforts of Lager’s committee have been hindered, Lager said, by DNR Director Mark Templeton. Data shows clearly, Lager said, that E. coli levels were higher than safe levels, yet someone at the department “made a conscious decision not to release that.”
We still wonder where this investigation was over the previous four years, as DNR allowed corporate farm after corporate farm to intrude on Missouri’s parks. That failure leaves a lingering smell of politics — which happens to smell a lot like the smell of turkey byproducts in Carthage.
DNR needs more than an investigation: It needs an identity change. For too long, the department has been a bumbling, bloated bureaucracy that fails miserably at its mission.
Compounding our frustration with the department is the fall from grace taken by its new director.
Mark Templeton was supposed to usher in a new era of environmental responsibility. But instead of protecting Missouri’s natural resources, the department has practiced the same-ol’, same-ol’ politics that characterized it in years past.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has a chance to make this right. DNR needs to take its job of protecting Missouri’s natural resources seriously. The department needs to vigorously defend the state’s resources, and the Legislature should give the department teeth.
