U.S. EPA Region 4 officials stopped South Florida office head Richard Harvey from working on the $10 billion Everglades restoration program earlier this year after he expressed concerns about a proposal to solve Lake Okeechobee's pollution problems by funneling contaminants into Biscayne National Park, government documents show.

In January, Harvey's boss in EPA Region 4 headquaters in Atlanta, Jim Giattina, sent Harvey a memo about comments Harvey made last year about a proposed $1 billion underground pipeline system to carry excess lake water into the park.

"Once again we're routing dirty water," Harvey said during an October 2006 meeting with Army Corps of Engineers about the proposed pipeline. "We are extremely concerned because the track record when the district and the corps move dirty water around is some resource gets trashed."

In Giattina's memo to Harvey, Giattina said that he discussed Harvey's comments about the pipeline with "several representatives" of other agencies, without naming them. As a result, Harvey would no longer be the EPA's representative on the Everglades project, Giattina said. "I believe that your remarks compromise our ability to have an effective voice on critically important matters with regard to Everglades restoration," Giattina wrote. "I believe your remarks are an indicator that you have lost your ability to be objective regarding the motivation of other key parties involved in Everglades's [sic] restoration."

Nevertheless, Giattina wrote, "because this is my first expression of concern in writing to you regarding this matter, I am still rating your performance ... as 'fully successful.'"

Harvey is still the head of EPA's South Florida office. He referred questions to the EPA regional office in Atlanta, at which a spokeswoman said EPA's Regional Administrator Jimmy Palmer could not comment on "a personnel matter" (Craig Pittman, St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 19). -- RJD