Editor:

Saturday's paper revealed the worst bureaucratic perfidy I have ever witnessed (Casper Star-Tribune, Jan. 27, "Industry rallies against water rules," by Dustin Bleizeffer).

The culprit is John Wagner, head of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Water Quality Division and the official who approves coal-bed methane water discharge permits. He said that, under a rule being considered by the Environmental Quality Council (the DEQ's citizen oversight board), he would be unable to issue any future CBM discharge permits.

I was one of the citizens who proposed this rule. Suffice it to say that, administered with the same discretion DEQ exercises in all other matters, the rule would reduce damage to ranchers and public lands currently being flooded and ruined by excess methane water. It would not prohibit CBM water discharges, stop the use of CBM water by people and landowners who want it or affect water from traditional oil and gas production facilities.

Wagner makes a fool of himself by claiming otherwise. And by doing so, he riles up most of the state over a lie.

His outlandish threats are aimed at forcing the EQC to reject a proposal he doesn't like. Wagner is a mid-level bureaucrat - not a lawyer, not a policy-maker, not an elected official. If he believes what he says, he doesn't understand the law or the rule.

I supervised dozens of bureaucrats at Wagner's level during my public career in Alaska, and none would have lasted 10 seconds after making such a statement. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I won't speculate why his two bosses, DEQ Director John Corra and Gov. Dave Freudenthal, keep him on the public payroll.

A public servant paid by our tax dollars should not be allowed to shout "fire" in a theater - or to threaten people's jobs in a childish attempt to get his own way.

BOB LeRESCHE, Sheridan