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EPA should have caught VW coverup

Environmental Protection Agency officials and members of Congress should be asking themselves this question: How did Volkswagen executives think they could get away with cheating on emissions testing?

Thanks to an investigation carried out by West Virginia University scientists, it is known that about 480,000 VW and Audi vehicles sold in this country were equipped with computer software that detected when emissions testing was in progress – and altered how engines ran in order to provide false readings. As many as 11 million vehicles worldwide have the devices.

VW’s cheating was detected with relative ease once an international organization asked WVU to investigate.

That raises the question of why the cheating, which began in 2009, was not uncovered sooner by the EPA – allegedly the nation’s environmental watchdog. Were EPA officials asleep at the switch?

Or were they preoccupied with planning and establishing new air and water quality rules?

Count on the EPA finding some way to gloss over its failure. But Congress should not allow the question to go away. It amounts to this: Are EPA officials so determined to expand their power, at the expense of tens of millions of consumers, they they are not taking care of business under existing regulations?

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