The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a lot of problems.

For instance, the federal government department has had to tell its employees to stop defecating in its office hallways. The agency’s top expert on climate change is currently serving time in federal prison for collecting a paycheck for years without actually doing any work. And, of course, its workers disregarded all warnings and polluted a river with toxic contaminants this past summer, as the agency’s director, Gina McCarthy, is increasingly faced with calls for her impeachment for gross negligence and other misconduct.

As you might imagine, these things could make the EPA a dreary place to work, if not for one thing: new, high-end office furniture! Kellan Howell of the Washington Times reports on a previously unknown perk of being a bureaucrat at a troubled government agency:

The federal agency that has the job of protecting the environment doesn’t seem to have too much concern for trees, at least the ones cut down to make furniture.

The Environmental Protection Agency over the past decade has spent a whopping $92.4 million to purchase, rent, install and store office furniture ranging from fancy hickory chairs and a hexagonal wooden table, worth thousands of dollars each, to a simple drawer to store pencils that cost $813.57.

The furniture shopping sprees equaled about $6,000 for every one of the agency’s 15,492 employees, according to federal spending data made public by the government watchdog OpenTheBooks.com.

When the bureaucrats who work at the EPA show up at work, they can and apparently do have their own personal environment brightened by sitting in their Herman Miller Aeron chairs beside their Knoll Executive desks. If not, they can always relax in the available Hayworth Galerie Lounge chairs and matching settees.

At least now we know whose environment the bureaucrats of the EPA are most out to enhance and protect. Americans such as the Navajo, who depend on water from the EPA-contaminated Animus River,are finding that EPA officials who might be looking out for them can be hard to find.