The Interior Department planned to announce the oil and gas leasing plan today, the day the Senate was schedules to take a critical vote on a massive energy bill endorsed by President Bush but deny him his top energy priority, opening an Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling.
None of the 8.8 million acres is in the wildlife refuge, but they do include some sensitive areas in Alaska that are important for the protection of migratory birds, whales and wildlife.
‘An Industrial Zone’
Environmentalists said the plan, based on a proposal made in January, would jeopardize Arctic tundra, lakes and ponds that provide sanctuary for wildlife and migratory birds but were set aside in the 1920s for potential energy development.
Charles Clusen, director of the Alaska lands project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the leasing plan rewards friends of the Bush administration in the oil and gas industry.
“Instead of being a wilderness area,” he said Thursday, “it will be an industrial zone subdivided by roads, pipelines, associated facilities, drill pads (and) maintenance facilities.”
The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency’s administrator, Christie Whitman, was aimed at providing the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.
Agency officials said it is tentatively scheduled to be released early next week, before Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.
The draft of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, was given to the New York Times on Wednesday by a former EPA official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memo in which some agency officials protested the changes. Two agency officials confirmed the nature of the documents.
The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that recent warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tailpipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.
Among the deletions were references to the conclusions of a 2001 report of the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year.
White House officials also deleted a reference to a widely cited 1999 study showing that global temperatures had spiked sharply in the past decade compared with levels over the past 1,000 years; in its place administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute that questioned that conclusion.
In the end, EPA staff members, after discussions with administration officials, said they decided to delete the entire discussion, including material inserted by the White House, to avoid criticism that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy. But private environmental groups sharply criticized the changes. “Political staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to endorse junk science,” said Jeremy Symons, a climate policy expert at the National Wildlife Federation. “This is like the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture.
An April 29 “issue paper” circulated among EPA staff members said that after the changes made by White House officials, the section on climate “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change.”
An “option paper” circulated at the same time said the “easiest” course would be to accept the White House revisions, but that to do so would taint the agency, because EPA will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science.
The changes were mainly made by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, although the Office of Management and Budget was also involved, several EPA officials said.
As part of the Environmental Protection Agency program Science to Achieve Results, the fellowship provides $10 million annually to students pursuing graduate degrees in environmental science, policy and engineering.
Since 1995, STAR has provided money to about 800 students, awarding $60 million for graduate-level environmental research. The program now supports 311 fellows, with each receiving $30,000 to $34,000 for one to three years, said Chris Saint, assistant director at the agency's National Center for Environmental Research, which administers the program.
"This is the only Federal program that is specifically designed to support the top students going into environmental science" and related fields, said David Blockstein, a senior scientists with the National Council for Science and the Environment.
"There are no specific programs being transferred from the EPA to the NSF," said Bill Noxon, a spokesman for the science agency.
House Committee on Science, which provides congressional oversight for parts of each agency, said the fellowship had been lost in the budget shuffle.
"It doesn't show up in their budget, and know one knows anything about it," the staff member said. "It's not really explicit why this program is being cut."
Plans to end the fellowship were made after more than 1,350 applications had been submitted for the 2003 program, Saint said. In February applicants were notified that the program had been cancelled.
A number of interests groups and lawmakers have called for reinstatement of the fellowship, including the Ecological Society of America and the American Chemical Society, as well as Rep. Lynn Rivers, D-Mich., and Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., who is chairman of the House Science Committee.
Supporters of the fellowship say the Bush administration has sent mixed messages.
Last year, Christie Whitman, administrator of the EPA, defended the fellowship in House appropriation hearings, saying it "continues to successfully engage the best environmental scientists and engineers from academia through a variety of competitive, peer-reviewed grants."
President Bush has consistently emphasized the importance of scientific research in environmental decision-making.
Dr. Daniel Rubenstein, chairman of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Princeton, argued, "If the goal is to formulate policy that is based on science so that it is made effective, then this program is a way to ensure that the next generation of scientists are in the pipeline."
Until recently, the EPA was on track to issue new rules this month requiring the nation’s 1,100 coal- and oil-fired power plants to install equipment to achieve the maximum possible reductions in mercury and nickel emissions, which can cause severe neurological and developmental damage in people. The plan has drawn fierce resistance from industry groups and their congressional allies who say the new regulations would be excessively costly and should be softened or delayed beyond the 2007 target date.
The White House and EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt are considering rescinding a December 2000 EPA ruling that concluded that mercury emissions are a public health menace that requires power plants to meet a “maximum achievable control technology” standard to sharply reduce toxic pollutants.
On Tuesday night, Leavitt confirmed that the EPA is considering reversing the Clinton administration’s finding in favor of a more flexible enforcement system.
The approach, environmentalists say, would save the utility industry hundreds of millions of dollars while ensuring a relatively high level of mercury pollution for years to come. Most utility companies, they say, could achieve the reduction target as a “co-benefit” or by product of reducing carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, with out having to add special equipment to cut mercury emissions.
Coal-fired power plants are the nation’s largest source of unregulated airborne mercury pollution, sending an estimated 48 tons into the atmosphere annually. The mercury can enter the food chain and threaten public health, especially for children and pregnant women who eat tainted fish. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found that 8 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury in their blood exceeding levels deemed safe by the EPA.
A reporter was provided documents from opponents of the rollback that described that the draft EPA proposal would limit mercury emissions nationwide to 34 tons a year by 2010. That was about 30 percent below current levels, but far less than the 26-ton limit originally proposed by the Bush administration as part of its “clear skies” initiative. Administrative officials say the alternative “cap and trade” approach reductions by 2018.
Environmental leaders Tuesday called the administration’s efforts a huge favor to the utility industry that would ensure continued high levels of mercury in the atmosphere. Courts will overturn the decision, they predicted, but the industry meanwhile could postpone significantly reducing mercury emissions for years.
“It looks as if the administration is going totally in the tank with the utility industry, in a flat-out violation of the law,” said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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The pharmaceutical industry that has handicapped countless children with mercury-based vaccines is able to buy a study that says a known neuro-toxin is good for the brains of infants and small children and improves their behavior!
First, "behavior" is not quantifiable and is completely subjective. There's no science here. Just corruption of science on an inconceivable scale.
Second, mercury is a poison, a neuro-toxin that destroys the functioning of the central nervous system. There is no conceivable justification for it to be mainlined into the bloodstream of anyone for any reason ever.
You may want to watch this twice so you can be sure you really heard what you thought you heard.
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threatens to scale back the federal law that protects our nation’s waters, we are reminded of a Scottish proverb: “We’ll never know the worth of water ‘til the well runs dry.” In this case, we may not know the value of our “Sportsman Paradise” until it is almost gone – thanks to proposed rollbacks of the 30-year-old Clean Water Act. In January, the EPA rewrote parts of the Clean Water Act on orders from the Bush Administration. That action came in response from a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that questioned whether the act was designed to protect “isolated” or “non-navigable” waterways. The High Court’s ruling didn’t specify what qualifies a wetland for federal protection, though, and the Bush Administration jumped at the chance to provide its own interpretation.
The EPA’s new rules would cease to protect “non-navigable” waters and wetlands – those not connected to another waterway on the surface. By the EPA’s own estimation, this change would remove about 20 percent of the nations wetlands from federal protection. Critics call that figure conservative.
According to the National Association of State Wetlands Managers, Louisiana would be among the states most dramatically affected by the proposals. So-called “isolated” wetlands serve as a valuable line of defense for Louisiana in both flooding and erosion control. They provide habitat for wildlife and filter pollution before it enters larger bodies of water. For these reasons, national organizations from Ducks Unlimited to the Sierra Club have opposed the changes.
In a letter to the EPA, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary James Jenkins Jr. expressed dismay that the act would no longer protect the small, isolated water bodies favored by migrating ducks and geese. “Louisiana is the most important water fowl wintering area in the U.S.,” he wrote. Jenkins joined officials from dozens of states – many with Republican governors – in opposing the EPA’s changes. He noted that waterways that may not be connected with surface water are usually “hydro logically connected,” or linked via groundwater. An excess of pollution in these wetlands would naturally seep into irrigation ponds, reservoirs, drinking water, wells, swamps, bayous, lakes, rivers – and ultimately the ocean. Plus, as we’ve seen during spring floods and other high water events, weather variations can rapidly transform “isolated” marshes and ponds into a broad network of water bodies connected through flooded surface waters.
Jenkins expressed particular concern about the “prairie potholes” slated to be stricken from the Clean Water Act. These small ponds and marshes caused by spring downpours and flooding sustain the nation’s migratory birds, providing nesting areas and food sources. “America’s waterfowl resources are dependent on protection of small, spatially isolated wetlands such as those found in the prairie pothole region,” Jenkins argued in his letter.
These proposed new EPA regulations appear to be based not on science, but on the interests of developers eager to drain wetlands. As Jenkins noted, many of the “isolated” wetlands that would lose federal protection “are privately owned and would be quickly converted to other uses.
Ironically, this “business-friendly” policy would have a potentially devastating effect on two of Louisiana’s largest industries: tourism and fisheries. According to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, 104,000 people hunted ducks and geese during the 2000-01 season, and they spent more than 150 million on hunting-related goods and services during that time. Wetlands loss would also hurt Louisiana’s fishing industry, the largest in the lower 48 states.
Last week, Louisiana officials presented a U.S. Geological Surveys (USGS) study to President Bush’s environmental advisor. Jim Connaughton, illustrating that Louisiana’s coastline is disappearing more rapidly than anyone had previously estimated. About 1,900 square miles had eroded between 1932 and 2000, USGS says. The state has spent over 4 million in the past decade to combat coastal erosion. To remove wetlands protection at this stage would counter every effort that has been made to slow the disappearance of Louisiana’s coast.
Both chambers of Congress have launched attempts to impede the EPA proposals. Sen. Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis., sponsored SB 473 (the “Clean Water Authority Restoration Act”), which would replace the term “navigable waters” in the Clean Water Act with “waters of the United States.” The bill awaits action by the Committee on Environmental and Public Works. An identical bill, HR 962, was introduced in the House.
We urge Louisiana’s congressional delegation, particularly Sens. Mary Landrieu and John Breaux, to back this important legislation, and we encourage everyone concerned about wetlands protection to contact his or her representatives in Congress to advocate the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act. The value of public uproar has already been proven at the EPA. In 2001, then-EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman attempted to increase the allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water. Public outcry prevailed. Whitman resigned last and, it is unknown to what extent her replacement (who had not been named at press time) will fight to support the proposed changes. We only hope enough people truly realize the worth of our water – before the well runs dry.
The Bush administration began its term in office by appointing industry officials and legal allies to the U.S. government’s top environmental protection offices. Since then it has pursued a strategy of opening public property to development. Current Interior Secretary Gale Norton once worked for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a think tank promoting commercial development of public lands.
Agriculture Deputy Undersecretary Mark Rey – who overseas the U.S. Forest Service’s 100 million – plus acres of public forest – worked for timber industry trade groups for 18 years, from 1976-1994. Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles most recently was the president of his own lobbying firm where clients included “utility, coal, and oil interests…Sun Co, Pennsylvania Power and Light, Occidental Petroleum, National Mining Sun Co, National Mining Association, Edison Electric, and the Aluminum Association,” reports research group CLEAR. Both President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have worked for resource companies and, once in office, this Administration set its tone by disavowing the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming and by announcing an intention to drill for oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and across public lands.
The Bush administration’s energy plan, which to date remains stalled in Congress, calls for altering laws to boost oil and gas development, mining, and spur the creation of more nuclear power plants. Yet how this plan was drafted under Vice-President Dick Cheney’s leadership remains obfuscated because the White House has fought to hide internal records and memos from public view. In spring 2002, the Bush administration was court-ordered to release some internal records. The National Resource Defense Council reviewed these documents and reported that the energy plan was developed with direct input from the National Coal Council, Chevron, General Motors, and the National Mining Council, among other companies and industry groups. Congressperson Henry Waxman (D-CA) has charged that Cheney’s proposed energy plan includes 17 provisions matching requests by the now-bankrupt Texas company, Enron; Enron was President Bush’s largest political donor up to January 2002, reports the Associated Press.
During the last three years, the Bush Administration fought to reduce a scheduled tightening of arsenic standards in drinking water, but was unable to halt it. In October 2001, the Interior Department relaxed mining rules on public lands to weaken water safety standards in mining operations and to make it harder for government officials to deny a proposed mine even if the mine would cause “substantial irreparable harm”. In January 2002, Bush loosened guidelines for how private-sector developers preserve wetlands when developing commercial and residential projects. In March 2003, Bush moved to double logging levels on 10 million acres of public forest in the Sierra Nevada region of California in disregard of a stricter 2001 management plan that took a decade of consultation and study to forge. The list of deregulation goes on.
In Mercury raining down on LA., May 30, state health officer Jimmy Guidry said, We don’t want to discourage the consumption of fish. However, I find having “twice the level of mercury allowed” in our rainwater more than discouraging. I find it downright frightening.
Eating seafood may become a dangerous guessing game if we do not curtail the mercury contamination in fish. It’s a game that I would not be willing to play. However, Bush’s so-called “Clear Skies” Act is betting the rest of Louisiana will.
The president’s plan will allow plants to emit 520 percent more mercury until 2018 and 300 percent more after 2018 than the current Clean Air Act.
As the Wildlife Federation report pointed out, coal burning power plants, many located in other states are to blame. Louisiana needs to take a strong stance of opposition to Clear Skies.
It is not suprising that our coastlines are disappearing. Louisiana, along with the rest of America, is suffering the high cost of years of dirty energy policies. In an effort to clean up the legacy that marsh and marine oil and gas exploration has left behind, American taxpayers will need to spend an estimated $14 billion dollars over the next 50 years.
The current energy policy proposed by the Bush administration may once again leave Americans holding the tax burden to clean up the foorprint of commercial resource exploration elsewhere. The current proposal will continue exploration in our marshlands into other environmentally sensitive areas such as our national monuments and forests.
It is time to start changing our national energy policy. America needs to adopt an energy policy dependent on clean power, from sources such as solar, wind and clean biomass, and to continue researching small-scale fusion.
It is time for our policymakers to start working for our best interests, rather than for the best interests of the corporations that exploit our lands.
WASHINGTON – U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Mike Leavitt, the three-term Republican governor of Utah, as the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, tapping a Westerner and veteran of that region’s volatile land-use debates.
The nomination drew mixed reviews and appeared to signal that the President is distancing himself from efforts to placate environmental activists, reaching out instead to corporate interests and his conservative base.
If confirmed by the Senate Mr. Leavitt would succeed Christie Whitman, whose credentials as a political moderate failed to satisfy environmentalists and raised suspicions among White House officials. She resigned in May.
His Senate confirmation hearings, to be schedules in September, probably will set the stage for a politically charged battle over the Bush environmental record.
One person familiar with the administration’s thinking said the selection of a Westerner in tune philosophically with Mr. Bush and U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney suggests the White House had “given up on the Eastern-industrial-urban-environmental base.”
Most recently, Mr. Leavitt was involved in an agreement with the Interior Department over the protection of wilderness in Utah. Larry Young, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the arrangement essentially lost the designation of “wilderness” for millions of acres of public land, opening them to mining, drilling and road-building.
In addition, Mr. Leavitt advocated building a major highway through wetlands and sensitive shore areas around the Great Salt Lake. He also opposed the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Phillip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said, “I can’t think to too many governors more hostile to government regulations than Mike Leavitt.”
The Environmental Protection Agency had offered options three months ago for reducing the 48 tons of mercury emitted annually from 1,100 coal-burning power plants, the largest source of the pollution. One favored reliance on a short-term technology, the other long-term market forces through which companies could buy rights to pollute from companies that do more than is required.
But studies co-sponsored by the Department of Energy and the utility industry concluded that there is no existing technology to remove mercury equally well from various types and grades of coal. EPA officials say that makes the first option to reduce the pollution to 34 tons by 2008 less feasible.
That leaves the second strategy, endorsed by the utility industry, that would establish a nationwide cap of 15 tons on mercury pollution by 2018 by phasing in lower ceilings on each plant’s pollution below a yet-to-be-determined ceiling could then sell credits to plants that don’t.
The request for recommendations was made in March of 2001 after Mr. Cheney's national task force had already consulted with dozens of energy executives to help formulate a national energy policy. Leaders of environmental groups have long complained that the White House did not extend to them the same courtesy given to energy corporations that had made large donations to the Republican Party to help elect President Bush and Mr. Cheney in 2000.
The groups have said that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 109 representatives of the energy industry and trade associations but no environmental groups from late January to May 17, 2001, when the report was released.
In a March 21, 2001, e-mail message that appears to substantiate those complaints, a senior department official instructs a colleague to telephone 11 environmental groups to compile "energy policy options they are advocating."
"Can you review the proposals and recommend some we might like to supports that are consistent with administration energy statements to date?" the official Margot Andersen, wrote to another staff member, Peter Karpoff.
The email message was sent at 12:49 pm on Wednesday, March 21, 2001. "Need by Friday noon," Ms. Andersen wrote to Mr. Karpoff.
The 11 groups listed are: the Alliance to Save Energy, Environmental Defense, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the Sierra Club, the World Resources Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Wind Energy Association, the Tellus Institute and Resources for the Future.
Jill Schroeder, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said the environmental groups had other opportunities to submit opinions.
"We did reach out to environmental groups," Ms. Schroeder said. "We incorporated a lot of their recommendations into the energy policy. To say that this was the only contact with environmentalists is short-sighted."
The above is the tenth in a series of earth day ads highlighting the Bush Administrations role in the environment.
SaveOurEnvironment.Org