Kicking Tongass, Taking Names

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17538

 

 

Kicking Tongass, Taking Names

 

By Amanda Griscom, Grist Magazine

January 12, 2004

 

Nowhere is the reality of a gutted EPA more sobering than in the area of Clean

Air Act enforcement. While environmentalists enjoyed a surprising victory over

the holidays – the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. issued a

preliminary injunction to block the Bush administration's efforts to rewrite the

act's New Source Review rule – it was in all likelihood more a symbolic than a

practical victory.

 

 

 

The court action was brought by a coalition of attorneys general from 14 states

and attorneys from 30 cities and municipalities. They argued that the EPA's rule

would have let more than 22,000 utilities, refineries, and industrial facilities

make major expansions without being required to install additional pollution

controls. A three-judge panel of the court agreed that this was a violation of

the Clean Air Act and issued a temporary injunction.

 

 

 

On the one hand, the decision was " proof that law is king in this country, not

the other way around, " said Chris Miller, a staff member for the Senate

Environment and Public Works Committee. On the other, it may be that this legal

injunction is a phantom king with a tenuous rule. Here's why: The hearings will

likely drag on for at least a year, during which time the New Source Review rule

will remain in limbo, and the administration will get exactly what it is looking

for: more time. " While this remains up in the air, the Bush administration will

in all likelihood simply continue to do nothing, " said Frank O'Donnell, director

of the Clean Air Trust. " And this is precisely the payback its corporate

contributors are hoping for. "

 

 

 

Worse still, even if the appellate court does decide to officially reject the

Bush administration's proposed rule changes, there will be few top-level

enforcement officials left who have previous knowledge of the cases and can move

forward with them. After all, it was Bruce Buckheit and his deputy Richard

Biondi (both now retired due to indignation over Bush EPA) who were the most

knowledgeable about how to prosecute New Source Review cases. According to John

Stanton of the National Environmental Trust, " Once you lose your brain trust,

once you lose your institutional memory, it has a crippling effect on the

ability of the enforcement office to even proceed. "

 

 

 

Judith Enck, a policy advisor to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the

man spearheading these cases against the administration, said she was well aware

that this victory may not, practically speaking, have any positive implications

as long as the Bush administration is running the show. But, she said, the

attorneys general are thinking longer-term: " This effort will preserve the [New

Source Review] tool so it can be used in the future – assuming that down the

road another administration will come along that actually wants to enforce the

Clean Air Act. "

 

 

 

Holiday Treats for Pollutocrats

 

 

 

And that's not the only grim news from over the holidays. While the American

public stuffed stockings, lit menorahs, and guzzled champagne, EPA Administrator

Michael Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton were hard at work pushing

some major regulatory changes through their agencies' pipelines. Two in

particular are of note:

 

 

 

Late in the day on Dec. 23, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it is

exempting 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from the

so-called roadless rule enacted by the Clinton administration. The decision

would open 300,000 acres of dense, old-growth woodland in the largest U.S.

national forest to logging and road building, and expose a total of more than a

million acres to damage from development.

 

 

 

The administration and Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski ® are defending this

decision as a major economic stimulant, while environmentalists are calling it a

major tragedy in which common federal land is being used for narrow local

purposes. Of the nearly 250,000 public comments submitted to the Forest Service

on this matter, fewer than 2,000 supported the administration's plan, according

to the Heritage Forests Campaign. Critics of the proposal included the office

supply giant Staples, as well as some Forest Service employees and a

considerable number of Alaskan citizens. The decision was, of course, most

eagerly heralded by companies that have already proposed 50 logging projects in

the area. Least enthusiastic, perhaps, are the wolves, bears, eagles, salmon,

and other wildlife that inhabit the forest and are steadily vanishing from the

rest of the country.

 

 

 

Then, on New Year's Eve, the Bush administration said it would not stop

companies from using treated sewage as fertilizer on farmland and abandoned

mines, despite a petition from more than 70 groups including the Center for Food

Safety and the National Farmers Union that alleges the sludge has sickened, and

in some cases killed, people and livestock. The EPA's science and technology

office argued that the agency already forces waste management companies to

filter about 40 pollutants from sewage sludge, and that there isn't a reasonable

case that they need to do more.

 

 

 

The EPA did, however, promise to conduct further tests on 15 untreated chemicals

and metals in the sludge, including acetone, barium, and nitrite, to determine

if the pollutants should be removed down the line. In the meantime, however,

sludge-smearing can continue as usual. The groups critical of the practice claim

that at least three people have died in the past decade after contracting

staphylococcus infections from sewage sludge. It seems they may have to wait for

a few more deaths before the shit finally hits the fan and the feds take

protective action.

 

 

 

 

 

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