Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=589884

 

Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws

By Geoffrey Lean in Washington

 

05 December 2004

 

George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling

Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US

environmental protection.

 

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that

they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most

important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas

drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures -

which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally

established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford

- even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasising his

environmental plans during his campaign.

 

" The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda, " said

Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that

over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement

over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with

people lenient to polluters.

 

The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open

up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the

Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar

bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.

 

But with the election of four Republican senators in favour of the

drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the

administration now has the votes forvictory.

 

It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last

Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation

for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power

stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

 

Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas

Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is

to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a

comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most

successful environmental laws.

 

Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut

air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30

years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House

Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the

Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has

been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining

endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders

have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy

Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major

developments before they proceed.

 

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last

week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented

itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one

intended to go much further. He added: " We will now see an assault on

the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third

World country in terms of environmental protection. "

 

The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on

environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green

majority.

 

They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by

the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s -

which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green

legislation.

 

 

5 December 2004 17:52