Energy Secretary nominee tried to abolish energy department

Washington, DC, Jan. 8, (ENS)— Defeated Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham has been nominated for a cabinet position as Secretary of Energy in the incoming Republican administration of George W. Bush. This nomination puts Abraham in the position of potentially heading a government department that he attempted to abolish when he was a senator.

In 1999, then Senator Abraham cosponsored S.896, the Department of Energy Abolishment Act. The bill sought “the complete abolishment of the Department of Energy” and its reestablishment as the Energy Programs Resolution Agency, an independent agency in the executive branch of the government.

Sponsored by defeated Minnesota Senator Rod Grams, along with Abraham, the bill was introduced in the Senate on April 28, 1999, read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. No further action was taken on the bill.

Still, Abraham’s support of this bill may serve as an indicator that the intention of the Bush administration is to get rid of the Department of Energy and parcel out its present functions to other government agencies.

But today, as Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Energy, Abraham no longer supports abolition of the department.

His spokesperson Angela Flood told ENS, “At the time when Senator Abraham cosponsored this legislation it was part of a streamlining effort. It is safe to say that in light of the current energy challenges facing the country he now sees the value of a cabinet level position for the Department of Energy.”

President-elect Bush is “confident that Senator Abraham would carry out the Bush administration’s energy agenda,” Flood said. He will implement the policies of the Bush administration “whatever they may be,” she said.

Evidently, Abraham’s sponsorship of the bill to abolish the Department of Energy did not stand in the way of his consideration for Energy Secretary. There was a question about the core mission of the department, but Bush is “not going to look at every bill any nominee has sponsored,” said Flood.

But others are looking at Abraham’s environmental record. On June 21, 2000, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) named Abraham to its Dirty Dozen list of candidates it targeted for defeat in the November election. In its highest priority race, the LCV spent $705,000 in the successful campaign to defeat Abraham. He lost the Senate race to Democrat Debbie Stabenow.

The League of Conservation voters opposed Abraham because of his lifetime voting score of six out of 100 percent pro-environment votes during his six years in the Senate.

In 1995, he voted to cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $1.5 billion. In 1998, he voted against an amendment to the fiscal year 1999 budget that would have restored funding for clean water programs although Michigan beaches were, and still are, experiencing high levels of bacterial contamination.

The LCV blames Abraham for voting to weaken a community’s right to know about toxics by supporting an amendment to eliminate up to 90 percent of the toxics that must now be reported under current law.

In 1999, Senator Abraham voted no on keeping CAFE fuel efficiency standards. He voted yes on removing funding for renewable and solar energy, and yes on approving an interim nuclear waste repository until a permanent repository can be sited and built.

Also in 1999, he voted yes on more funding for Forest Service road maintenance and wildlife and fisheries habitat management programs.

In 1998, Michigan Governor John Engler named Abraham the head of the campaign to pass his Clean Michigan environmental bond issue. This passed easily, and was widely seen as an attempt to boost Abraham’s poll ratings.

Abraham is an attorney with a Harvard Law School degree. Before his election to the Senate, he worked as chairman of the Michigan state Republican party. In 1990 Abraham became the deputy chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle in the administration of President George Bush, the father of the current President-elect. He also worked with the National Republican Congressional Committee.

US agency seeks approval to recycle radioactive metals

By Brian Hansen

Washington, DC, Jan. 3, (ENS)-- The manufacture of consumer products out of radioactively contaminated materials discarded from commercial nuclear power plants and government bomb factories could become a fact of American life. In an extraordinary move, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission today asked the National Academy of Sciences to sanction the controversial practice.

Dr. Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), made the request during the public portion of a special National Academy of Sciences committee meeting in Washington.

Meserve asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel to examine the practice of releasing radioactively contaminated solid waste materials into everyday commerce. He said this type of recycling is necessary to insure the continued viability of the commercial nuclear power plant industry and the Cold War decommissioning activities of the US Department of Energy.

“There has basically been no guidance as to how those problems should be addressed,” Meserve said to the panel of NAS scientists. “It is our hope that we will get your findings and recommendations as to how we should proceed in a timely manner.”

Meserve’s request of the NAS panel is the latest development in a long standing government and industry led effort to establish a consistent system governing the release of solid materials from NRC licensed facilities.

The nuclear power industry and the Department of Energy (DOE) are currently saddled with tens of thousands of tons of solid materials contaminated with low levels of radioactivity, which they once disposed of in specially designed nuclear waste disposal facilities.

That practice changed beginning in the 1970s, when the NRC, its licensees, and the DOE began searching for a more cost effective method of disposing of the enormous volume of steel girders, pallets, machinery and other solid materials tainted with tiny amounts of radioactivity.

The NRC and the DOE now allow their licensees and contractors to recycle some solid materials, but there is currently no national health based standard or generally applicable criteria governing the release of solid materials from commercial nuclear power plants or government nuclear weapons facilities.

Meserve said that the current “ad-hoc” recycling system is not sufficient for the NRC and its licensees, which he noted must spend large amounts of money to dispose of their low level solid wastes.

Meserve said that the DOE has encountered the same costly solid waste disposal problem “in spades” as it proceeds with decommissioning a number of Cold War nuclear weapons facilities.

Meserve acknowledged the controversial nature of the solid waste recycling initiative, which environmental and public health groups have vehemently criticized.

“This is a difficult issue where the emotional currents run strong,” he said.

Still, Meserve implored the NAS panel to resist putting a “spin” on its findings to address - or to avoid - the controversial nature of the NRC’s solid waste recycling initiative.

Andrew Wallo, director of the DOE radiation division’s office of environment, safety and health, was on hand Wednesday to report the agency’s perspective on the contaminated solid materials disposal problem.

Wallo noted that there are hundreds of tons of metals and other slightly contaminated materials at DOE nuclear weapons facilities that must be removed if the sites are to be cleaned up and closed down.

“It’s a valuable commodity excepting the radioactivity in it,” Wallo said of the materials.

Wallo told the panel that most of the scrap metal that has been released from DOE facilities is either not contaminated at all, or has surface contamination well below the agency’s current standard. However, the pubic and the steel industry has not been accepting of those very low exposure risks, Wallo acknowledged.

Wallo recalled the furor that erupted when the DOE allowed contractor British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to release 110,000 tons of radioactive metals - including 6,000 tons of volumetrically contaminated nickel - from the DOE’s K-25 nuclear weapons plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Public health and environmental groups vehemently objected to the contract, saying that there was no law to prevent the metals from being used to make silverware, orthodontic braces, hip joint replacements, and even intrauterine devices.

The steel industry also opposed the release of the contaminated scrap metal, saying that it would erode public confidence in the industry and cost steel companies tens of million of dollars should radioactive materials somehow find their way into production furnaces.

The public outcry forced Energy Secretary Richardson to block the sale of the radioactive nickel. Richardson later issued a moratorium restricting the release of such materials until a national policy could be devised.

Lisa Gue, a policy analyst with the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, was also on hand on Wednesday to keep tabs on the two federal agencies and their industry contractors.

“We have an ongoing concern with federal agencies that appease industry by setting rules that facilitate the release of radionuclides into the environment,” Gue said. “If the nuclear industry cannot afford to protect the public and the environment from its waste products, then it’s not a viable industry.”

Gue and other observers said they are concerned with the large block of time that was devoted to closed sessions during the three day meeting. According to the official agenda, a total of 12 and a half hours of meeting sessions are to be closed to the public, though officials pledged to post a summary of the private sessions on the Internet.

Superfund investigations suspended as furor rages at EPA

By Brian Hansen

Washington, DC, Jan. 8 (ENS)— A federal ombudsman responsible for investigating complaints leveled against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suspended his inquiries into nearly two dozen allegedly mismanaged hazardous waste cleanup projects, claiming that top EPA officials have blocked him from doing his job.

Robert Martin, the EPA’s national hazardous waste ombudsman, announced the suspension of the investigations on Friday in a letter sent to key government officials and other stakeholders involved in the allegedly mishandled cleanup cases.

“In view of reported recent personnel transfers and pending implementation of EPA Ombudsman Guidelines ... all schedules for all National Ombudsman Cases have been put on hold and/or delayed until further notice,” Martin wrote. “I will communicate with you as soon as I have received clear and consistent direction from EPA management, which will allow me to develop definitive schedules for performing work on all the pending National Ombudsman Cases.”

Martin and his staff had been investigating the cleanup projects at the request of a number of federal lawmakers, who were concerned that the EPA’s activities in the cases were not protective of public health and the environment.

The investigations that were put on “hold” Friday pertained to some of the most controversial hazardous sites in the nation, such as the Honeywell/Solitron Superfund site in Florida, the Bunker Hill Superfund site in Idaho, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Superfund site in Colorado.

A total of 20 EPA hazardous waste ombudsman investigations had been officially suspended as of Friday afternoon.

Other investigations on the newly announced suspension list include the Alberton train derailment case in Montana, the Marjol Battery case in Pennsylvania, the sewage sludge contamination case in Georgia, the Stauffer/Atkemix case in Florida, and the Von Roll Waste Technologies Industries hazardous waste incinerator case in Ohio.

Allegations of “political revenge”

Martin sent courtesy copies of his letter announcing the suspension of the investigations to top EPA officials, including administrator Carol Browner and assistant administrator Tim Fields.

Fields, who oversees the EPA’s solid waste division, played a key role in the “personnel transfers” that Martin described in his letter. In a controversial move that has drawn fire from environmental activists and a host of federal lawmakers, Fields last month relieved Martin’s chief investigator, Hugh Kaufman, of his duties in the EPA ombudsman’s office.

Kaufman, a 30 year EPA veteran, claims that he was ousted from the ombudsman’s office because he exposed EPA wrongdoing at a number of agency- managed hazardous waste cleanup sites.

An aggressive investigator, Kaufman has accused EPA officials of misleading the public, hiding documents, conspiring with polluters, and approving cleanup schemes that are not protective of public health and the environment.

Moreover, Kaufman maintains that his ouster was “political revenge” for his office’s damning revelations about failed Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, whose environmental record was called into question by an ombudsman’s report released just five days before the 2000 presidential election.

Kaufman, in fact, was stripped of his investigatory powers by Fields just one day after Gore formally conceded the contested presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, the two term governor of Texas. Fields, like EPA chief Browner, is a political appointee of the outgoing Clinton administration.

“It’s revenge of the EPA bureaucracy and revenge of the politicos who wanted Gore elected,” Kaufman told ENS of his recent removal. “After Gore conceded, there was a confluence of revenge from the politicos and the entrenched bureaucracy to cripple the ombudsman’s office.”

New ombudsman’s guidelines called into question

The EPA’s first step in “killing” the [ombudsman’s] office, Kaufman said, was to get rid of him as the office’s only full time investigator. The EPA took another major step towards that alleged goal last week, Kaufman said, by publishing in the Federal Register a set of proposed guidelines that outline how the office is to operate.

“Basically, the guidelines totally violate every minimum requirement for ombudsmen as stated by the American Bar Association, the US Ombudsman Association, and the Administrative Conference of the United States,” Kaufman said. “The guidelines give the ombudsman absolutely no independence, and that will kill the program.”

Kaufman said that the proposed guidelines would require the EPA ombudsman to get approval from the agency’s politically appointed managers before doing anything of substance. The guidelines would prevent the ombudsman’s office from selecting its own cases, while allowing the people and institutions to be investigated to decide “whether they want to be investigated or not,” he said.

Kaufman has had to launch a campaign of his own to dispel the notion that he supports the new guidelines. That misconception was put in motion by Fields, who in an internal EPA memo last week thanked Kaufman and a host of other agency employees for their “help in writing [the guidelines].”

Kaufman, in his own memo, pointed out that he did not help to draft the new guidelines. “In fact, as you know, I opposed [the guidelines] because [they] strip away what limited ombudsman function EPA presently has,” Kaufman wrote. “The proposed [guidelines] falsely imply to the public and to Congress that there is a real ombudsman function at EPA, [and] this is simply not true.”

Canada to fight Bush over Arctic oil drilling

By Kate Jaimet

Ottawa, Canada, Jan. 8— Canada will fight the plan by US president-elect George W. Bush to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Environment Minister David Anderson vowed yesterday.

“I’m utterly opposed,” Mr. Anderson said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen.

Mr. Bush has said he plans to allow oil exploration in the refuge, a vast Arctic plain that straddles the border between Alaska and the Yukon.

The refuge provides a safe calving ground for the 200,000 caribou of the Porcupine caribou herd — one of the largest free-roaming herds left in the world. Environmentalists fear oil extraction will destroy the calving grounds with a network of pipelines, airstrips, access roads and heavy machinery, leading to mass deaths of pregnant cows and newborn calves.

Mr. Anderson said the caribou herd is a Canadian concern, because the animals migrate over the border into the Yukon, and Canadian native people depend on the caribou hunt for food.

“We can only keep on pointing out the fact that this is an international herd of animals. We have a long tradition of concern where animals cross the border,” he said.

The plan to drill for oil in the refuge first came up in the late 1980s, under the presidency of Mr. Bush’s father, George Bush Sr. It was shelved after the Exxon Valdez disaster spilled 40 million liters of crude oil in Prince William Sound and raised fears about the risks of oil exploration in the High Arctic.

One way for Canada to put pressure on the US would be to refuse a pipeline across Canadian soil if the Americans allowed drilling in the refuge.

The US has already expressed interest in a pipeline across Canada to transport the natural gas found in Alaska’s Prudhoe bay. But Mr. Anderson said he would not go that far in pressuring the US.

Instead, he said, he would encourage them to look for other places to drill in the Arctic.

“This is not: You do what we want or we won’t do what you want. But I think there are some alternatives with respect to energy,” Mr. Anderson said.

The change in administration in the United States will also lead to delays in other environmental issues, such as coming to an international agreement on global warming, he predicted.

After global warming talks in The Hague fell apart in November, officials from Canada and the United States spent the Christmas season feverishly negotiating with their European counterparts to try to reach a deal before the end of the Clinton administration.

Those talks were unsuccessful, and the negotiations will be further delayed now, as Mr. Bush’s officials get up to speed on the issues and hammer out their position.

Mr. Bush in the past has been critical of the 1997 Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, saying it comes down too hard on American interests, especially oil interests.

“We’re certainly concerned. And I have to admit disappointment we didn’t get an agreement with the Europeans,” Mr. Anderson said. “Now we’re faced with uncertainty. Certain delay, but uncertainty as to what that delay will lead to.”

“He himself is an oil man,” Mr. Anderson added, referring to the president-elect. “(Vice-president Dick) Cheney is an oil man. He’s just appointed a secretary of the Interior from the oil industry. It’s going to be a very, very interesting period while we discover what the views of the administration are. That said, I think it’s wrong to make assumptions too quickly.”

Mr. Anderson said Canada will push a green agenda in its dealings with the United States. But that stance could cause some friction with a president not known for his environmentally progressive attitudes.

Mr. Bush has said that he favors easing some environmental regulations that stifle business. Mr. Anderson said he’s willing to work with the new American administration and remains open to new ideas.

“If the US and the Bush administration do focus on the issue of market incentives to achieve environmental goals, it may be that we enter a whole new area of environmental management through economic instruments rather than regulatory instruments,” he said. “If you can harness the market to achieve environmental objectives, you can go a long way.”

Source: The Ottawa Citizen