Critics attack plan to put military above law
Congressional Democrats held a press briefing May 1 on Capitol Hill to rally opposition against the Bush administration’s proposal to exempt the US military from five major enviromnental laws. The administration says the laws are compromising the military’s training and readiness, but a growing coalition of Democrats, environmentalists, state officials, and public health groups believe the proposal is unnecessary and ill conceived.

The Bush administration has “failed miserably to provide any basis for these exemptions,” Rep. Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat, told reporters at the briefing.

The Bush administration is seeking exemptions from federal laws governing hazardous waste, clean air, marine mammal protection, and endangered species.

These laws are: the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which regulates hazardous waste; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, often referred to as the Superfund statute; the Clean Air Act; the Endangered Species Act; and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The proposal, which was defeated last year by the Senate, is again drawing sharp criticism from state officials throughout the country, who worry such exemptions would shift undue burdens onto state governments and private industry.

Associations representing state attorney generals, state environmental agencies, and state pollution control officials, as well as the National League of Cities and municipal water organizations, have all issued statements strongly opposing the proposed exemptions. (ENS)

Reopening a frontier to development
More than a century after historians declared an end to the American Frontier, the Interior Dept. made a somewhat similar announcement last month. Just after Congress had left for spring break, the government said it would no longer consider huge swaths of public land to be wilderness. The administration declared that it would end reviews of Western landholdings for new wilderness protection. As long as the lands had been under consideration for the American wilderness system, they had temporary protection from development.

With a single order, the Bush administration removed more than 200 million acres from further wilderness study, including caribou stamping ground in Alaska, the red rock canyons and mesas of southern Utah, Case Mountain with its sequoia forests in California, and a wall of rainbow-colored rock known as Vermillion Basin in Colorado. By declaring an end to wild land surveys, the administration ruled out protection of these areas as formal wilderness ­ which, by law, are supposed to be places people can visit but not stay. Now, these areas, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, could be opened to mining, drilling, logging, or road-building.

The move follows a consistent pattern in Bush’s environmental policy: to change the way the land is managed, without changing the law. Whether the issue is allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park or logging in the Pacific Northwest, the course has been to settle lawsuits by opponents of wild land protection by opening up the areas to wide use without going to Congress to rewrite the rules. (NYT)

Lawsuit seeks to end water pollution exemption for logging operators
A coalition of conservation organizations has filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court to reverse a decision by the Central Valley Regional Water Board granting the logging industry a broad exemption under California’s Clean Water Act. The exemption applies to industrial logging operations on public and private land throughout the Sierra and affects the municipal water sources for approximately two-thirds of the state’s population.

The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), DeltaKeeper, and Sierra Club filed the lawsuit and are represented by EarthJustice. The lawsuit charges the Central Valley Regional Water Board with violations of the California Environmental Quality Act for issuing the exemption and cites water quality concerns relating to the increased rates of clearcutting and herbicide spraying throughout the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades.

Approximately 45% of all industrial logging operations in California occur within the Central Valley watershed, the water supply for the San Francisco Bay Area and an important source for Los Angeles. The water district covers the Sierra Nevada and Cascades and the Valley from Bakersfield to the Oregon border. This region already experiences the majority of logging-related water pollution in the state. Logging activities discharge soils and organic materials that can lead to increased water temperatures, erosion, and stream sedimentation. Logging operations also use herbicides, pesticides, and oil, all of which can impact aquatic ecosystems and water quality. (EarthJustice)

Senate panel approves fossil fuel heavy energy bill
The Senate Energy Committee approved an energy bill Apr. 30 that its supporters say will help diversify the nation’s energy supply, but critics contend it does nothing of the sort. The Energy Policy Act of 2003 passed the Senate Energy Committee by a partisan vote of 13 to 10.

Despite Committee Chairman Republican Pete Domenici’s assertion that the bill will “expand production of wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass energies as well as the clean production of oil, gas, and coal in appropriate locations,” the bill repeals the current federal law requiring utilities to buy wind, solar, and other renewable energy resources when they are less expensive than fossil fuels. It also contains some $10 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas industries and up to some $30 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry. Critics say it has little to offer renewable energy development.

The Committee’s ranking Democrat, Jeff Bingham, was extremely critical of the bill, saying that it does not protect electricity consumers from market manipulation, does nothing to address the nation’s growing demand for imported oil transportation, undercuts fish passages at hydroelectric dams, and does little or nothing to address climate change. (ENS)

Respiratory health group says US air quality poor
About half of the US population continues to breathe unhealthy air, and the Bush administration’s proposed changes to clean air laws would only make this situation worse, finds a new report from the American Lung Association.

The Bush administration is putting at risk laws that have helped protect public health for 40 years and is putting politics above clean air and public health, said John Kirkwood, president and chief executive officer of the American Lung Association (ALA), one of the nation’s oldest and largest public health advocacy groups. In its “State of the Air: 2003” report released May 1, the ALA reveals that current policies are barely holding the line on air pollution.

Some 137 million Americans continue to breathe unhealthy amounts of the air pollutant ozone, commonly referred to as smog. Four California metropolitan areas ­ Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Visalia-Tulare-Portersville ­ top the organization’s list of smoggiest cities for the fourth year in a row.

The ALA recommends cleaner fuel standards and stricter pollution control requirements for motor vehicles and for power plants, including those that will bring older power plants up to current emissions standards. The organization has praised the administration for its proposed standards that would reduce pollution from nonroad diesel vehicles, but has slammed its other policies.

Critics of Bush’s Clear Skies initiative say it would be a poor substitute for enforcing the existing Clean Air Act and would allow industries to spew more nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and arsenic than would be permitted if the current law was enforced. (ENS)

‘Driving Ms. Whitman’ defended
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s special agents, whose job it is to investigate environmental crimes, are being used to run personal errands for EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman on her personal security detail, according to a survey of agents and interviews conducted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Scores of agents report having to walk her dogs, fetch dry cleaning and perform other personal duties for Whitman.

EPA employees report that a 24 hour, seven day a week protective security detail of as many as 10 special agents, plus permanently attached supervisors, must accompany Whitman even on vacations and to private events such as fundraisers. While J.P. Suarez, the EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, defended the detail, saying that this level of protection was appropriate in light of the administrator’s responsibilities related to environmental threats and her status as a cabinet officer in the Bush administration, some agents contended that the effectiveness of the detail in preventing any potential attack is wholly lacking.

Suarez stated further, “Issues raised regarding personal services are simply not accurate. At no time have agents assigned to the protection detail been required to provide personal services for the administrator.”

Referring to the film “Driving Miss Daisy,” about a proud old Southern lady and her chauffeur, PEER executive director Jeff Ruch said, “Privately, agents deride the Whitman protective detail as ‘guarding Miss Daisy’ and complain that they are being kept from their real jobs of fighting pollution and investigating corporate environmental crimes.” (ENS)

Zambia develops biotechnology strategy
Seven months after Zambia rejected genetically modified foods and banned American transgenic food donations from entering its territory, the Zambian government has developed a National Biosafety and Biotechnology Stategy Plan.

The five year plan, from 2003 to 2007, will take care of the unwarranted proliferation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country. It also sets the pace for Zambia to develop biosafety regulations to protect the country’s unique biodiversity.

The new biosafety and biotechnology framework identifies seven core program areas. These include environment and biodiversity, which aims at conserving the genetic diversity of Zambia’s crops. Other program areas include livestock, fish, and the control of environmental pollution. The plan also aims at enacting legislation that will govern the research, development, and utilization of GMOs. (ENS)

Alarm sounds for disappearing birds in Latin America
Any overview about birds in Latin America conveys a sense of the great health of species, serving as a reminder of the region’s almost lavish biological diversity and of the aggressions against the environment, which not only threaten the habitat of one kind of bird or another, but of all living things.

Of the 9,700 known bird species in the world, 4,339 (45%) are found in the Americas. Of that total, 649 are in danger of becoming extinct before 2020, according to the environmental coalition BirdLife International, based in Britain.

In Brazil and Colombia, the world leaders for biodiversity, the threat of extinction hovers over 114 and 77 bird species, respectively.

Worldwide, 1,200 bird species ­ approximately one out of eight ­ are in danger of disappearing forever within the first two decades of this century.

The impacts of human activity on the environment are the cause behind bird species endangerment in 99 % of the cases, according the the Worldwatch Institute. Howard Youth, author of “Winged Messengers: The Decline of Birds,” says the earth is witnessing the worst wave of species extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.

In the past 500 years, since the Europeans arrived in the Americas, at least 128 bird species have disappeared form the hemisphere, with more than 100 of that total becoming extinct in just the last two centuries. (Tierramerica)

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