Bush Environmental Disaster Watch
I predicted when GW Bush came into office that he would be the Anti-Environment President. All one had to do was peruse his horrendous record of rollbacks on environmental regulations, all in the name of greed and favoritism for his family business, energy. His policies there resulted in the worst air and water quality in the nation for Texas. This page will catalogue his efforts to subject the entire country to the same abuse he perpetrated as Texas governor. Although Bush tries to revive the archaic notion that economic expansion and environmental protection are mutually exclusive, we have the past decade of success stories across all business sectors that belie this ludicrous assertion.
Read the First 100 Days Report by the League of Conservation Voters
*The Bush administration yesterday announced new "hard rock" mining regulations that eliminate significant environmental and land use requirements imposed on the industry in the final days of the Clinton administration. The Interior Department will lose its authority to deny permits on grounds that a proposed mine could result in "substantial irreparable harm"
*Drilling in the ANWR isn't just about 2000 desolate acres in the far northwest that no one wants to visit. It is about the precedent for management of 300 million acres of public land covering at least 11 Western states. For every acre used for oil rigs, how many others are ruined with roads, traffic, pollution, noise and habitat destruction, well beyond the oil field itself? Bush Inc. have bought the petroleum industry lies that they have been shackled by onerous environmental restrictions, when in fact they have continued to drill ever increasingly on public lands, even under Clinton. And made record profits in the process.
*A lot of inaccurate information seems to have been disseminated about Clinton's road less forest plan. About 1.6 million public comments were received on the original plan, 90 percent favorable to the roadless proposal. Far from being the "last minute" proposal that Bush has claimed, the Clinton administration held more than 600 public hearings on the issue. The Bush administration is conducting a review of the plan, many believe in order to reverse it or significantly alter it to cater to logging and mining interests. The plan does not call for the elimination of any existing roads or impede the use of existing roads, will allow clearance of logs for fire prevention, would not interfere with existing mining or hunting rights. The aim of the plan is to protect as yet untainted forest land, by preventing new road construction.
*Bush's nominee for chief environmental enforcer at the EPA, Donald Schregardus, ran the Ohio branch of the agency. Under his tenure, the state of Ohio was cited by the EPA for failing to implement federal air and water protection programs and threatened to take over the state's enforcement duties. He tried to thwart lawsuits aimed at industry's reduction of pollution leading to acid rain. Sounds like the perfect Bush enforcer, to the detriment of the environment and the health of all Americans. The Senate is investigating his record, and he has a confirmation battle on his hands.
*Labor unions lobbying and support for drilling in the ANWR has been cited as one reason so many House Democrats voted for the Resident's energy bill. The union representatives should have considered the source. Alaskan Senator Frank Murkowski, a strong proponent of drilling for obvious reasons, quoted a figure of over 700,000 new jobs created. Any moron could see that number is outrageously high. But where did it come from? It came from a group called Arctic Power, which is funded by Alaska for the express purpose of promoting ANWR drilling. They got the job number from a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Association, who had commissioned a research company owned by a former gas company CEO. The estimate assumed opening up of the ENTIRE 1.5 million acre ANWR coastal plain, and even then only 13,000 jobs would be created as a direct result of the operations. The other 687,000 some jobs would be due to "indirect macroeconomic effects", and were calculated with stunning precision, such as 2702 jobs in Hawaii. Can you say SNOW JOB!
*Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) amended the Interior Department appropriations bill with a provision that will allow more cruise ships in the Glacier Bay National Park, the nation's largest protected marine ecosystem, without obtaining an environmental impact statement. The Park Service allowed a 72% increase in traffic in 1996 bypassing the impact statement then as well, and this decision has been overturned in court. Now Mr. Stevens wants to bypass the attempts to get an impact statement for the increase already allowed. A cruise ship collided with and killed and endangered humpback whale last month. Environmentalists are not proposing to ban ships, only limit them to a reasonable number. The cruise lines predictably gave $75,000 to Alaska Republicans last year.
*Mining companies have long been able to strip and scrape away, reshaping public lands and have reaped huge profits since they do not have to pay royalties to the federal government. President Clinton tried to reign in their unfettered destruction of public lands by imposing stricter rules. the mining companies have tried to portray these regulations as " a siege". Siege on the public lands would be more accurate, as these companies strip huge tracts of land and dump on even larger areas and extract the ore with cyanide, which runs off into the ground water, and have basically no requirement to clean up their mess or pay for the environmental impact. Predictably, Bush Inc. agrees and will roll back all the regulations except for one requiring companies to carry a bond against environmental damage. That these massive subsidies to mining companies are considered reasonable by our corrupt Interior Department is not surprising. Gale Norton's number 2 at the agency, J. Steven Griles is a former mining lobbyist.
*A recent study in Science found that more people are dying from air pollution than car accidents, that death rates due to asthma, heart disease and other lung disorders are predictable in relation to pollution levels. The study shows that pollution has a significant impact on mortality and morbidity of urban dwellers.
*Mr. Bush wants to ease the maintenance backlog in our national parks, and he has allotted $5 billion in his budget to do so. The problem is that the money comes from the destruction of the oceanic environment: the park clean-up will be funded by off-shore drilling royalties.
*Bush Inc. strike again, proposing to relax air pollution standards to ease the "burden" on some of the nation's oldest and worst polluters. The EPA has required companies to install modern pollution controls when they build new plants or perform major upgrades. Many companies ignore these rules, or subvert them by calling major upgrades "routine maintenance". Under Clinton, the rules enforcement was making real progress, which has now halted under the Bush stewardship. A pull-out by the EPA could scuttle a number of suits under the Clean Air Act. States would not have the jurisdiction. "In the Northeast, so much of the pollution arrives on the prevailing winds from the West and South that if New York City and some other areas were to stop all local emissions, they would still violate federal clean air standards."
*The Army Corps of Engineers is asking Bush to relax restrictions established in the Clinton years for granting permits to developers wanting to drain or fill in wetlands. The new rules would allow the Corps to waive regulations and would eliminate the current requirement to protect or create an acre of wetland for every acre destroyed. Critics say the laxer standards would accelerate the loss of wetlands.
*The largest operator of oil wells in Alaska, British Petroleum, has been on felony probation for breaking US pollution laws since the mid-90’s. Now probation officers in Alaska are investigating charges by BP employees in a July 16 letter that the company's Prudhoe Bay operations are so slapdash that "a major catastrophe is imminent." And CheneyBush keep trying to tell us oil drilling is so safe and clean these days. The truth is they could care less if it’s safe or clean, as long as their oil buddies make money.
*EPA director Whitman is asking Congress to relax air pollution standards because oil and energy industries are complaining about too much paperwork. Utilities of course oppose common sense provisions that require them to spend money and eat into their huge profits. For example, they don’t want to have to install up-to-date pollution control devices when upgrading or building new plants. They’d like to give states more oversight, when poor compliance resulted in the formation of the EPA to begin with. Whitman proposes to switch completely to a program where industries trade pollution credits amongst themselves, which severely limits the government’s role in pollution monitoring.
*Shrub is not happy that he cannot get his energy plan passed, even by the Republican controlled House, which has resisted opening federal lands to drilling. Thus Shrub is trying to figure out how to get his way without Congressional approval. This would involve changing land-use plans and easing lease requirements for lands under federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management. It's hard to understand how Shrub can feel this is justified, given the opposition of the majority of the American people, including a large percentage of Republicans.
*The Bush administration has halted one of the government's largest environmental investigations, a probe of over 100 energy companies accused of violating the Clean Air Act. The administration has suspended a regulation requiring companies to bring themselves into compliance with pollution regulations as they upgrade or add new equipment. The Clinton EPA brought suit against dozens of companies that tried to evade the regulations, but none are likely to follow under Bush, to whom "review" really means" rescind".
*Calling the Bush stance "unilateral and non-cooperative", the European Parliament voted for a number of environmental measures opposed by the administration of the United States of Oil, including the Kyoto Treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and to launch "initiatives" under the World Trade Organization preventing countries that do not ratify the protocol from gaining competitive advantages, especially in the energy products sector.
*Gale Norton has appointed Cam Toohey, leader of a group that campaigned to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, as her special assistant for Alaska, and Drue Pearce, a former Alaska state senator who has lobbied for drilling in the Arctic, as her senior aide on Alaskan issues. Sara Chapell, an Alaska spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, said: ''Today we've seen a hostile takeover of the Interior Department by the oil industry.''
*The Bush Justice Department
has not and will
not defend the government rule protecting 60 million acres of national parkland
coveted by timber and oil companies. "The rule was three years in the making and involved 600 public
hearings and 1.6 million public comments, most of them favorable....The sad truth is that the administration would like nothing better than a court order
requiring it to rewrite the plan so as to accommodate the very development that Mr.
Clinton — and the public — had hoped to prevent."
*Bush has agreed to "'more study" on the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park, caving into the snowmobile manufacturers (that critical constituency). Clinton had ordered the phase-out of snowmobiles in the park based on public comments and pollution concerns.
*More good news!! The House votes to prohibit drilling in the Great Lakes!! (Tom Delay blames the Democrats even though his party controls the House, for now.)
*Some good news, from the Republican-controlled House no less. They passed several measures that directly counteract Bush's energy policy wish list, including blocking oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (maybe just to help Jeb get re-elected), barring new oil, gas and coal exploration in millions of acres of national monuments, and restricting the administration's ability to review or alter new restrictions on hardrock mining on government land.
*One of the provisions of the Bush "energy plan" is to loosen controls under a provision of the Clean Air Act requiring power plants and refineries that make major upgrades to take steps to prevent additional pollution, either by installing new controls or by making reductions elsewhere at the same plant. The main targets are hundreds of old, coal-fired power plants that were exempted from the act's strict pollution controls in the expectation that they would soon be closed. But nearly all of them are still very much in business, spewing out pollutants that contribute heavily to smog, acid rain, global warming and mercury contamination. The law requiring strict controls on old plants whenever they undergo major renovation is one of the few ways the government has to curb increases in these pollutants.
*Bush fills Cabinet posts with responsibilities to the environment with industry insiders: a mining industry lobbyist as the No. 2 person at the Interior Department; a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to be the department's chief lawyer; a lobbyist for Monsanto for No. 2 at the Environmental Protection Agency; as chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality a lawyer who represented General Electric in its fight with the E.P.A. over toxic waste sites. "They are lawyers and lobbyists who built their careers by helping industry get out of environmental regulations," said Maria Weidner, policy advocate for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. "Now, assuming they're confirmed, they will be doing the same thing, only the taxpayers will be paying for it."
*The Bush budget deleted a tax incentive for developing renewable energy, and Cheney dismissed renewables as ''years down the road.'' California Senator Dianne Feinstein notes that 30 percent of the state's electricity is ALREADY produced through renewable resources. (Whereas, a missile defense system that doesn't work and that most agree belongs more in a science fiction movie script than in a national defense policy proposal, well that initiative deserves mega-bucks!!)
*The Bush administration is considering pleas from coal and electric companies to drop a series of government lawsuits initiated by the Clinton administration to require the utilities to install modern pollution controls on old coal-fired power plants. Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which initiated the litigation, is resisting the industry's suggestion, while Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham are more sympathetic (DUH!!).
*The Bush budget includes NO money for the continued clean-up of a huge uranium-slag heap in southern Utah that leaks radioactive waste into the Colorado River. The slag heap was left behind by a plant run by Atlas Corp., which filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998. The plant, which began operating in 1956, provided uranium for nuclear weapons.
*The Bush house wants to allow dredging for gravel in protected wetlands.
*The Bush budget cuts over $500 million from the EPA budget. It also reduces the Interior Department's budget for dealing with citizen's environmental lawsuits.
*Bush wants to squash an EPA report that dioxin consumed in animal fat and dairy increases the risk of cancer in humans. The release of the study, over 10 years in preparation could be held up indefinitely, due to opposition from the meat industry and Congressional Republicans.
*Bush wants to place a moratorium on all suits brought by US citizens to enforce the protection of endangered species under a provision of the Endangered Species Act. This would leave the power to designate and enforce protection to the EPA, which under Bush we know will be doing nothing of the kind. Gale Norton would become a "one-woman god squad", deciding which species live or die.
*Resident Bush wants to relax energy efficiency standards on central air conditioners, washers and water heaters (in the middle of a purported energy crisis!). Interestingly, the companies that make the products don't WANT the standards relaxed, so Bush doesn't even have a mandate form the industry side this time. The 30 percent improvement would be "a very cost-effective way to reduce harmful air emissions and energy requirements, which as we know from California and other places is a critical issue now," stated a spokesman from one manufacturer.
*The Bush proposed budget cuts land conservation programs, research for alternative energy sources and regulations for more fuel efficient vehicles by over 50%, proposes to eliminate one of the Agriculture Department's most useful conservation initiatives, the Wetlands Reserve program, and shrinks spending on rain forest preservation to laughably minimal levels. At the same time, funding for oil, gas and coal exploration is given a 20% increase, and any funds for alternative fuel research is to be funded by leases on drilling sites in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
*Breaking his second in a row of campaign promises on the environment, Bush has abandoned a pledge to invest $100 million a year in a program for rain forest conservation, according to the budget he released. Last August, in the wake of a surge of popularity and poll readings in favor of Al Gore following the Democratic National Convention, Bush announced in a foreign policy speech that he planned to greatly expand the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, which allows poor countries to restructure their debt in exchange for protecting the disappearing forests.
*Bush proposes opening up millions of acres of public lands for drilling. This despite the fact that the oil industry has already shorted the government on oil-royalty payments alone by about $100 million a year, through a variety of price-fixing and record-fiddling games. What has made this possible is a system that allowed industry to decide on its own what it would pay the government for the oil it pumped. Imagine going to a filling station and being allowed to bring your own pump and gauge to figure what you've purchased — and how much it's worth. That's essentially how the industry has been allowed to account for oil and gas taken from public land.
*Bush's first federal budget cuts funding for alternate energy sources and renewable by 50%. So despite the fact that we supposedly have an energy crisis and an over-dependence on foreign oil, Bush isn't interested in developing non-fossil fuel solutions. Instead he proposes oil drilling across the nation in our national parks and investing in ludicrous research into "clean coal".
*The Bush budget wants to shift responsibility and expenditure for the enforcement of federal environmental protection laws to the states, citing their ability to understand local problems better. The problem is that the EPA was created in the first place because the states weren't enforcing environmental protections and didn't have a good record of allocating funds to do so.
*Decides not to honor the US commitment to the Kyoto Climate Control Treaty aiming at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases by 5% over the coming decade. Citing costliness, harm to the US economy (despite ample evidence to the contrary), and proclaiming the existence of a fictitious energy crisis, Bush shocks and angers the rest of the world. Contradicts statements made the G8 by EPA director Christine Whitman just days before. Anger in the rest of the world mounts because the USA with 4% of the world's population produces 25% of the world's emissions, yet Bush balked that underdeveloped nations were excluded.
*Pushes hard to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, citing the current energy crisis in California and American dependence on foreign oil, despite that no oil would flow from there for at least 10 years, and even then is predicted to supply the US with 6 months of crude at the most.
*Bush reverses a Clinton regulation requiring a reduction in the acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water. This issue mainly affects small rural, and mostly poor communities out West whose ground water is contaminated by arsenic and cyanide run-off from mines.
*Bush threatens to rescind the Clinton administrations' ban on road building in our national forests, the main purpose of which is to open up access for commercial logging vehicles into previously protected areas. U.S. Forest Service Chief Michael Dombeck resigned on March 27 in protest against the Bush logging-friendly forest agenda.
*Under pressure from the meat industry, proposes an end to testing for salmonella in beef designated for public school lunch programs, until public outcry deafens, and Bush is forced to blame an underling at the Agriculture Department.
*The Department of Interior proposes to rollback hard-rock mining regulations for public lands that would have toughened environmental standards and made it more difficult for mining companies to escape financial liability for violations of anti-pollution laws.
*The EPA rescinds Clinton orders to increase public access to information about the potential consequences of chemical plant accidents, hobbling the ability of communities to prepare for chemical spills and releases.
*The Interior Department proposes to backs off on regulations to phase out snowmobile use in Yellowstone Park. The vehicles are being phased out because the yahoos who want to ride them around the park were abusing the privilege, harassing wildlife and other visitors. Beginning in early 1998 and continuing through early 2001, tens of thousands of Americans participated in a public review of winter transportation problems in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. After 22 public hearings and more than 64,000 comments, a clear majority favored a National Park Service plan to phase out snowmobiles from both parks.
*Native Americans asked a federal court to hold Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt for failing to inform her departmental employees that they are to communicate problems with the administration of trust funds that compensate Native Americans for land that was grabbed from them by the US government.
Sites where the Bush Environmental Disaster Brigade want to drill for oil:
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
The Great Lakes
Rocky Mountain National Park
Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks
The Upper Missouri Breaks in Montana
Grand Staircase-Escalante monument in Utah
Vermillion Basin in northwestern Colorado
The Gulf of Mexico (despite protests from brother and Florida governor, Jeb)