EPA Flying Blind

from PEER:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unable to reliably assess the state of the environment or gauge its own effectiveness, according to a compilation of outside reviews by the agency’s Inspector General released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Unfortunately, these weak spots will likely suffer further from pending Bush administration budget cuts.

Dated August 16, 2006, the report by the EPA Office of Inspector General was done at the request of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works with an eye toward possible reorganization of the agency. The report assembles all recent reviews of agency organization and effectiveness conducted by entities such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the Government Accountability Office, as well as other private and public assessments.

The overwhelming consensus of these reviews was that inadequate information and fragmented scientific work precluded meaningful evaluation of both EPA’s present structure as well as possible reorganizations. Troubling findings cited by the Inspector General include –

• “EPA does not have the data to support its positions on the state of the environment or to measure the success of its programs”;
• “EPA’s information systems have incomplete and untimely data”; and
• EPA lacks a “clear identification and prioritization of the most important scientific questions to be addressed.”

“Right now, EPA is flying blind,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the agency is spending millions on a public relations campaign to burnish the “corporate image” of its science program even as it cuts research support. “EPA scientists describe a deliberate attempt by its current leaders to ‘dumb down’ the agency and marginalize research so it cannot be applied to any topic of controversy.”

While the deficiencies found in the reports summarized by the Inspector General have roots in earlier administrations, the actions of the Bush administration almost seemed designed to aggravate them:

• Investment in EPA science has steadily decreased to the point where the chair of EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board believes that the agency no longer fields a coherent scientific research program;
• EPA is slashing its network of technical research libraries; and
• Suppression of politically inconvenient scientific findings and rewrites of technical reports for non-scientific reasons have become commonplace.

“While Congress is not known for being a fact-based institution, it needs to reinvest in environmental information and research before it wades into any attempt to reshuffle the deck chairs at EPA,” Ruch added. “The question is whether there is sufficient political support behind rebuilding EPA’s basic scientific capabilities.”

EPA Begins Closing Libraries and Public Access

from PEER:

EPA BEGINS CLOSING LIBRARIES BEFORE CONGRESS ACTS ON PLAN — End of Public Access to Technical Holdings as Original Collections Shuttered

Washington, DC —The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead this summer to shut down libraries, end public access to research materials and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not reverse President Bush’s proposed budget reductions, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA’s own scientists are stepping up protests against closures on the grounds that it will make their work more difficult by impeding research, enforcement and emergency response capabilities.

In an August 15, 2006 document entitled “EPA FY 2007 Library Plan,” agency management indicates that it will begin immediately implementing President Bush’s proposed budget cuts for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, without waiting for Congress to act. The memo describes what EPA terms “deaccessioning procedures” (defined as “the removal of library materials from the physical collection” ) for its network of 26 technical libraries. Under the plan—

• Regional libraries, located in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, serving 15 Midwestern and Southern states will be closed by September 30. Other regional library hours and services will be gradually reduced;
• Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as possible;
• As many as 80,000 original documents which are not electronically available will be boxed up (“put their collections into stasis,” in the words of the EPA memo) and shipped for eventual “digitizing.”

EPA scientists represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, had previously sent a “Demand to Bargain” on the issue, but EPA managers dismissed that demand as premature. The August 15th EPA memo, however, shows that the union concern was far from premature. On August 16, the AFGE National Council of EPA Locals filed a formal grievance demanding that all library closures be put on hold until affected scientists can negotiate the matter as required in the collective bargaining agreement, writing:

“After October 1, 2007, three Regions will no longer have a physical library at all. Library hours or core library services will be reduced in other Regions that keep their physical libraries open. Management has been insisting that it can effectively ‘do more with less,’ and continue to provide the same level of library services to all of EPA’s staff members despite the reduction in the number of library contractor staff. The Council is not convinced that this is the case.”

“The central fiction is EPA’s promise to digitize its entire massive collection, making everything available online someday, without any dedicated funds amid sharply reduced budgets,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting EPA studies show the cuts will actually lose money due to additional professional staff time that will have to be spent tracking down research materials now assembled by the libraries. “The idea that library closures are a purely budgetary move is increasingly hard to swallow.”

A key tenet of the new plan is that all research requests will be centrally controlled. The plan calls for “discouraging establishment of divisional or branch mini-libraries” so that central staff can “have knowledge of [the] location” of all research materials. In a mass letter of protest signed this June by representatives for 10,000 EPA scientists and researchers, more than half the total agency workforce, employees contend that the library plan is designed to “suppress information on environmental and public health-related topics.”

“What is going on inside EPA is positively Orwellian,” concluded Ruch.

###

Sea Levels Already Rising along Florida Coast

from PEER:

Federal and state policymakers are turning a blind eye toward unmistakable evidence of rising sea levels affecting Florida coastal areas, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Within the next twenty years, predicted sea level rises will begin to inundate much of the Florida coastline, as well as low-lying open lands, starting with the Everglades.

Sea level rises are already being recorded in Florida, about 10 inches during the last century (at a rate of 2.3 millimeters per year as measured by tide gauge data). Due to global warming, melting ice caps and thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm, the rate of sea level rise is predicted to accelerate. Based upon data developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), estimated sea level rises for Southwest Florida will range from 2.8 inches to 10.6 inches by 2025. At that rate, sea level increases would double to 2 feet this century and rise another 3 feet next century – for a net rise of 5 feet by 2200. An EPA report titled “The Probability of Sea Level Rise” has a predicted a range of sea level rise from as low as 21 inches with a 90% probability to 177 inches with a 1% probability.

In the near-term, higher sea levels will lead to higher hurricane storm surges, resulting in greater property damage. In addition, saltwater intrusion will compromise the quality and available quantities of fresh water, as well as change vegetation patterns. In the long-term, coastal areas, wetlands and many other undeveloped lands will simply disappear altogether, or exist only behind sea barricades.

“Florida will be a modern Atlantis with its most expensive real estate under water,” stated Florida PEER Director Jerry Phillips, noting that much of the $12 billion Comprehensive Everglades Restoration now under construction may be underwater in less than 50 years. “We had better begin planning now for how to handle these rising tides.” ...[go to rest of article]

Fiddling While the World Burns

from WaPo:

OVER THE PAST two weeks, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee has held a pair of truly senseless hearings on global climate change. The purpose was not to figure out how to cut carbon emissions. It wasn’t even to discuss the science of global climate change in general. Instead, the purpose was to pick at a single study of global temperature patterns, the so-called “hockey stick” graph—a trend line that purports to show a sudden and dramatic increase in global temperatures in the 1990s and therefore looks like a hockey stick. The graph is hardly central to the modern debate over climate change. Yet the subcommittee has investigated the scientists who dared produce it and hounded them for information. Now that a study of the graph by the National Academy of Sciences has largely backed up the hockey stick findings, the committee has been holding hearings to attack it some more.

A more responsible House hearing on climate change, held by the Government Reform Committee, revealed the utter frivolity of investigating the hockey stick. Even the Bush administration—which is actively avoiding regulation of carbon emissions—took pains to acknowledge the science of climate change. Speaking on behalf of the White House, James L. Connaughton made clear that global warming is real and that human causes are at least partly to blame.

In fact, the broad contours of climate science are a matter of considerable consensus. Increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases traps additional energy, which tends to cause warming of the Earth’s surface. The actual concentration of carbon in the atmosphere has increased enormously since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. And average global temperatures have risen in recent decades, an effect that is amplified significantly in the polar regions. The major outstanding question about global warming is not whether adding large amounts of new carbon to the atmosphere will tend to increase temperatures further. It is how sensitive the climate will be to what mass of additional carbon over time—and how bad the practical consequences of that sensitivity will be. On this point, there exists vigorous scientific debate. But it’s a debate to which congressional committees are laughably ill-suited to contribute.

The reality is that nobody knows how bad global warming will be; responsible estimates vary from manageable to catastrophic. So the prudent move is to take action now as a kind of insurance policy. Yes, reducing carbon emissions substantially is a daunting prospect given American and world dependence on fossil fuels—so daunting that it induces a kind of denial in many people. But it is a particularly ugly kind of denial that leads a congressional committee to spend this kind of energy attacking scientists, instead of confronting the problems their data suggest.

BushCo Again Pushing Anti-Environmental Court Nominee

from BushGreenWatch:

For more than two years now, the Bush administration has been seeking to place the Pentagon’s top lawyer, William Haynes II, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (see BushGreenwatch, 12/18/03 and 3/16/04). Haynes’ nomination stalled for various reasons, but the Bush team is nothing if not persistent.

With crucial congressional elections less than five months away, the administration is under increasing pressure from its right wing base to stack the federal bench with more of their kind of guy. As a key player in developing the Pentagon’s military tribunal plan for suspected terrorists (which the Supreme Court firmly tossed out last month) Haynes definitely fits the bill. Hence his nomination is again before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this afternoon.

Also active in proposing ways the U.S. could circumvent international treaties banning torture, as well as supporting indefinite detentions of American citizens without benefit of legal counsel or meaningful judicial review, Haynes came to the attention of environmental advocates early in the Bush administration with what will surely stand as one of the strangest arguments in the history of environmental law.

Seeking an exemption from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in order to enable the military to resume bombing on a remote Pacific island as part of live-fire training exercises, Haynes prepared a legal brief arguing that even though the island is an important nesting site for such migratory birds as great frigate birds, red-footed boobies and Pacific golden plovers, bird lovers should have no problem with the bombing.

Indeed, argued the Haynes brief, conservationists would actually benefit from the destruction of such birds, because it makes the birds rarer - and “bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one.” Moreover, Haynes noted, the bombing is good for the birds, too - because it keeps the island free of other “human intrusion.”

Somehow the Haynes logic did not fare well. A federal judge ruled against the military in 2002. The judge’s decision included one particularly memorable line: “The Court hopes that the federal government will refrain from making such frivolous arguments in the future.” [1]

If the Senate Judiciary Committee approves Haynes’ nomination, his name could come up for a vote in the full Senate as soon as this summer.

You can send a message to Congress on this important issue on Friends of the Earth’s web site. Take Action!

Postscript: Although Haynes’ argument lost in Federal court, the Bush administration promptly moved its allies in Congress to exempt the Pentagon from compliance with the law anyway. And on his Senate questionnaire back in 2003, Haynes described his bird-bombing effort as the second most significant case of his career.

Also, the Haynes hearing may be webcast at http://www.capitolhearings.org click on SD-226 link at or around 2:15 pm EST, Tuesday, July 11.

Note:
[1] Center for Biological Diversity vs. Pirie, 191 F. Supp. 2d 161 (D.D.C. 2002).

Navy Continues up to 300 Detonations per Year in Puget Sound

from PEER:

The U.S. Navy sets off between 180 and 300 underwater explosive charges each year in some of the most sensitive waters of Puget Sound, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Despite promises four years ago, after PEER first revealed the existence of the extensive Puget Sound demolition program, to conduct environmental reviews, measures to protect threatened or endangered marine mammals, fish and aquatic plants have yet to materialize.

Several times each month, the U.S. Navy detonates live explosives deep underwater to provide “realistic” training for its divers in destroying and disabling mines. Unfortunately, the detonations also blow up marine life. In one exercise, for example, involving a five-pound explosive charge set off near Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, observers counted 5,000 dead fish on the surface but estimated that up to another 20,000 fish died and sank out of sight to the seabed.

The Navy conducts approximately 60 demolition exercises each year, at least three every month, using three to five C4 plastic explosives, far more powerful than dynamite, in packets ranging in size from five to 20 pounds, often set off with 20 pound blasting charges.

Since 2002, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the two civilian agencies charged with enforcing the Endangered Species Act, have urged the Navy to undertake alternative training practices to minimize damage to marine life, such as using bubble curtains or other containers to minimize blast impacts, or conducting the training in quarries, lakes or the open ocean rather than in the waters of Puget Sound, a designated Essential Fish Habitat under the Sustainable Fisheries Act.

“Why are taxpayers spending millions to preserve Puget Sound when another government agency is busy blowing it up?” asked Washington PEER Director Sue Gunn, noting that the Navy is resisting her document requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act for the Navy’s own studies. “No one seeks to deny the Navy realistic demolition training opportunities but the question is whether the Navy is being a good neighbor by failing to minimize unnecessary harm caused by its explosive ordnance operations.”

According to documents obtained by PEER from the civilian services, both NMFS and FWS rejected the Navy’s self-assessment that its demolition exercises were “not likely to adversely affect” federally protected species such as Chinook salmon, Stellar sea lions, humpback whales and bull trout. The Navy, in turn, rejected the services’ suggestions for environmental mitigation. According to notes from a June 2, 2005 interagency meeting:

“Some conservation measures floundering – not being moved forward because no pressure.”

“We are going to make it our business to bring sufficient pressure to move this glacial interagency consultation process off the dime,” Gunn added, pointing out that the Navy exercises are often conducted in sensitive shallows such as Crescent Harbor, Port Townsend and Hood Canal. “National security does not demand that the Navy inflict maximum environmental damage in the waters it is supposed to defend.”

Nation Parks Funding Slashed by Bush

from PEER:

The Bush administration has directed the National Park Service to substantially decrease its reliance on tax-supported funding, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In a turnabout from the last two presidential campaigns when candidate Bush promised greater funding of parks, new “talking points” distributed last week to all park superintendents urge them to begin “honest and forthright” discussions with the public about smaller budgets, reduced visitor services and increased fees.

Using a new approach called Core Operations Analysis, each park is asked to develop budgets based on a 20 to 30% reduction in appropriation support. In this “exercise”, park superintendents decide which visitor services or other functions can be jettisoned (“staffing and funding alternatives based on realistic funding projections,” in the words of the Park Service). Whatever shortfalls in support for essential operations that remain must be made up for with fee hikes, cost shifting or increased reliance on volunteers.

Once the Core Operation Analysis is finalized, each park is then put on a “glide path” to implement the agreed upon reductions during the next five years.

In the talking points memo issued on April 11, 2006, park public affairs and budgetary staff provide coaching as to how individual parks should spin shrinking budgets and reduced visitor services, including:

* “The National Park Service, like most agencies, is tightening its belt as our nation rebuilds from Katrina, continues the war on terrorism and strives to reduce the deficit” and
* “Our satisfaction rating is over 96 percent nationally, and has remained high for several years. That’s a clear indicator that budgets have not reduced visitor enjoyment.”

By contrast, prior to the 2004 election, park officials were ordered to avoid mention of cutbacks and instead use the euphemism “service level adjustments.” In talking points distributed on April 7, 2004, park managers were instructed to counter charges of lower budgets by declaring “NPS has fared well under President Bush.”

“Rather than being honest about planned budget cuts, the Bush administration once again makes stealth policy decisions cloaked by management reform mumbo jumbo,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “If our national parks are going to be reduced to performing only the bare minimum of ‘core operations’ the public ought to be given some say as to what is considered essential.”

Drug Warriors Push Eye-Eating Fungus

from In These Times:

By Jeremy Bigwood

On April 16, the New York Times ran a full-page ad from contact lens producer Bausch and Lomb, announcing the recall of its “ReNu with MoistureLoc” rewetting solution, and warning the 30 million American wearers of soft contact lenses about Fusarium keratitis. This infection, first detected in Asia, has rapidly spread across the United States. It is caused by a mold-like fungus that can penetrate the cornea of soft contact lens wearers, causing redness and pain that can lead to blindness—requiring a corneal replacement.

That same week, the House of Representatives passed a provision to a bill requiring that the very same fungus be sprayed in “a major drug-producing country,” such as Colombia. The bill’s sponsor was Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and its most vocal supporter was his colleague Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who has been promoting the fungus for almost a decade as key to winning the drug war.

The Colombian government has come out against it. And those entities of the U.S. government that have studied the use of Fusarium for more than 30 years don’t recommend it either: The Office of National Drug Control Policy, also known as the Drug Czar’s office, CIA, DEA, the State Department and the USDA have all concluded that the fungus is unsafe for humans and the environment.

“Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly. … Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide,” wrote David Struhs, then secretary of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, in a 1999 letter rejecting the use of the fungus against Florida’s outdoor marijuana crop. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species.”

Mutation of the fungus allows it to attack other “hosts.” The eye-eating Fusarium seems to be a result of such a mutation. After all, the soft-contact lenses that it grows behind are a recent development—having only been commercially available since 1971.

The DEA stopped funding Fusarium research in the United States during the early ’90s after it learned that Fusarium infections can be deadly in “immunocompromised” people—not only AIDS patients and those with other illnesses, but also those who are severely malnourished. The University of the Andes in Bogot� has recently reported that 12 percent of Colombian children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Spraying this fungus on a vulnerable population could be perceived as using a biological weapon.

The CIA has been against the use of Fusarium to kill drug crops since at least 2000. At that time, one official told the Times, “I don’t support using a product on a bunch of Colombian peasants that you wouldn’t use against a bunch of rednecks growing marijuana in Kentucky.”

A top scientist from the USDA, which has studied the fungus the longest, said that his agency “cannot support” its use. And the State Department, whose Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement carries out drug crop eradication all over the world, does not support it, either.

In 2000, when Congress first passed “Plan Colombia,” the Colombian aid package that ordered the use of the fungus in Colombia, President Clinton waived the part of the bill that dealt with the fungus because he thought its use would be perceived as biological warfare. At the same time, the Andean Community of Nations, an organization comprising Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, banned it within their territories.

So, who does support the spraying of the eye-eating fungus over other countries? Only a few adamant drug war jihadists in the House, led by Burton, who are frustrated by the lack of progress in the drug war.

The fungus provision has already passed the House, but the Senate version of the bill contains no similar language. Responsibility for a final decision rests on the conference committee where the House and Senate bills will be reconciled—scheduled to happen before this summer.

Junketing Judges: Another Case of Bad Science

from WaPo:

By Eric Schaeffer

Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor? Last fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. It turns out that two of the jurists who helped decide the case—Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge David B. Sentelle—attended a six-day global warming seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a free-market foundation and featuring presentations from companies with a clear financial interest in limiting regulation.

According to documents released by a watchdog law firm last week, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other large businesses contribute to conservative think tanks to help “educate” federal judges through seminars like the one at Yellowstone. At least one major funder of these judicial junkets has said that the D.C. Circuit is targeted because of its jurisdiction over important environmental cases.

Did the Yellowstone trip affect the court’s decision in the global warming case? Ginsburg and Sentelle are both strong-minded intellectual conservatives, and it is possible, perhaps likely, that they would have made the same decision if they had stayed home. The Code of Conduct for federal judges does not prohibit attending such seminars—as long as participation does not “cast reasonable doubt on the capacity to decide impartially issues that may come before them.” But if appearances count, then Ginsburg and Sentelle may have fallen short. And Sentelle did violate the law by not listing on his financial disclosure forms the value of the Yellowstone trip.

Many experts in the scientific community agree that global warming is approaching a tipping point where action must be taken to avoid irreversible consequences. But bowing to the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself in September 2003 by ruling that carbon dioxide was not subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. (Administration efforts to soften enforcement rules led several other career officials and me to leave the agency a year before this case.) Convinced that the EPA had misinterpreted the law, a coalition of states and environmentalists sued the agency at the end of 2003, and the case was assigned to the D.C. Circuit.

Sentelle was the deciding vote in the 2 to 1 ruling last fall backing the EPA’s decision not to regulate, and he and Ginsburg were part of the 4 to 3 majority on the full court that rejected a request by states and environmental groups to reconsider. The Supreme Court will decide on June 15 whether to hear an appeal.

Well before the issue hit the appeals court, those opposed to carbon dioxide regulation got an early start by persuading Ginsburg and Sentelle to participate in the 2002 Yellowstone conference on climate change, sponsored by the corporate-funded Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. As documented by the Community Rights Counsel, a nonprofit judicial watchdog group, FREE has for more than a decade hosted seminars for federal judges at Montana resorts. Until last year, Ginsburg was a member of FREE’s board. Ginsburg, Sentelle and 10 other federal judges at this particular conference were warned about deep scientific uncertainties, according to FREE’s John Downen, who, in writing about the seminar, suggested that people adapt to higher temperatures through economic growth, rather than by cutting emissions.

While relaxing in beautiful surroundings, the judges heard from Caterpillar Inc., the largest U.S. manufacturer of greenhouse-gas-producing construction and mining equipment, and Temple-Inland, a major forest products company. The Caterpillar representative lectured on “the environmental and economic impact of regulation by litigation,” which must have been particularly interesting; the company has paid huge fines for rigging its heavy-duty diesel engines to bypass emission controls. Caterpillar and Temple-Inland both belong to industry associations that filed briefs opposing global warming regulation in the case heard later by Ginsburg and Sentelle.

According to FREE, some of its funding has come from the M.J. Murdock Foundation, which also donated $250,00,000 to the conservative Washington Legal Foundation in 2003. WLF filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the D.C. Circuit case.

FREE’s Pete Geddes has dismissed the idea that these judicial junkets affect court decisions, telling a Washington Post reporter recently, “I don’t think they’re going to come to Montana, go on a horsy ride and run home and strike down federal environmental laws.” But judges attend these seminars for an education, so some of what they are taught is bound to stick.

Leaders of Congress and the federal courts seem to recognize that the federal judiciary ought to be out of bounds for lobbyists. Chief Justice John G. Roberts testified during his confirmation hearing that “special interests should not be permitted to lobby federal judges,” and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) is sponsoring legislation that would ban such trips, while creating a fund to pay for legal education for judges.

Voters can replace elected officials who seem too close to special interest groups. But judges are appointed for life, and allowing insider access threatens the integrity of the one branch of government that should stand above politics. Court cases must be won by argument, not by influence, and that means putting a stop to judicial junkets that give one side of the debate an unfair advantage.

Eric Schaeffer was director of the EPA’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement from 1997 to 2002 and now directs the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project.

Alaska: Last Frontier is a Waste Dump

from PEER:

The residents and wildlife of Alaska may be bearing health consequences from thousands of industrial and military waste dumps, according to a compilation of waste sites prepared for the Department of Environmental Conservation but never published. The report, entitled “Pollution and Cancer in Alaska,” was released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

The report assembles all state records on nuclear, mining and military waste sites but makes clear that, while thousands of sites are known, thousands more pollution sites may be unknown. For example:

• The U.S. Department of Defense is responsible for “one-third of all active contaminated sites in Alaska.” In addition, there may be as many as 10,000 abandoned polluted defense sites;
• Hundreds of hazardous waste dumps are spread along Alaska’s coast and adjacent to lakes, streams and freshwater aquifers but the extent to which they may be contaminating drinking water is poorly understood. The vast majority (79%) of “rural Alaskans obtain their drinking water from small drinking water systems or private wells which are not currently monitored for toxic substances”; and
• There is no state inventory or monitoring of thousands of small landfills or industrial waste pits.

“While many parts of Alaska remain pristine, many other parts of The Last Frontier are profoundly polluted,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Unfortunately, the state is making no effort to assess the dimensions of this multifaceted toxic legacy or the effects on its people and wildlife.”

The report underlines the tremendous knowledge gaps about the effects of persistent pollution exposure on cancer rates, disease patterns as well as bioaccumulation of toxins in both humans and wildlife. The report surveys discrepancies in cancer rates and traces cancer clusters but argues for more systematic research before conclusions can be drawn.

Additional research will be hampered, however, by the absence of active monitoring of the vast majority of hazardous waste sites scattered throughout the state.

“The prevailing anti-pollution philosophy at the Department of Environmental Conservation seems to be don’t ask-don’t tell,” Ruch added pointing to a 2002 survey conducted among ADEC staff that reflected resource limitations, political interference and fear of retaliation limiting the agency’s environmental performance.

###

Read “Pollution and Cancer in Alaska”

View the highlights of the 2002 PEER survey of ADEC staff

View question-by-question survey results

A Fishy Policy (still)

from WaPo:

YOU’D THINK THE Bush administration would have learned its lesson with James Hansen and global warming. Apparently not. Mr. Hansen, you may recall, is the NASA scientist who was muzzled—by a 24-year-old résumé falsifier, no less—in his efforts to warn about the dangers of climate change. Mr. Hansen, it turned out, wasn’t alone: Other employees working on that issue at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been chastised for speaking out and answering media questions.

Now it appears that this chilling effect isn’t just for global warming. According to a report in Wednesday’s Post by Blaine Harden, NOAA has directed that questions about endangered salmon—which the agency is responsible for protecting—are to be answered only by headquarters, and then only by three officials, all political appointees. Scientists and other agency officials who actually work on the salmon studies aren’t supposed to answer reporters’ questions.

This latest crackdown came—coincidentally, officials insist—the day after a Post article quoted a NOAA spokesman in Seattle as making positive comments about decisions by a federal judge and federal scientists that ran contrary to Bush administration policies on salmon protection.

With the Orwellian cheeriness that has become a Bush administration specialty, NOAA headquarters spokesman Jeff Donald explained that the change was made because “some folks were trying to consolidate a little bit and make sure everything we were putting out was accurate and as up to date as possible.” That’s the kind of helpfulness we don’t need.

The trouble with ethanol

from Salon:

By Amanda Griscom Little

As ethanol boosterism spreads far and wide—from Bush’s bully pulpit to the New York Times editorial page to green-group press releases—a quietly emerging trend is threatening to undermine the biofuel’s environmental credibility.

More and more ethanol manufacturers are looking to power their plants with cheap coal instead of its cleaner and increasingly expensive competitor, natural gas, thereby potentially limiting ethanol’s environmental benefits. And the Bush administration is doing its part to accelerate this trend. Under pressure from a group of senators and representatives from corn- and coal-producing states, the U.S. EPA is considering a rule change under the Clean Air Act that would relax pollution regulations on ethanol plants, clearing the way for them to burn coal with fewer restraints.

While only four of roughly 100 ethanol plants currently operating in the U.S. are powered by coal (practically all of the rest are fueled by natural gas), some 190 more are under construction or soon to be built. One energy analyst, Robert McIlvaine, president of the Illinois-based research group McIlvaine Co., predicts that “100 percent” of new ethanol plants built in the U.S. over the next few years will be coal-fired, “largely because of the exorbitant cost of natural gas right now, and the comparatively predictable future supply of homegrown coal.” A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor also points out that many ethanol manufacturers are increasingly being drawn toward coal.

But Nathanael Greene, a renewable-energy expert with Natural Resources Defense Council, doesn’t see such a clear-cut trend. “Less than a quarter of the 16-plus ethanol plants that came online last year were coal-fired, even given current natural-gas prices,” he says. He believes that many ethanol-industry leaders will stick with natural gas or opt for zero-emission renewable fuel sources for their plants in order to protect their much-advertised eco-friendly image and avoid the arduous environmental-review process required for coal-plant construction.

Still, some enviros see cause to worry about a tilt toward coal, particularly because ethanol production in the U.S. is already fossil-fuel intensive. Nearly all of the ethanol on the U.S. market today is derived from corn, which tends to require substantial fossil-fuel inputs to grow, harvest and process. While the eco-utopian promise of cellulosic ethanol—derived from substances such as switchgrass and wood chips that require comparatively negligible fossil-fuel inputs—lingers on the horizon, cellulosic technology is still in its infancy, years away from widespread use.

According to recent research on ethanol’s environmental benefits from the University of California at Berkeley, corn-derived ethanol produced by a natural-gas powered plant offers a 38 percent greenhouse-gas reduction compared to gasoline, while corn-derived ethanol produced by a coal-fired plant offers a greenhouse-gas benefit of only about 19 percent. Cellulosic ethanol, by comparison, is far more conducive to processing without any fossil fuels, and thus is expected to offer an 88 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline.

Greene estimates that an ethanol industry using environmentally preferable production methods could fully replace the gasoline used in America by mid-century and slash U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 1.7 million tons per year, equivalent to 80 percent of current greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation.

Instead of striving to produce the cleanest, greenest ethanol, however, many in the industry want to keep production costs as low as possible, and they’re supported by members of Congress who also want to use ethanol’s soaring popularity to bolster the coal industry.

In March, the EPA—reportedly at the behest of at least one corn-state politician—proposed changing a rule in order to let ethanol-fuel plants more than double their air emissions, from 100 tons per year of any pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act to 250 tons per year.

“This proposal is clearly designed to usher in this wave of new coal-fired plants—loosening the rules so that the facilities can be bigger, dirtier and cheaper,” says Greene’s colleague John Walke, director of NRDC’s clean-air program. Walke warns that if the EPA approves it, his group might file suit. While ethanol-fuel manufacturers can build coal-fired plants under current rules, the facilities have to be kept relatively small to meet pollution restrictions, and must undergo a rigorous permitting process.

On the other hand, a bipartisan group of 33 members of Congress led by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., threw its support behind the proposed rule change earlier this month in a letter (PDF) to EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. The Renewable Fuels Association, an industry trade group, also backs the change.

A public-comment period on the proposal concluded earlier this month, and a final decision is expected soon. “It’s widely accepted that the EPA will go ahead and make this important change,” says Matthew Hartwig of RFA.

According to Kyle Downey, a spokesperson for Thune, “The current rules are needlessly impeding the growth of ethanol nationwide.” He further argues that the trend toward coal is a good thing for the planet in the long run because it will accelerate the development of ethanol-friendly infrastructure, thereby paving the way for a system based on cellulosic ethanol: “The cheaper the ethanol in the short term, the greater the consumer demand will be for a shift from gas to ethanol, and the quicker America will transform fueling stations from gasoline to ethanol,” he says, suggesting that the industry could then gradually move toward lower-emission forms of ethanol.

Environmentalists reject this logic, arguing that the ethanol industry is booming now and doesn’t need looser environmental regulations to succeed. “The ethanol markets are already exploding with 25 percent growth per year without this rule change,” says Greene. “The industry is expected to double in less than four years. It’s very clear that there is an economically viable way of growing the ethanol industry rapidly without sacrificing public health.”

He points to new corn-ethanol facilities fueled by zero-emission technologies. A plant in Nebraska was built next to a cattle farm so it could use methane from the bovine waste to power its operations. Two others in Minnesota use fuel from gasified biomass, and a demonstration plant being built in Illinois will be powered by solar thermal collectors. These facilities can produce corn ethanol with nearly 70 percent lower greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, says Greene. “I suspect we’ll see substantial growth in this area,” he predicts.

RFA’s Hartwig agrees that zero-emission ethanol plants are economically sound and part of an important trend; still, he sees them as only one part of the puzzle. “We need a diversified approach to growing this industry,” he says. “There is plenty of room for coal, natural gas, and renewables.”

But if the industry wants to keep promoting ethanol as the eco-friendly fuel of the future, it would be well advised to lay off the coal and lean on clean energy.

An Inconvenient Truth

Bush energy plan whacks conservation

from the CSM:

By Mark Clayton

A few years ago a little-known US Energy Department program helped produce a design technology for lightweight cars and trucks that in 2004 alone saved the nation 122 million barrels of oil, or about $9 billion.

Even without that breakthrough, the tiny Industrial Technologies Program routinely saves the United States $7 worth of energy for each dollar it spends, proponents say.

So, with energy prices spiking and Bush pushing for more energy research, the ITP would seem a natural candidate for more funding. In fact, its budget is set to get chopped by a third from its 2005 level. It’s one of more than a dozen energy-efficiency efforts that the Energy Department plans to trim or eliminate in a $115 million cost-cutting move.

The push to solve the nation’s energy woes are bumping up against the federal government’s budget problems. To be sure, the Bush administration is anxious to fund its new Advanced Energy Initiative - long-term research into nuclear, coal, wind, solar, and hydrogen power. But to accomplish that, it is cutting lesser-known programs like ITP whose payoffs are far more near-term.

“This is the worst time to be cutting these programs,” says William Prindle, deputy director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a Washington think tank. “At this point in time, with high energy prices and pressures, you’d think maybe we’d want to invest in a suite of energy-efficiency programs that make a dent right away.”

If Congress accepts the Energy Department’s proposed 2007 budget, it will cut $152 million - some 16 percent - from this year’s budget for energy-efficiency programs. Adjusting for inflation, it would mean the US government would spend 30 percent less on energy efficiency next year than it did in 2002, the ACEEE says.

[full text...]

Taking the “E” out of EPA

from PEER:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just created a new, top level position for Homeland Security, one of several recent moves emphasizing security operations at the expense of children’s health and other key environmental protections, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

On May 1, 2006, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that Tom Dunne would serve as the agency’s first Associate Administrator for Homeland Security and will report directly to Johnson, who has also created a “national security and intelligence” center in the new Homeland Security Office. In addition, the Bush administration has proposed channeling $45 million of EPA research funds into a “Water Sentinel” program, to help monitor water infrastructure safety in the event of a terrorist attack.

“EPA is cannibalizing its children and public health functions in order to run programs that should be paid for by the Department of Homeland Security, an organization not suffering from a lack of funding,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that no other agency will pick up the anti-pollution efforts discarded by EPA. “We do not need EPA researchers playing junior G-men.”

At the same time these new security functions are being expanded, EPA’s overall budget is being cut. The budgetary axe is falling on traditional environmental programs, such as those designed to improve water quality. EPA is also closing most of its libraries as a cost-saving measure.

Programs that affect children’s health have also been particularly hard-hit. This fall, Johnson announced the elimination of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection, an entity dedicated to ensure that the special vulnerability of children is safeguarded in environmental standard-setting, enforcement and prevention efforts. The Office of Children’s Health Protection was collapsed into the Office of Environmental Education, considered one of EPA’s lowest priority programs.

In January, the EPA Office of Inspector General issued a report criticizing serious inadequacies in the agency’s ability to assess the effects of pesticides on fetuses, infants, toddlers, and youngsters. The agency claims that it lacks funding to collect data, conduct cumulative effect analyses and develop standards for determining the developmental neurotoxicity of the pesticides that EPA is approving for commercial use. Significantly, EPA is overdue in producing a plan for corrective actions that address the material weaknesses identified by the Inspector General.

“It is unconscionable that EPA is certifying pesticides as safe without doing the basic research to determine their effects on growing children,” Ruch added.