Critics Bash Bush on Earth Day
Published by MAC on 2003-04-22
Critics Bash Bush on Earth Day
By J.R. Pegg, Environmental News Service (ENS)
April 22, 2003
Washington, DC - The Bush administration is orchestrating an unprecedented assault on the nation's environmental laws and is allowing corporate interests to plunder America's natural resources, leaders of a dozen major environmental organizations told reporters today at an Earth Day press conference in Washington, DC.
The nation's biodiversity, wild lands, clean air, clean water and protection from harmful toxic waste are all threatened by the administration's policies, the environmentalists say, and the consequences could be severe.
"Our message for this Earth Day is clear - behind closed doors and out of public view, the Bush administration is letting big corporations rewrite and weaken our environmental laws so they can pollute our air and poison our water, cut down our national forests and make taxpayers, rather than polluters, pay to clean up toxic wastes," said Gene Karpinski, executive director of U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
The organizations say the Bush administration is pushing through radical reforms of key environmental protections, even as it celebrates what these laws have accomplished. It is starving federal agencies of adequate funding to enforce existing laws, they say, and shifting the burden of environmental protection and conservation onto financially strapped state and local governments.
"We can ensure clean water, healthy air, safe communities and splendid natural resources," said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth. "But unfortunately, the programs that meet these goals are dying a slow death under a Bush administration that has starved them of the funding they need."
Administration officials strongly reject the criticism of environmentalists. The President is intent on balancing the need for economic growth and development with environmental protection and conservation, they say, and that is what his policies are designed to do.
"Three decades after the first Earth Day, our air is cleaner, our water is purer, and our lands and natural resources are better protected," President George W. Bush said today in a prepared statement. "My administration is building on these accomplishments through new and innovative policies."
Environmentalists agree with the comment that the environment is better now than it was some 30 years ago, but believe the administration's new policies are thinly veiled measures that weaken, rather than enforce or strengthen the laws and policies that are largely responsible for the nation's cleaner air and cleaner water.
They cite administrative rulemaking efforts to remove protection for wetlands, streams and tributaries from the Clean Water Act and to weaken oversight of industrial polluters under the Clean Air Act.
The President's advisors are good at spinning administration policies, League of Conservation Voters President Deb Callahan told reporters, but the rhetoric does not match the reality.
The administration has proposed to "allow big power plants to put more toxic pollution in the air we breathe and called it 'Clear Skies,'" Callahan said.
"President Bush wants to turn the management of our natural heritage over to the timber industry and call it 'Healthy Forests.'"
Rather than take decisive action, the environmentalists say, the administration announces big initiatives that have little or no funding to back them up or that depend entirely on volunteerism. They contend the administration has turned its back on proposals that would reduce the nation's dependence on oil by either encouraging more renewable energy or embracing tighter fuel economy standards.
"Even worse than doing nothing, the administration has opposed those who seek to do something," said Alden Meyer, director of government relations for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Conservationists fear unspoiled wilderness like the Tongass National Forest could be opened to increased logging by the Bush administration. (Photo courtesy the U.S. Forest Service) The administration has "abdicated leadership" on international environmental issues, Meyer said, in particular on global warming.
US will increase global warming
"The United States represents 25 percent of the [global warming] problem, but under the Bush administration we represent zero percent of the solution," Meyer said. Meyer blasted the administration's climate change initiative that proposes using voluntary industry commitments to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions intensity - the ratio of emissions to economic output - by 18 percent within the next decade.
The administration's own projections show that under the President's plan emissions of heat trapping gases would increase 14 percent over the next decade, Meyer explained.
"For the world's largest emitter of global warming pollution, this proposal is an embarrassment," Meyer said.
The administration's proposal to exempt the Department of Defense from five major environmental laws was singled out for sharp criticism at today's Earth Day briefing. Bush officials say the military's readiness and training is compromised by federal laws governing hazardous waste, clean air, marine mammal protection and endangered species.
Environmentalists argue the military can already get case by case exemptions from these laws, and say blanket exemptions are unnecessary and unwise.
"These laws have kept our children and communities safe from hazardous waste and from pollutants in our air and have protected rare and sensitive creatures," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "No federal agency should be above the law."
Public health is being compromised by the Bush administration's environmental policies, added Phil Clapp, president of National Environmental Trust.
One in six Americans live within a mile of a toxic waste site, he said, but the Bush administration is relaxing efforts to clean up these sites. Cleanup of toxic wastes last year was down 41 percent from the average of the previous eight years, and the number of new cleanups dropped to its lowest level since 1988, Clapp said.
The administration opposed the continuation of a program that forced polluters to pay for cleanup, according to Clapp, transferring a large portion of the cleanup responsibility from industry to taxpayers.
"There is no greater evidence that this President puts the interests of big corporations ahead of the welfare of average Americans," Clapp said.
And this cuts to the heart of many of the complaints about the administration by environmentalists - that its policies and officials aim to favor corporate interests.
According to Marty Hayden, legislative director of Earthjustice, the administration has relaxed environmental regulations and granted financial incentives to oil, gas, and timber industries to literally take the nation's natural resources.
Hayden pointed to the administration's forest management policies, which he says allow timber companies to clearcut public lands under the guise of forest management, waive environmental protections for logging projects and seek to eliminate the public's right to comment on or question federal agency decisions.
"When it comes to our National Forests, the Bush administration has adopted a policy of leave no tree behind,"
Hayden said. "Never in modern times has there been an administration so singly focused on getting fish, wildlife, the public and the law out of the way of commercial timber interests and other extractive industries."
The nation's biodiversity is suffering, added Schlickeisen, because Bush administration officials within the Department of Interior are unwilling to carry out management efforts needed to protect threatened and endangered species. Over the adminstration's first two and a half years, Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton has not listed a single species on the Endangered Species list and is "a fraud when it comes to protecting the environment and our natural heritage," Schlickeisen said.
It is not just the policies of the administration that have environmentalists worried, many believe some the President's judicial nominees pose a serious, longterm threat to the environment. The legality and enforcement of environmental laws is increasingly being determined by federal courts and several of the Bush nominees are on record with what many believe are extreme views on private property and federal jurisdiction that could contradict with fundamental environmental protections.
"The courts have played an extremely important role in environmental protection," said Greg Wetstone, advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Impartial nominees are all we ask for - there is too much at stake."
The one administration policy the environmentalists at today's briefing singled out for praise was the recently announced proposal by the administration to reduce harmful emissions from nonroad diesel engines.
But this one positive, Wetstone said, is "but a solitary star in a very dark sky."
"The record of the Bush administration on clean air issues is dismal," he said.
With several declared Presidential candidates also using Earth Day to criticize the administration's environmentalism, many of the organizations at today's briefing hope these issues could become a major factor in the 2004 Presidential election.
"In 2004, Election Day might just be the most important Earth Day ever," Callahan told reporters. Callahan and others believe the broad scope of what they label "an assault on the environment" will ultimately leave President Bush vulnerable in the 2004 election.
"The Bush administration has allowed polluters to water down or completely gut the cornerstone laws designed to protect America's environment and public health," said PIRG's Karpinski.
"On Earth Day, we are asking the American public to send a loud and clear message: The Bush administration should listen to the public, not the polluters, and uphold, not uproot, America's environmental laws."
Bush Public Lands Policy Under Fire
By J.R. Pegg, Environmental News Service (ENS)
April 24, 2003
Washington, DC - Recent policy decisions by the Bush administration's Interior Department represent the greatest threat to America's public lands in decades, conservationists told reporters at a press briefing today.
Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton is conducting a broad assault on the protection of wilderness under the management of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), conservationists say, and rather than protecting America's natural resources, wild places and biodiversity, Norton is actively working to open up public lands to more drilling, mining and road construction.
"It is as if suddenly the word 'wilderness' does not exist any more," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness. "This amounts to colluding with corporations for control of every American's birthright."
The three specific decisions that have drawn such ire from conservationists directly involve the states of Utah and Alaska, but have important precedent for BLM lands across the United States.
BLM, which is under the authority of the Interior Department, manages some 260 million surface acres in 12 Western states, including Alaska. BLM oversees more land than any other federal agency.
The decisions include the use of an 1866 law to establish rights of way across BLM lands and agreements that eliminate any further wilderness designation of BLM lands by the Interior Department.
Conservationists blasted the administration for not involving the public in its decisions, a complaint that has become a frequent criticism of the Bush administration's Interior Department. Conservationists warn that the Bush administration's policies are endangered special places, including much of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
"These are irresponsible decisions, but not surprising ones from this administration," said Dave Alberswerth, director of the Bureau of Land Management program for The Wilderness Society. "The decisions are a disservice to the majority of Americans and contrary to public law."
The announcement on April 11 that Norton had reached a settlement with Utah over wilderness designation the conservationists say effectively removes wilderness protection from lands managed by the BLM.
The settlement stems back to a suit by Utah against the Interior Department in 1996 over a BLM reinventory that identified three million more acres in the state that qualified for wilderness protection that the agency's inventory in the 1980s had identified.
Although their legal case was largely rejected by the courts, the state renewed its challenge last month and the Bush administration brokered a settlement that revokes BLM's authority to conduct wilderness inventories in any state or to establish new Wilderness Study Areas in any state. Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton says her policies foster a needed sense of cooperation and balance economic and environmental interests.
The settlement also revokes the Wilderness Inventory Handbook, which is a set of guidelines for BLM managers to assess wilderness protections for federal lands affected by proposed resource development, and it disallows the use of a 1999 comprehensive statewide BLM reinventory of Utah's public lands.
"The settlement eliminates wilderness as one of the multiple uses agencies are required to look at," Matz said. "The Bush administration simply met behind closed doors and settled the complaint in favor of development interests."
The Bush administration's settlement limits the amount of BLM land eligible for wilderness protection to some 23 million acres unless Congress orders otherwise. Less than three percent of BLM land is currently protected as wilderness.
"Under the settlement, the BLM is never again going to look for wilderness quality land or protect wilderness quality land," said Ted Zukowski, an attorney with Earthjustice.
In addition to the Utah settlement, Norton pushed forth another major policy shift for BLM on April 11, instructing the agency to cease wilderness reviews in its resource management planning in Alaska and consider wilderness only where it is broadly supported by elected Alaska officials. In a letter to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, Norton explains the decision as part of a belief that local officials are better suited to wilderness legislation.
"Pursuing wilderness designation is not an exclusive option for identifying and protecting important environmental values," she wrote.
Conservationists sharply disagree, and say Norton has failed on her responsibility to balance the uses on federal lands managed by the Interior Department.
"Secretary Norton's decision is incredibly shortsighted and in direct conflict with her own promises during her confirmation hearings," said Eleanor Huffines, Alaska Regional Director with The Wilderness Society.
It is inappropriate for BLM not to review its lands for wilderness designation, she said, because the agency has never done a comprehensive review of the 70 million acres in Alaska under its authority.
"We do not even know what is out there," Huffines said. "The administration is denying the American public any input into the long term protection of these public lands."
Illegal decisions
The wilderness decisions are illegal, the conservationists say, because the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act requires the Interior Department to maintain current, continual inventories of BLM lands and to establish and revise resource management plans for public lands.
The BLM is required to present these inventories to Congress so members can identify what to do with these lands, explained Alberswerth, and Norton is "abdicating that responsibility."
Conservationists are also questioning the legality of the Bush administration's interpretation of a right of way law that they believe could allow private interests, and state and local governments to bulldoze through federal lands.
On April 8, Norton signed a memorandum of understanding with the state of Utah to establish a process to use an 1866 law known as RS2477 to recognized rights of way across BLM lands.
The law intended to serve grant the right to construct and use highways across public lands that were not otherwise reserved or protected for other public use.
Although repealed in 1976, claims on right of ways prior to the repeal can still be made. When announcing the settlement, both Norton and Utah Governor Mike Leavitt said it only applies to existing publicly traveled and regularly maintained roads.
It does not apply to environmentally sensitive areas, Interior Department officials say, but conservationists believe this is untrue.
The actual language of the agreement rolls back existing law, according to Heidi MacIntosh, conservation director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and does not place the limits conveyed by Bush administration officials.
"They are trying to put the best possible face on this," MacIntosh said. "If the only thing at issue here were the real constructed roads, we would not be arguing about this."
There was no environmental review of what these claims could do, MacIntosh said, and it will allow Utah to pursue "bogus RS2477 claims" such as dirt roads, paths made by offroad vehicles, and even stream beds.
The legal action that resulted in this memorandum of understanding was brought by the state of Utah and the National Association of Counties, which urged Norton to adopt a policy approach to RS2477.
"Counties have seized on this as their get out of wilderness free card," MacIntosh said., adding that some six million acres of BLM could be affected by RS2477 claims under the memorandum issued by Norton.
Estimates range from 15,000 to 20,000 claims, which could "wreck havoc" with wilderness protection plans, MacIntosh said.
The concern is not just for Utah, explained Pam Eaton, Four Corners regional director of The Wilderness Society, because the agreement sets a precedent for other states to seek similar memorandums of understanding with the Interior Department.
Conservationists say they will look to Congress and possibly the courts to remedy these decisions. Several Congressional Democrats have voiced concern about the Interior Department's policies and have requested explanations from Norton.