Home    News    April 2002

News from the Keweenaw Peninsula Posted April 23, 2002 Press release © 2002 Public Interest Research Group in Michigan (PIRGIM)

Earth Day report shows sweeping attack on environment, health at federal agencies

LANSING -- Key Bush administration agencies have been quietly carrying out a coordinated attack on numerous environmental safeguards, according to environmental and public interest groups in a new report released on Earth Day, April 22, 2002.

"America's environment is at risk this Earth Day. Our clean air and clean water laws are clearly in the hands of polluters," said Vicki Levengood, Michigan organizer for the National Environmental Trust (NET). "The Bush Administration is working overtime to pay back their friends in industry." 

The report, "Rewriting the Rules: The Bush Administration's Unseen Assault on the Environment," by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), provides a detailed review of more than 30 recent or ongoing Bush Administration attacks on public health and the environment and an appendix of nearly 90 environmentally destructive actions since last January. The report also details the White House Office of Management and Budget's efforts to weaken environmental safeguards by twisting the regulatory process to benefit industry at the expense of public health and the environment.

"The vast majority of voters oppose these attacks on the environment. The problem is that the vast majority of corporate campaign contributors love them," said Isaac Elnecave, Air Policy Specialist with the Michigan Environmental Council. "EPA efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act to aid polluting power companies like Enron are the result."

Some of the most glaring examples documented in the report include:

• A pending Environmental Protection Agency proposal, which would undermine the fundamental Clean Air Act requirement directing older power plants, refineries and other major air pollution sources to install state-of-the-art cleanup equipment when they expand or modernize their facilities (known as New Source Review), allowing 17,000 facilities to emit higher levels of smog and soot forming pollutants.
   
• The "Clear Skies" initiative that ignores global warming pollution and sets new targets for three other pollutants from power plants -- mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide -- that would delay emission cuts now required by the Clean Air Act by up to 10 years.
   
• Failure to defend the Roadless Area Conservation Rule protecting wild national forest lands, while undermining core protections through obscure Forest Service bureaucratic directives, and failure to defend the rule from timber industry lawsuits.
   
• Shifting costs of cleaning up the nation's most dangerous toxic waste to citizens, rather than making polluters foot the bill. Abandoning the polluter pays principle means placing the financial responsibility of the massive clean up program squarely on the shoulders of American taxpayers and means fewer toxics sites being cleaned up.

"These rollbacks will have direct impacts on the health of the people of Michigan," said Elliot Levinsohn, the Air Policy Manager of the American Lung Association of Michigan. "There are over 250,000 people with asthma in Michigan who will have a harder time breathing because of weakened clean air standards."

"Under President Bush's watch, federal agencies are quietly twisting rules that are supposed to safeguard public health and resources," said Megan Owens, Field Director for PIRGIM (Public Interest Research Group in Michigan). "The polluters and the Bush administration have learned that what they couldn't do in public view due to public outcry, they can do behind closed doors -- if no-one hears about it."

Save Our Environment, a coalition of the nation's leading environmental organizations, is conducting a national public education campaign in observance of the 32nd annual Earth Day. The campaign includes a new television ad and a website detailing environmental attacks and opportunities for action, www.saveourenvironment.org. The coalition hopes to build public awareness about the Bush Administration's efforts to weaken environmental safeguards and encourages Americans to participate in Earth Day by writing to their local newspapers and contact their elected officials to urge that they oppose the trampling of environmental safeguards.

"There is still time to reverse these unprecedented assaults by the polluters and their allies on our health and our environment," concluded Owens. "Poll after poll tells us that the public supports more, not less, environmental protection. President Bush should listen to the public, not the polluters."

For more information on the Earth Day campaign effort, visit the environmental community's collaborative website for environmental activism: www.saveourenvironment.org. Participating organizations include: American Oceans Campaign, American Rivers, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, League of Conservation Voters, National Audubon Society, National Environmental Trust, National Parks Conservation Association, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sierra Club, the Ocean Conservancy, the State PIRGs (including PIRGIM), the Wilderness Society, Union of Concerned Scientists, and World Wildlife Fund.

Visit the Keweenaw Now discussion forums to comment on this article.