<font color=green>And so begins the dismantling of the EPA! <font color=black>
**********************************************************
Bush taps governor of Utah to run EPA
By JEFF NESMITH
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Monday chose Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a vocal advocate of "states' rights" on environmental matters, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Democrats and environmental groups criticized the appointment, a sign they may try to turn Leavitt's confirmation into a politically charged examination of Bush's environmental policies.
"Mike Leavitt will come to the EPA with a strong environmental record, a strong desire to improve what has taken place in the last three decades," Bush said.
"He respects the ability of state and local government to meet [environmental] standards. He rejects the old ways of command and control from above," Bush said.
Leavitt stressed the need for consensus on environmental regulation. "There is no progress polarizing at the extremes, but great progress when we collaborate in the middle," he said.
The nominee vowed to improve the nation's air quality.
"I'll leave it a better place than I found it," he said. "I'll give it my all."
If confirmed by the Senate, Leavitt would succeed Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor who resigned as head of the EPA in May.
The president announced his choice in Denver, during a Western speaking tour in which he has promoted his administration's forest policies.
The Healthy Forest Initiative, which Bush announced last year, will care for rangelands and forests and protect Western communities from wildfires, the president said.
The initiative, which involves increased "thinning" of national forests, offers "common-sense" techniques for forest management, Bush said.
Wilderness groups have criticized the plan as a scheme to give loggers easier access to wilderness areas in the National Forest System.
They also criticized Leavitt's selection.
"President Bush could have made a far wiser choice," said Doug Scott, policy director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness. "We need someone who will stand up to the polluters and the developers."
A Utah environmental group called Leavitt's nomination a "disappointment."
"He's had a series of actions that have led to environmental degradation," Scott Groene, a lawyer with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in a telephone interview. "Everything from fighting the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to the secret deal he made with [Interior Secretary] Gale Norton that will put millions of acres of Western wilderness at risk."
Under the recent "deal" between the governor and Norton, the Interior Department agreed to rescind much of its authority to protect publicly owned wilderness areas, Groene said.
Word that Bush had settled on Leavitt to succeed Whitman was circulating among well-connected business groups in Washington hours before the president's announcement Monday.
Many welcomed Leavitt's preference for greater state involvement in environmental decisions.
"His genuinely federalist approach will return primary responsibility for environmental law implementation and enforcement back to the individual states," National Association of Manufacturers air quality specialist Jeffrey Marks said.
Frank Maisano, a lobbyist with the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an electric power industry group consisting of Southern Co. of Atlanta and five other utilities, praised Leavitt for being able to forge agreements among disagreeing parties.
It was not immediately clear if Leavitt would succeed in building consensus between Bush and Democrats in Washington who are beginning to see the president's environmental policies and appointments as a potential political problem for him.
"I think the Democrats will use the [Leavitt] confirmation process to put Bush's environmental policies on trial," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, declared Bush the "worst" president ever for the environment and served notice that Leavitt's confirmation process likely will not be an easy one.
"President Bush has the worst environmental record in history," Lieberman declared in a prepared statement. "The American people deserve to know whether Governor Leavitt shares the same disregard for clean air, clean water, land conservation and global warming as the president."
Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, promised to consider the Leavitt nomination with an "open mind" but criticized Bush's environmental policies.
"The Bush administration has a horrific record on the environment, from stalling regulations pertaining to arsenic in water, to gutting the Clean Air Act, to allowing Midwest power plants to continue to pollute, to putting taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up Superfund sites and to ducking the growing problem of global warming," Corzine said.
In These Times ©2003 |
