I'D LIKE A TUNA ON WHITE — HOLD THE MERCURY!
By Arianna Huffington
To the list of Campaign 2004's make-or-break issues — Iraq, homeland
security, lost jobs, tax cuts — we can now add tuna fish sandwiches.
I'm not kidding.
I was recently at a dinner filled with smart, passionate, politically
active guests. When the talk inevitably turned to the presidential
campaign I was surprised to find that the issue that really set the table
humming was the Bush administration's outrageous undermining of efforts
to curtail mercury pollution — and stop the increasing contamination of
America's air, water and fish-of-choice.
The administration's lies — and ongoing rationalizations — about WMD
are utterly contemptible, but messing with people's tuna salad hits them
right in the gut.
And this is not some theoretical menace whose effects won't be felt for
decades. After a recent medical checkup, I was shocked to discover that
I have elevated levels of mercury in my bloodstream — as do my sister
and four of my closest girlfriends.
The primary source of mercury emissions is coal-fired power plants,
which pump out 48 tons of the highly toxic pollutant a year. A second
important source is the chemical industry. This mercury pollution drifts
into our lakes, rivers and oceans, and ends up in the fish we eat. Which
means it ends up in us. As a result, over 600,000 babies a year may be
born with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood, putting them at risk
for mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness and blindness. How's
that for a security issue?
In adults, exposure to mercury can cause infertility, high blood
pressure, tremors and memory loss, which perhaps explains Jessica Simpson’s
befuddling inability to remember if Chicken of the Sea had fins or
feathers.
Later this year, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue new
mercury emission standards, setting a limit for the first time on the
amount of mercury the nation’s 1,100 coal-burning power plants are allowed
to release into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the Bush administration
is clearly intent on subverting the process by which those standards
are set.
Back in 2001, the EPA created a taskforce made up of state air quality
officials, environmentalists and representatives of the utility
industry to determine the best way to reduce mercury emissions. But after
working diligently on the issue for close to two years, the group was
unceremoniously disbanded before completing its work — and its
recommendations scuttled in favor of a plan that was, surprise, surprise, more to
the liking of the White House's buddies, benefactors and cronies in the
power plant industry.
Without getting shrouded in a toxic cloud of technical mumbo-jumbo, the
bottom line is that current technology offers a way to reduce mercury
emissions by 90 percent over the next four years — but the Bush
administration has opted for a plan that would, at best, lower the noxious
output by just 50 percent over the next 14 years, while setting no
meaningful limits on the tons of mercury released by the chemical industry. All
of which will save the power, coal and chemical industries billions.
Choke on that for a minute: Big Power gets a tasty multibillion-dollar
treat, while everyone else is served up a Toxic Tuna Surprise.
Of course, cooking up distorted scientific findings and dishing out
political favors at the expense of the public good has become something of
a blue plate special at the Bush White House.
So has allowing lobbyists extraordinary input on legislation and
regulations affecting the industries they represent. In the case of the
administration's proposed mercury rules, no less than a dozen paragraphs
were directly lifted, often word for word, from memos prepared by lobbying
and advocacy groups representing power and energy companies with a
major financial stake in the outcome of the regulatory process.
But that's not the half of it. It turns out that two of the key EPA
regulators overseeing the development of the mercury guidelines, Jeff
Holmstead and William Wehrum, used to represent utility industry clients
before Bush tapped them for high-ranking posts in the EPA's Office of Air
and Radiation. They were both attorneys at Latham and Watkins — a
high-powered D.C. law firm that's been lobbying the administration to adopt
the less stringent mercury standards, and which authored one of the
memos cribbed in the EPA proposal.
Here's a thought: Maybe the White House can save taxpayers some money
and have Holmstead and Wehrum put back on the Latham and Watkins
payroll, seeing how they continue to be such devoted company men. Call it the
privatization of the EPA.
This kind of fox-guarding-the-henhouse cronyism is fortunately being
challenged by almost 200,000 citizens, who've signed a MoveOn.org
petition opposing this blatant payback to Bush's utility industry
contributors. And later this week, MoveOn will launch a hard-hitting television and
print ad campaign designed to stoke public outrage over the Bush
mercury proposal, which the EPA's own Children's Health Protection Advisory
Committee declared, "does not sufficiently protect our nation's
children".
Here's a suggestion: Perhaps the president should take a page from Don
Rumsfeld and keep a shard of tin from a can of contaminated tuna on his
Oval Office desk as a daily reminder of the havoc his irresponsible
environmental policies are wreaking on the health of America's kids. Bush
wants this election to be a referendum on his performance as guardian
of our safety. I couldn’t agree more.
© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
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