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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MKTBUZZ who wrote (19299)	8/18/2004 12:16:14 AM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 173976

Bush continues to IGNORE SCIENCE and enforce ENVIRONMENT DESTRUCTION Muddying The Waters Ed Hopkins August 17, 2004 The Bush administration issued a quiet, unpublicized directive to the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers not to enforce existing Clean Water Act protections. The motive? Removing the barrier businesses face when developing wetlands. In an utterly duplicitous move, Bush now touts the decision as a plan to set aside new wetland areas. Sierra Club environmental expert Ed Hopkins says Bush is hoping no one noticed—but they have. Ed Hopkins is environmental quality director for the Sierra Club. The Bush administration knows that Americans, including tens of millions of hunters and anglers, place a high value on protecting wetlands and water quality. Yet the administration also wants to satisfy the demands of oil, mining and development interests for relief from “pesky” Clean Water Act requirements. Using a little political ingenuity, the Bush administration has found a way to balance these competing interests—it simply instructed federal agencies not to enforce longstanding clean water protections, while staging campaign photo-ops to symbolize its “commitment” to wetlands and clean water. Many organizations that represent hunters and anglers, typically considered a core constituency for the Bush administration, have seen through the charade. But the general public remains largely unaware that the administration’s disingenuous maneuver threatens to strip clean water protections from up to 20 million acres of wetlands, as well as other vital waters. The administration began its clean water strategy in January 2003 with a new policy directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers not to enforce Clean Water Act protections for so-called “isolated” wetlands and small streams without first obtaining permission from headquarters in Washington, DC. If the federal agencies do not seek headquarters’ permission, then, by default, the waters are no longer protected. The pretext for this initiative was a Supreme Court decision in January 2001, which held that the Corps of Engineers could not protect intrastate, isolated and non-navigable waters solely on the basis that migratory birds use these waters. The administration’s directive, however, went far beyond the Court’s narrow ruling by undermining protections for waters used as drinking water sources and for irrigation, recreation and industrial purposes, as well as wildlife habitat. This new policy allows developers to pave wetlands and industries to dump waste in headwater streams without meeting any federal requirements. If these waters are destroyed or polluted, the effects will be felt on downstream waters and drinking water supplies. The potential impact to wetlands alone is staggering—the EPA estimated that this initiative could threaten up to 20 million acres in the United States, about a fifth of our remaining wetlands outside of Alaska. Every region of the country contains unique types of aquatic ecosystems threatened by the administration’s directive. These wetlands, ponds, lakes and streams support a wide variety of life, supply clean drinking water, sustain imperiled species, provide natural flood control and perform a host of other functions important to both human and wildlife communities. They are also an important part of our natural and cultural heritage. How is the Bush administration implementing this directive? A recent report based on responses to Freedom of Information Act requests by the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Wildlife Federation shows that Corps districts around the country are denying protection to a diverse array of waters ranging from an 86-acre lake to a 150-mile-long river, to a 4000-acre tract of wetlands and a 70-mile-long canal. The report offers more than a dozen case studies of how the administration’s policy has allowed destruction of our waters. (The report, Reckless Abandon: How the Bush Administration Is Exposing America’s Waters To Harm , is available at sierraclub.org With this directive not to enforce the Clean Water Act in place, quietly but effectively freeing polluters and developers from the Clean Water Act, it was time to reassure the public that the Bush administration is, indeed, committed to clean water. So President Bush celebrated Earth Day 2004 at a wetland in Maine by announcing a new wetlands policy. Going beyond the “no net loss” of wetlands policy that his father set forth—but which the nation has yet to achieve—President Bush set a goal to increase wetlands in America by three million acres over the next five years, relying largely on voluntary incentive programs which, ironically, the administration has actually targeted for funding cuts. President Bush hopes that no one will remember that he exchanged Clean Water Act protections more than 20 million acres of wetlands for an unlikely plan to create or restore three million acres. tompaine.com