11/01/01 -- U.S.: Environmental Rollbacks Mount Under Cover of War

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

U.S.: Environmental Rollbacks Mount Under Cover of War

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

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11/01/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

While America's attention is focused on the war against terrorism,

the Bush administration is moving to dismantle major environmental

protections. Recent environmental rollbacks have occurred on popular

mining, wetland and forest protections - with little discussion or

oversight. Believe what you may regarding the righteousness of the

current American war effort, but nothing justifies short-thrifting

the environment in the name of national security. Even mainstream

media is beginning to note (below) that the war on terrorism is

beginning to look like an overt and covert war on the environment as

well.

By turning its back on the climate and bioterrorism treaties early in

its administration, President Bush showed a dangerous unilateral

streak. This go it alone attitude has had horrendous consequences.

Global security depends upon the Bush administration engaging with

the World to address the range of global security threats - including

questions of global environmental sustainability. It is incumbent

upon the Bush administration to reengage and support the Kyoto

process, to protect roadless forests in its National Parks, and in

general not use fears of terrorism to pursue regressive environmental

policies.

This war's rhetoric is largely based upon achieving security. There

can be no security, ever, if there are not ecosystems to sustain us.

Even in this trying time, the U.S. cannot relax the vigil over the

nation's and World's environment. The current gutting of

environmental measures under the shroud of war must be stopped.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: More Environmental Rollbacks

Date: October 29, 2001

Byline: Editorial

While the nation's attention is focused on the war against terrorism,

the Bush administration is moving, both overtly and covertly, to

dismantle major elements of Bill Clinton's environmental legacy. It

is difficult at a moment of crisis to devote much thought to things

like mining rules or snowmobile bans. But if the president's top

officials have time to undermine environmental regulations, the

public needs to pay attention as well.

The war against the Clinton rules goes back to Inauguration Day, when

the new administration suspended a half-dozen directives approved in

Mr. Clinton's final weeks. Among these was a rule reducing the

arsenic content in drinking water. The arsenic blunder came to

symbolize the administration's fecklessness on environmental issues

generally, and only when Christie Whitman, administrator of the

Environmental Protection Agency, promised to review the matter did

the issue recede. But as Interior Secretary Gale Norton now reminds

us, the demolition effort proceeds.

On Thursday, Ms. Norton wheeled out her subordinates at the Bureau of

Land Management to announce the reversal of Clinton-era regulations

involving hard-rock mining for minerals like gold, copper and lead.

The Clinton rules would have imposed stricter environmental standards

on mining operations and, for the first time, would have given

federal officials the power to block mines likely to cause

"substantial irreparable harm" to water quality and other natural

resources. The department claimed that the rules had been concocted

at the "eleventh hour" and were unduly onerous. They had in fact been

in the works for years, and did little more than impose on the hard-

rock mining industry some of the same standards that apply to other

extractive industries.

At least Ms. Norton was up front about it. Much of the assault on the

Clinton rules is occurring under the radar, in obscure courtrooms

where industry is challenging them, and in closed-door negotiations

that shield the administration from public accountability. Industry

lawsuits against government rules are hardly unusual. What is unusual

is the administration's decision to use this litigation as an excuse

to weaken, through settlement talks, popular rules that it would

prefer not to attack directly.

A small but telling case in point is the administration's sneaky

effort to reverse a Clinton rule phasing out snowmobiles from

Yellowstone National Park - a rule buttressed by overwhelming public

approval and years of conscientious science. Under pressure from

various industry lawsuits, however, the administration has agreed to

review the matter and issue what is widely expected to be a more

industry-friendly proposal next year.

In like fashion, the administration has signaled a retreat from Mr.

Clinton's most ambitious land conservation measure - a Forest Service

rule protecting 60 million largely untouched acres of national forest

from new road building, new oil and gas leasing and most new logging.

Nine separate lawsuits have been filed against the plan, by private

companies and state governments. In each case, the Justice Department

has failed to defend the conservation rule in court. Nor, from the

look of things, does it intend to. The sad truth is that the Bush

administration would like nothing better than a court-ordered excuse

to rewrite the plan so as to accommodate the very commercial activity

Mr. Clinton had hoped to prevent.

Another possible rollback that has received virtually no public

attention involves the nation's diminishing wetlands. After a decade

of struggle, environmentalists finally persuaded the Clinton

administration to close a loophole in the clean water laws that had

exposed many thousands of acres of valuable wetlands to commercial

development. In the week before Earth Day last April, when Mr. Bush

was trying to atone for the arsenic fiasco, Mrs. Whitman promised to

keep the loophole closed. Within days, however, the Justice

Department began talks with the home builders and other industry

groups - talks from which the environmentalists say they have been

excluded. Mrs. Whitman's resolve may again be tested.

ITEM #2

Title: Negotiating Away the Environment

Date: October 30, 2001

Byline: Editorial

Americans overwhelmingly support a number of environmental

protections, according to a Los Angeles Times Poll last spring. Never

mind, the Bush administration is quietly selling out the environment

by "negotiating" settlement of lawsuits brought by business and

industry.

The Department of the Interior is using this procedure as a way to

reverse the ban on snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park and the

prohibition on further road building in 60million unspoiled acres of

the national forest. It's an underhanded way of gutting needed

environmental measures taken after years of study and strong popular

support. This practice should be stopped.

When rules were challenged in the past, the federal government went

to court to defend them. Now they are "negotiated" before any talks

are even held, a de facto victory for the commercial exploiters of

the nation's parks and forests. In Yellowstone, the administration

claimed it was reconsidering the snowmobile ban to collect more

information that might shed a different light on the issue. This is a

subterfuge foisted on us by the International Snowmobile

Manufacturers Assn., which sued the Park Service and forced a new

study and a new decision just as the phaseout of the noisy, polluting

machines was to begin. In fact, the ban was adopted by the Park

Service after 10 years of study and the comments of thousands of

Americans, including affected industry and commercial interests and

local agencies as well as conservation groups and ordinary citizens.

The subterfuge of "negotiations" is also at work in the Department of

Agriculture for logging interests seeking to overturn the ban on

roads and for opponents of re-introducing grizzly bears into parts of

Montana and Idaho. Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton canceled

the bear program after Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne challenged the plan

in court and denounced the bears as "massive, flesh-eating

carnivores."

Norton was more open in her outright cancellation of a rule allowing

the Interior Department to deny a permit for a proposed mining

operation that would result in "substantial irreparable harm" to the

environment. The mining industry called the rule too broad and vague.

The law governing mining on federal lands is virtually unchanged from

1879 and is in desperate need of reform.

President Bush also is touting a plan, developed by Vice President

Dick Cheney, that would benefit the big energy companies while

offering the false hope of energy security and despoiling the unique

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Americans are focused on the awful toll of terrorism and the slumping

economy. But those who would exploit our natural resources continue

their quest for commercial gain. Even in this awful time, the U.S.

cannot relax the vigil over the nation's environment.

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