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America’s Environment at Risk: The Local Impacts of the Bush Administration’s Anti-Environmental Policies 2002-04-02 Americas_Enviro_At_Risk.pdf

Executive Summary

As the new home of RIPIRG's environmental work, Environment Rhode Island can be contacted regarding this report.

As the long Fourth of July weekend approaches, families are packing their minivans for short getaways; college students are packing their coolers to head to the beach; and city dwellers are heading out to enjoy nature in our National Parks. Children are celebrating their summer vacations at neighborhood playgrounds, summer camps and community swimming pools.

However, Americans are at risk of losing these simple pleasures and much, much more.

Vacationers packing their bags for a holiday weekend next year, five years from now or 10 years from now—or even this year—may find themselves visiting beaches that have been contaminated and closed by water pollution. Sightseers at National Parks may not be able to enjoy the scenic vistas because of thick haze obstructing the horizon. Families traveling by car may pay exorbitantly at the gas pump to fill up their SUVs. Nature enthusiasts may revisit a favorite forest, only to find it logged. Children may go fishing with Grandpa at a lake where the fish are too poisoned with mercury to eat. Old friends may find themselves road-tripping along side a cask of highly radioactive waste heading to Yucca Mountain. In our nation’s cities, children eager to play outside may be forced to stay indoors because of critically unsafe air pollution.

Who is threatening Americans’ quality of life? Under pressure from the oil companies, electric utilities, the nuclear industry and other industry giants, the Bush administration has allowed corporate polluters to water down or completely gut the cornerstone laws designed to protect the environment and public health.

Of course, the polluters’ assaults on the environment and public health threaten to ruin much more than our vacations; they promise to darken our skies, choke our lungs, pollute our waters, and poison our land. America’s environment is at risk, and each state in the Union will share the burden of policies written by the polluters and enacted by the Bush administration. This report details some of the administration’s worst attacks on the environment and reveals how each state will experience the very real, very local effects of these harmful actions.

• Clean Air at Risk: The coal-burning utilities have been lobbying for years to weaken the Clean Air Act, and they have found a sympathetic ear in the Bush administration. The administration’s plan strikes at the heart of the Clean Air Act and will lead to more asthma attacks and premature death; cause more acid rain, damaging our forests and streams; choke our National Parks with haze; and poison fish and wildlife with mercury.

• Wild Forests at Risk: The Bush administration’s failure to implement the Roadless Area Conservation Rule—and subsequent attempts to undermine it completely—places almost 60 million acres of pristine national forests at risk to logging and development.

• Toxic Waste Cleanups at Risk: Under pressure from some of the country’s most prolific polluters and campaign contributors, the Bush administration has failed to reauthorize the Superfund “polluter pays” tax, which has slowed cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic waste sites and will shift the bulk of the cost of these cleanups onto taxpayers’ shoulders.

• Public Lands at Risk: The oil and gas industry, with allies and former top executives staffed in every level of the Bush administration, helped Vice President Cheney draft the administration’s energy policy. As such, the Bush administration is calling for dramatically stepped up oil and gas production on our public lands, often at the expense of some of the most beautiful and fragile wild places left in the United States.

• Neighborhoods at Risk: The Bush administration is pushing forward with a plan to store the nation’s nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a plan that will require hauling thousands of shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste through neighborhoods in 44 states.

• Beaches at Risk: The Bush administration has been holding up regulations that would require sewer operators to improve sewer capacity and operations and to notify health authorities and the public when sewage overflowing into oceans, rivers and streets could endanger public health.

• Environmental Laws at Risk: The Bush administration is pushing to exempt the Department of Defense from most of our cornerstone environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act and Superfund, in the name of national security.

• Energy Efficiency at Risk: The Bush administration announced that it would allow air conditioner manufacturers to meet weakened efficiency requirements, ensuring that electricity demand—and consumers’ electricity bills—will remain high on hot summer days.

• Mountains at Risk: The coal industry, as one of the most powerful special interests in Washington, D.C., has wielded particular influence over the shape of the country’s energy policy. The Bush administration has proposed a rule that would legitimize “mountaintop removal” coal mining, in which companies literally blast the tops off mountains in order to access thin coal seams and then dump the waste into neighboring valleys and waterways.

• Mining Regulations at Risk: Upon entering office, the Bush administration quickly gutted new rules to protect drinking water and aquatic habitat from mining waste and ensure that polluters, not taxpayers, pay the full cost of mine remediation.

• Global Climate at Risk: The industries with the most financial might in Washington, D.C.—the oil and gas industry, auto industry, coal industry, large manufacturers and electric utilities—are united in their opposition to sensible action to curb emissions of global warming pollution. In February 2002, the Bush administration issued a plan that would allow global warming emissions to increase, rather than decrease.

• Clean Water at Risk: The Bush administration has proposed weakening a program of the Clean Water Act designed to clean up 20,000 impaired water bodies across the country. These changes would make cleanup strategies voluntary, decrease EPA's responsibility for ensuring that states follow the law, and substitute more studies for real cleanup requirements.

• Auto Fuel Economy at Risk: Bowing to the political muscle of the auto industry, the Bush administration actively opposed increasing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2013, which would have saved American consumers billions of dollars at the gas pump, conserved millions of barrels of oil and reduced global warming emissions.

• America’s Biodiversity at Risk: The Bush administration has failed to adequately fund the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s programs to implement the Endangered Species Act, threatening valuable species across the country with extinction.

• Public Health at Risk: Despite well-documented studies showing dioxin’s extreme toxicity, the Bush administration has failed to finalize and release a reassessment of dioxin exposure and its human health effects. This is nearly a year after the administration’s Science Advisory Board recommended that the report be finalized ‘expeditiously.’

• Local Environmental Laws at Risk: Currently, multinational corporations are using international trade agreements as a means to challenge certain environmental laws, claiming they are barriers to free trade. One of the Bush administration’s top priorities is renewal of “Fast Track” negotiating authority, which would give the president virtually unfettered authority to negotiate additional trade agreements with no protections for the environment or consumers.