Troma in Your Neighborhood?
By John Watson with Toby Vest
"The Bush administration, using an arbitrary Enron-like accounting gimmick, is authorizing massive pollution increases to benefit Republican campaign contributors at the expense of public health," said John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air Project.
Over the past three years, through a veil of secrecy and
lame duck policy decisions the Bush administration has completely ignored
the importance of our environment or what their shoddy policies are doing
to it. Since the 2000 inauguration, President Bush has done nothing to
prevent rapidly increasing industrial pollution that threatens the future
of our nation. However, the administration has done some great things to
appease the utility and power industries.
The first issue that deserves disclosure is the administration
lifting the ban on the sale of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) contaminated
property. This ban, which has been in place for 25 years, was intended
to prevent hundreds of polluted sites from being redeveloped in ways that
spread or magnify public health risks.
The PCB’s, located in the soil, seep into the water systems
and can contaminate anyone who comes into contact with it over prolonged
periods of time (i.e. living on the land, planting vegetables, etc.). Many
researchers believe PCB’s to be cancer-causing agents. Removing restrictions
on the sale of these properties allows developers to cultivate the land
as they see fit. Imagine the number of subdivisions and housing projects
that go up every year in this country and picture the effect these toxic
living conditions could have on an entire community. It might end up looking
like something out of a Troma film. A neighborhood of toxic refugees, mutated
and sickly, just so a man the president went to school with can increase
his company’s profit margins.
Another of President Bush’s reckless environmental policies
is the de-regulation of automobile emissions. Shortly after taking office
the Bush administration disavowed the landmark 1997 global warming act.
This international global warming treaty forced car manufacturers to meet
mandatory targets for reducing carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases
linked to the problem of the earth’s rising temperature. Bush administration
defense is it’s not their job to regulate global warming. Apparently, it’s
not their job to handle a number of issues so they remain content to sit
idly by.
A discussion of how the Bush administration has decided to
allow thousands of the nation’s oldest coal-powered plants and refineries
to upgrade their facilities without installing costly counter-pollution
equipment is also deserved.
The administration’s Clean Air Act requires new plants and
utilities to install the best available pollution-control technology. However,
plants and refineries built before 1970 are exempt from having to install
modern "scrubbers" unless they undertake extensive and costly
improvements that boost power production and pollution. Industry officials
have long complained that the distinction between "routine maintenance"
and more substantial improvements are too vague. Now, under the rule, which
according to acting EPA administrator Marianne L. Horinko went into effect
in fall 2003, older plants can avoid installing pollution controls when
they replace equipment -- even if the upgrade increases pollution -- provided
the cost does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of replacing a plant's
essential production equipment, and the new parts are the "functional
equivalent" of the worn-out equipment.
The decision marks an important cost-effective victory for
the utility industry, which has vigorously lobbied the administration for
2 ½ years to relax the Clean Air Act enforcement program. Under the rule
change, industry will potentially save billions of dollars in pollution-control
equipment costs while continuing to emit hundreds of thousands of tons
of pollutants. These pollutants contain sulfur-dioxide, which is a deadly
compound that is the leading cause of acid rain.
"The Bush administration, using an arbitrary Enron-like
accounting gimmick, is authorizing massive pollution increases to benefit
Republican campaign contributors at the expense of public health,"
said John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air Project.
And Walke is correct in his statement. For example, if a
coal-powered plant replaces a boiler at a cost that is less than 20 percent
of the combined replacement cost of the boiler, turbine, generator and
other equipment, the company would not have to install devices to control
the additional pollution.
These three anti-environment policies of the administration
are the tip of the iceberg as far as their attack on nature goes. Their
War on the Environment is simply another on their list, ranking well below
their other concerns but just as damaging to our prospect of a bright and
hopeful future. But why should the President be concerned, the polluted
air travels mainly to the Northeast, where no one voted for him anyway.
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