Thursday, 07 Dec 2000

Sweeney Among the Corps-n-gales

Three top officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rigged an economic study to justify spending $1 billion to expand a system of locks along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, according to a Pentagon investigation released yesterday. The report by the Army's inspector general also found that the agency has an institutional bias toward huge river construction projects regardless of their cost. Corps leaders had predicted in congressional hearings that the report would fully vindicate their agency, but instead it supported several of the allegations of whistle-blower Don Sweeney. Sweeney was removed as head of the economic study on the locks system after he found that the costs of the system would outweigh the benefits.

Lame Duck Tales

In its last seven weeks, the Clinton administration is preparing a raft of environmental regulations. Standards for organic food labels, new limits on sulfur in diesel fuel, and protections for almost 60 million acres of roadless national forestland will be among the high-profile regs. Other regulations will likely include limits on mercury releases from power plants and waste runoff from animal feedlots, as well as a new policy barring the federal government from contracting with companies that have violated environmental laws. Word is that the U.S. EPA is hoping next fall to crack down on emissions from a wide range of mobile sources including dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, pleasure boats, and industrial vehicles such as forklifts -- but who knows if such a plan would survive a George W. Bush administration. Already, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is blocking an end-of-the-year budget deal with the Clinton administration because he is upset about new rules restricting fishing off of Alaska to protect the Steller sea lion.

Capitalist Pigs

In what could be a harbinger of things to come should George W. Bush become president, environmental groups and family farm advocates yesterday unveiled a campaign in which hotshot lawyers from 15 law firms will help them fight pollution from factory hog farms. Taking a page from the tobacco war books, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said that the most effective way to stop corporate pollution during a lax Bush administration would be to file mass tort cases against polluters with the aim of winning huge court-ordered damage awards. The enviros' pilot case is a lawsuit filed this summer against Smithfield Foods, the nation's biggest pork producer, for creating a public nuisance by spilling billions of gallons of hog waste into North Carolina rivers. The enviros estimate it would cost $148 billion to cover the damages to 3.7 million acres of wetlands.

Heir Apparent's Air Is Apparent

Texas's top environmental officials approved a major new plan yesterday for cleaning up the air of Houston, the country's smoggiest city. The plan by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, which would bring the area into compliance with federal clean air standards by 2007, would cap the speed limit in an eight-country region at 55 miles per hour, require stricter tailpipe tests for vehicles, and ban the use of diesel construction equipment during morning hours for part of the year. The U.S. EPA is expected to approve the plan (especially if Texas Gov. George Bush becomes president). Some environmentalists criticized the plan for not including aggressive enough measures to fight ozone pollution.