Thursday, 03 Jan 2002

Coal in His Stalking

More bad news from the Bush administration: The U.S. EPA is planning to relax Clinton-era interpretations of the Clean Air Act by allowing owners of aging coal-fired power plants to upgrade their facilities without installing pollution controls. The policy change is bound to be unpopular with environmentalists, as well as with many Northeast states, which cannot meet federal clean-air standards because of pollution drifting toward them from coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and the South. The EPA proposals do not require congressional approval and cannot be blocked without the passage of new legislation -- an unlikely scenario, given the Republican-controlled House and President Bush's veto power.

Physics Lab Tests Tensile Strength of Senator

And from the other side of the aisle ... U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), normally thought of as environmentally friendly, is championing legislation to protect a mining company from any liability for environmental damage done in its 125 years of operating in the senator's home state. The company, Homestake Mining, plans to close its gold mine in South Dakota's Black Hills this month; the mine will then be converted to an underground physics laboratory. Under the Daschle bill, which has already been approved by Congress and will likely be signed by President Bush in the next few days, the government will spend between $500 million and $1 billion to build and equip the lab and to indemnify the mining company. Daschle and other supporters say the lab will boost the local economy. But critics, including Rep. Sherry Boehlert (R-N.Y.), describe the bill as a sweetheart deal for the mining company and worry that it will set a dangerous precedent by placing limitations on liability and saddling taxpayers with the cost of cleaning up private-sector projects.

Tijuana Ass

For decades, raw sewage from Tijuana has flowed into the Tijuana River, north through the United States, and into the Pacific Ocean, violating U.S. clean water standards. Efforts to clean up the waste have bogged down in the double-bureaucracy that plagues cross-border negotiations, with fully one dozen Mexican and U.S. municipal, state, and federal agencies weighing in. Now, though, there's a glimmer of hope that the sewage problem could be solved once and for all: This month, officials from both countries are meeting to discuss a plan to pipe millions of gallons of sewage from an existing but only semi-effective treatment plant in the U.S. back into Mexico, where a U.S.-funded plant would further cleanse the waste before piping it to the sea. The plan has met with cautious optimism from some environmental organizations, city officials in San Diego and Tijuana, and marine-sports enthusiasts, who are sick of surfing in sewage.

Coughing in a Winter Wonderland

Be glad you're not on the planning committee for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. First there was terrorism to worry about; now there's the weather. Salt Lake's squeaky-clean image could suffer a blow if the world gets a glimpse of the woeful air pollution that plagues the city in the winter. Snow in Salt Lake City usually means a temperature inversion, which creates one of the ugliest smog blankets in the country. The U.S. EPA ranks Salt Lake among the 10 worst cities in the nation based on carbon monoxide counts. About 1,100 Utah residents per year die from respiratory diseases, which are often caused or exacerbated by poor air quality.

Fuels Don't Rush in

Environmental groups sued the U.S. government yesterday for violating a 1992 law requiring federal agencies to buy vehicles powered by alternative fuels. The suit, filed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Bluewater Network, charges 18 agencies for failing -- in some cases miserably -- to meet the terms of the Energy Policy Act, a Gulf War-era law designed to reduce U.S. dependence on oil. The law requires 75 percent of all agency-owned vehicles to use alternative fuels; alleged violators include the U.S. EPA, the Department of Energy (which is supposed to enforce the law), and the departments of Justice, Commerce, Transportation, Defense, Agriculture, and Interior.

Anniston Get Your Gun

For almost four decades, the Monsanto Company discharged toxic waste, including millions of pounds of PCBs, into creeks and landfills in Anniston, Ala. For most of that time, the company knew PCBs were highly toxic: Monsanto consultants placed fish in the contaminated creeks and watched them die within 10 seconds, and confidential internal reports acknowledged the evident dangers. But the company didn't share that information with Anniston residents, who grew up playing in contaminated dirt and fishing and swimming in toxic lakes and streams. The effects on residents remain unknown, and Monsanto opposes comprehensive health studies. Now it's up to the courts to decide if Monsanto is liable for environmental and health damage in the area -- next week, 3,600 plaintiffs, one of every nine Anniston residents, plan to file suit against the company.