Wednesday, 08 Oct 2003

Rake That Muck

Senators Wheel and Deal on Climate, Energy, and the Arctic Refuge

What does it take to buy a senator's support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? How do things work deep inside the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee? How much would it cost the average U.S. family for the nation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels by 2010? Where does the word "muckraker" come from? Learn all these things and more in this week's Muckraker column -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Nuclear Holler Costs

Nuclear Weapons Facilities Vulnerable to Terrorists, Whistleblower Says

Nuclear weapons facilities in the United States are vulnerable to terrorist attacks, according to a whistleblower who recounts his tale to reporter (and Grist contributor) Mark Hertsgaard in the November issue of Vanity Fair. Until September 2001, federal employee Rich Levernier was in charge of coordinating simulated attacks on weapons facilities. The results of those simulations reveal just how unprepared the U.S. is for the real thing: During more than half of the staged attacks, Levernier's teams of faux terrorists successfully stole plutonium and escaped unscathed. Levernier, who made his claims public for the first time in the article, is suing the Department of Energy for gagging him and removing him from his duties without sufficient cause. The DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees weapons facilities, calls his claims "simply untrue."

Cold, Hard Kashmir

Kashmir Gets an Amusement Park, but Enviros Are Not Amused

The war-torn Indian province of Kashmir is hardly a place you'd go for amusement -- but now, you can go there for an amusement park. That's right: On Sunday, a private bank unveiled a brand-new amusement park in the town of Pahalgam in the Himalayan foothills, to the delight of many locals, who have been deprived of ordinary entertainment by the ongoing conflict in the region. But environmentalists are not amused in the least; they fear that Pahalgam, long famed for its natural beauty, could become a hotspot for money-hungry developers. They accuse the park of having no facilities to treat its waste products, of not blending in with its surroundings, and of leaking dyes into a nearby river, and they say that the area development board was not consulted about the project.

Dollars Without Sense

Privatizing Forest Service Jobs Would Cost More, Study Finds

A Bush administration plan to privatize hundreds of U.S. Forest Service jobs, from wildlife biologists to safety officers, would cost taxpayers more than continuing to pay federal employees, a new agency study has found. Under the Bush plan, as many as one-fourth of all 40,000 USFS jobs would be outsourced in the interest of "improving the cost-effectiveness" of the agency -- but according to a study that looked at jobs in New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Texas and Oklahoma, private contractors would cost more than federal employees. The study's authors found, among other things, that federal employees were a better bargain because they're used to wearing many hats and working with tight budgets. The Bush administration is also studying the possibility of privatizing jobs within the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.

Can't Get a Piece of the Rock

British Insurance Companies Would Not Cover Farmers Growing GM Crops

The general public in the U.K. is deeply opposed to genetically modified crops, and now British farmers have yet another reason not to grow them: No one will insure them. A study by the agricultural organization Farm found that none of Britain's five major insurance underwriters would be willing to insure farms that were growing (or thinking about growing) GM crops. Nor would they insure non-GM farmers trying to protect themselves against crop contamination. All the companies said too little was known about the long-term effects of GM crops on human and environmental health. Comparing the crops to the likes of asbestos and Thalidomide (the drug that caused gross birth defects in babies), one company said, "There is a real feeling that GM could come back and bite you in five years."