Tuesday, 16 Mar 2004

H2Oops

EPA Exaggerated Claims About Clean Drinking Water

A new report from the U.S. EPA's inspector general slams the agency for systematically exaggerating its progress in cleaning up the nation's drinking water, basing its declarations on faulty or incomplete data. The EPA claimed that 94 percent of U.S. residents drank water that met EPA health standards in 2002, and that number was parroted by the media, but the real figure is more like 81 percent. Wonder if you're among the tens of millions at risk? Read all about the kerfuffle in Muckraker -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Crystallized Meth

Methane Hydrates Could Be Next Big Energy Source; Enviros Concerned

Methane hydrates deep under the ocean floor and the Alaskan permafrost may represent the world's next big energy source, if they can be extracted safely. Some 10 trillion tons of carbon are trapped in the strange ice-like compounds, which form when flammable methane gas is subjected to cold, high-pressure conditions. When perturbed, they can explode violently or release massive amounts of methane -- a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide -- into the atmosphere. Currently, extracting and processing them is six times more expensive than traditional oil and gas drilling, but the U.S. Department of Energy is funneling money into technological advancements that could make it cheaper. This has environmentalists worried. Scientist Jeremy Leggett says, "Thinking of burning methane hydrates is like opening a Pandora's box knowing a murderous and quite probably genocidal genie lurks within it."

Good Label Manners

Some Green-Sounding Food Labels Mean More Than Others

Today's conscientious consumer has a plethora of choices at the supermarket: "Free-Range," "Farm-Friendly," "Organic," and that warmest and fuzziest of warm-fuzzies, "Natural." These labels all sound wonderful, but what do they mean? Some of them, it turns out, mean quite a bit, while others mean almost nothing. Bewildered shoppers can get the scoop on which labels to look for and which to disregard -- on the Grist Magazine website.

Biotech Dot Con

U.S. Government Funds Biotech-Boosting Website

The U.S. government has launched a new website that trumpets the benefits of genetically modified foods -- paid for with taxpayer dollars. It's part of a larger State Department effort to "encourage broader adoption and acceptance of biotechnology in the developing world," said department official Deborah Malac; the program got half a million dollars this year, and a million over the previous two. Some farming and environmental groups have protested that the government should be funding research on the safety of GM crops rather than accepting (and pushing) corporate claims about their beneficial qualities, and that an allegedly free-market society should not be subsidizing individual industries. No complaints, though, from the industry being subsidized: Said Lisa Dry of the Biotechnology Industry Association, "The State Department clearly sees value in this technology and they are trying to share that with other countries."

Regulate First, Ask Questions Later

Flurry of Charges Leads EPA to Revisit Mercury Regs

Amid a swirl of angry charges from states, environmental groups, and its own employees, the U.S. EPA is promising to revisit controversial proposed regulations on mercury emissions from power plants. Several EPA staffers -- who remain anonymous to avoid retaliation -- revealed what enviro groups have long suspected: The process whereby the regulations were developed was driven almost entirely by political appointees doing the bidding of industry lobbying groups and a sympathetic White House. According to the staffers, an expert advisory board's 21 months of work was ignored and staffers were instructed not to conduct the analysis the board requested. Language for the regulations was taken directly from industry lobby proposals. The EPA claimed its regs would reduce mercury emissions from power plants by 70 percent by 2018, but its own database reveals this to be utterly implausible. EPA chief Mike Leavitt is now backing away from the claim and promising to conduct the very analysis staffers were forbidden to undertake previously. Leavitt called post-regulatory analysis the agency's "normal process."