Friday, 01 Oct 2004

Who You Gonna Believe, Us or Some "Inspector"?

EPA inspector general blasts Bush admin's power-plant rules

The U.S. EPA came under harsh criticism yesterday from environmental fringe extremists ... oh, wait, no ... actually, from its own top investigative official. The agency's inspector general issued a scathing report saying that enforcement of clean-air laws has been crippled by the Bush administration's decision to substantially revise the new-source review rule, which requires that power plants upgrading their equipment install the latest pollution-control technologies. The Bush EPA proposed changing the rule to say that the new upgrades must cost at least 20 percent of the value of the generating unit for the requirements to kick in -- a change that top officials claimed would have no adverse effect on enforcement efforts. In fact, after interviewing numerous agency employees, Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley concluded that even though the new rule has not been instituted yet, current lawsuits have been stymied and it has become more difficult to launch new enforcement actions. Enviros hailed the report even as officials in the agency's political (as opposed to enforcement) wing dismissed it.

Hang Up and Hike

Cell towers and phones are invading national parks

The swish of a breeze through the trees. The twittering of birds. The burbling of a brook. The ... opening notes of "U Can't Touch This"? Get used to it: Bleeping (and by that we mean fricking) cell phones are becoming more common in national parks, in part because cell companies are pushing to build towers there. For instance, you may recently have had your view of the majestic Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone enhanced by the looming cell tower nearby. A proposal to build three towers along a scenic road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park was recently withdrawn by a wireless company after Sen. Lamar Alexander and Rep. John Duncan Jr., Tennessee Republicans both, called it "one of the worst ideas we have heard," but phone companies are still pushing. A National Park Service inventory lists at least 30 national parks sporting cell towers -- and the inventory isn't finished. Park managers lamely point to security as a justification for the towers, leading enviros to wonder how it is that millions of park visitors over the decades have survived in the wilds without wireless access.

Amazon Women on the Move

Friend of indigenous Ecuadorians fields queries on rainforest conservation

Judy Logback believes that the Amazon rainforest ecosystem cannot be effectively preserved unless the rural villagers who populate the forest are involved in the effort. As she explains to inquisitive Grist readers, she organized the Kallari Association to facilitate just this sort of involvement; it's a network of indigenous artisans and farmers who market and sell their wares across the globe. Grist readers were full of questions about the endeavor, wanting to know whether the model works, who buys the stuff, how they can get involved, and how Logback manages to fit a personal life into all this work. She reveals all in InterActivist -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Utah, You've Been Norton'd!

Interior Department protecting Utah rivers from wrong threat

Last month, Interior Secretary Gale Norton splashily announced the Three Rivers Withdrawal: Nearly 200 miles of prized territory along Utah's Green, Colorado, and Dolores rivers would be withdrawn from consideration for new hard-rock mining claims. The proposal had been on her desk for 18 months, so some enviros suspected the timing of the announcement had quite a bit to do with burnishing Bush's tattered environmental credentials during an election year. But hey, protections are protections, right? Well, not so much. According to a review of Interior Department land-use records by the Environmental Working Group, mining is not what most threatens the area. The real threat is oil and gas development -- and oh yeah, three days before Norton's announcement, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off oil and gas leases on some 5,000 acres of territory surrounding the rivers.

Leftovers Again?

New environmental trend: eating other folks' leftovers

Here at Grist we love reporting on new environmental trends, especially when there are gimmicky new terms coined to describe them. Herewith, we give you the "freegan," someone who subsists entirely on food other people -- usually restaurants or grocery stores -- have thrown out. Though freegans can often be found rooting through dumpsters around closing time, for the most part they are not jobless or homeless -- they are simply protesting a culture that discards tons of edible food while people starve elsewhere in the world. Adam Weissman, a part-time New York City security guard who has lived almost entirely on free, discarded food for some nine years, says freeganism is "about being aware of the insane waste by our culture of overproduction and overconsumption." He claims he has never gotten sick from discarded food: "When you throw out food from your refrigerator, it's at the point where it's gross. That's not the case with stores." Freeganism is not without its risks, though. As adherent John Phillips explains, "People go crazy because they find a 50-pound bag of doughnuts. Restraint is a problem."