Tuesday, 01 Nov 2005

All the loudest chatter about Samuel Alito, President Bush's new nominee for the Supreme Court, centers on abortion. But where does this longtime appellate court judge come down on environmental issues? Muckraker ferrets out the story.

We've Got a Beef With That

Federal grazing program loses money hand over hoof

Aren't you just sick of welfare queens sucking off the public teat? We're talking, of course, about Western ranchers who graze their cattle on public land. A new analysis from the Government Accountability Office reveals that 10 federal agencies spent $144 million managing the government's grazing program in the last fiscal year, and got back only $21 million in fees -- less than a sixth of the cost. Most ranchers pay an average of $13.30 a month to graze a cow-calf pair on private land, while running the same bovine duo on public land costs them only $1.79 a month. Conservationists say the program subsidizes activities that destroy the land and provide only a fraction of the nation's beef, but Jim Hughes of the Bureau of Land Management says the Bush administration has no plans to change current policies. After all, he says, ranchers need "that public land to subsidize operations to stay in business."


Unless you're a workaholic -- or avoiding the prospect of leftover meatloaf at home -- you probably don't see much of your workplace cleaning staff, who perform their thankless tasks in the dark of night or the wee morning hours. But the potent products they use affect both their health and yours. Today, Joel Makower explores the industrial green-cleaning revolution, and explains how your company can join.

Arbor Slay

Poverty drives forest loss in Malawi

Southern Africa's Malawi (yes, it's a country -- look it up) loses about 200 square miles of forest a year to illegal logging for firewood and charcoal; over a fifth of the nation's forests disappeared between 1990 and 2000. Twenty-three tree species are endangered, streams are drying up, air pollution is increasing, and some rivers get so clogged with silt that hydroelectric-power operations are impaired. Poverty and joblessness are the primary drivers -- about 8 million of the nation's 12 million people earn less than a dollar a day, far too little to buy stoves or devices needed to hook up to the electrical grid. "The problem is that we have nothing else to do," says one illegal logger. "We have no money ... So we have to cut the trees to feed our families." Studies suggest Malawians could prosper by using the forests sustainably -- selling honey from forest beehives, or botanicals for traditional medicines -- if they can just escape the daily struggle for survival.

Dumping to a Conclusion

Louisiana officials and enviros clash over disposal of hurricane debris

The pressure on regional officials to cleanse New Orleans of the trash and debris left by Hurricane Katrina is intense -- so intense that eco-groups say they're cutting corners, sending garbage to areas not equipped to handle it, and on the verge of creating a Superfund-sized toxic problem. Illegal dumping in the swampland east of residential New Orleans is already openly tolerated. Also, the state Department of Environmental Quality recently reopened a city-owned garbage dump in the same area that was shut down by federal regulators years ago. Yesterday, the Sierra Club and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network filed suit to stop most kinds of dumping in the landfill, charging that it wasn't constructed to prevent groundwater contamination. Said LEAN lawyer Robert Wiygul, "We don't want to respond to one disaster by creating another one." But the state claims the landfill meets "all the standards," and anyway, said a DEQ official, "the ultimate goal is speed."