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Take
Action
Our
Environmental Protections At Risk
A
Turn For The Worse
Stop
The Rollback
Who
Is Challenging Our Laws?
America’s
Arctic Protection At Risk
Other
Protections At Risk:
Public Lands Protection
Safe
Drinking Water
Clean Air Protection
Toxic Waste Cleanup
Protecting Public Lands From Mining
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| The
state PIRGs are working to expose special interest pressure and to ensure
that Congress strengthens, not weakens, our environmental laws. |
| Our
Environmental Protections At Risk
30 Years Of Environmental
Protections
1960’s and 70’s our air was dirtier than ever and some rivers were so
polluted they actually caught fire. In response, Congress passed our nation’s
core environmental laws. Since then, we have won new protections for public
health and our natural heritage.
• Drinking water utilities
must reduce the amount of arsenic in water supplies.
• Oil and gas companies are not allowed to drill in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge.
• Timber companies cannot clearcut 60 million acres of wild national forests.
• Power plants must reduce smog, soot, and deadly toxic pollution.
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A Turn For
The Worse
The Attacks On
Our Environmental Laws
Unfortunately, the oil, timber, coal
and mining industries, and others who stand to gain from weakening our
environmental protections, are attacking these laws. To gain influence
and access to Congress and the President, they have contributed hundreds
of millions of dollars to political campaigns over the last 30 years,
including more than $47 million in the last election alone.
Last
fall, it wasn’t clear if the new Congress and administration
would continue to improve our environmental and public health laws. In
his campaign, President Bush came out in support of regulations of pollution
from power plants, including the pollution that causes global warming.
Yet, just months into the new term it has become clear that the Bush administration
will cave to the wishes of industry.
President Bush has
already reversed a campaign pledge to support a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, one of the conservative
think tanks that has been pushing for the rollback, said that “...unless
something happens before the election like a bunch of people turning up
dead, these issues are not going to resonate with lots of voters.”
On
March 20th, the EPA announced its plans to revoke a new rule
that would have reduced the acceptable level of arsenic in drinking water.
In doing so, EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, rejected arguments
that the limits are critical to protecting millions of Americans from
cancer and other health threats.
It
is less clear who Congress will listen to
when cuts to environmental and public health protections make it to the
House and Senate floor. Many members are currently pushing destructive
proposals that will be up for debate shortly. Representative Hansen, Chair
of the House Resources committee, has threatened to roll back a broad
range of protections for public lands. He is particularly focused on rolling
back protections for recently designated national monuments by redrawing
their boundaries or allowing destructive activities. He has said, “Our
committee is thinking we’ll turn this back the way it should have been.”
Proponents of oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have found a strong ally
in Senator Murkowski, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee. He has said of his efforts to open the Refuge to drilling,
“We have an opportunity, I think, now to go on the offensive...”
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Stop The Rollback
We must stop the rollback
of our environmental laws. At the onset of a new Congress and a new administration,
citizens must make it clear from the beginning that we oppose rollbacks
of our environmental and public health protections. The state PIRGs are
working with a coalition of environmental groups to shine the spotlight
on any attempts to roll back these protections.
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Who
Is Challenging Our Laws?
The Clinton Administration
blocked congressional attempts to allow drilling in the pristine coastal
plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, oil companies,
led by BP Amoco, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Phillips, see President Bush’s
open endorsement for drilling in the Refuge as an opportunity.
Other environmental
and public health laws are also under attack. Sen. Larry Craig, who threatened
legislation to block the Forest Service’s wild forest protections even
before they were finalized, has joined colleagues in promising a “review”
of the new rules early in the new Congress. Electric utilities and auto
and trucking companies are fighting to overturn the tough new clean air
standards. General Electric, responsible for many of the toxic waste sites
in the country, is lobbying to limit industry’s responsibility to clean-up
poisonous chemicals and shift the cleanup cost to taxpayers.
The mining industry,
which spent $6.6 million on campaign contributions in 2000, is pushing
to undermine environmental protections against hardrock mining pollution
in our water and on public lands.
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America’s
Arctic Protection At Risk
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The
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: This area is home to spectacular
wildlife like caribou, musk oxen, polar bear and wolves, and is
sacred to the Gwich’in people.
President
Bush endorses drilling. President George W. Bush has
repeatedly called for oil and gas drilling in the coastal plain
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On Jan. 22, just two days
after the inauguration, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told
reporters that the Bush Administration would move quickly to open
the Refuge to drilling.
The
Refuge is a national treasure. The coastal plain of the
Arctic Refuge is one of America's last wild places, and the only
part of America's Arctic currently off-limits to oil and gas drilling.
The pristine and untrammeled wilderness of the coastal plain is
the biological heart of the Arctic Refuge and supports a vast array
of wildlife.
Drilling
is a dirty business. In 1997, there were more than 500
oil spills in Prudhoe Bay. Once a pristine ecosystem to the west
of the Refuge, Prudhoe Bay is now one of the most industrialized
areas in the U.S., with more than 400 square miles of oil wells,
roads, and pipelines.
The
Arctic is not a quick energy fix. Turning the Arctic
Refuge into a sprawling industrial complex would destroy the wilderness,
yet would do virtually nothing to ease our energy problems. At current
rates of consumption, there is enough oil in the Arctic Refuge to
last the U.S. for about six months. This oil and gas wouldn’t even
be available to consumers for ten years.
We
must act now to save America’s Arctic. Though allowing
oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a top priority of the
Bush administration, it would take an act of Congress to open the
area. Drilling supporter Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the chair
of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has stated
that he would like to see a vote on drilling in the Arctic Refuge
by April 2001.
We must reduce
our dependence on oil and other energy sources that pollute our
environment, and invest in energy conservation, energy efficiency
and clean renewable power.
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| Other
Protections At Risk |
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Public
Lands Protection
A
new Forest Service policy protects 58.5 million acres of national
forests, and other important public lands have recently been protected
by designating them national monuments. Our public lands provide
habitat for endangered species, clean drinking water, and endless
opportunities for recreation. Unfortunately, the timber and oil
industries and their allies in Congress and the administration are
working to overturn protections for national forests and monuments.
What
You Can Do. || More.
We must treat our nation's forests and other public lands as
a natural heritage to be passed to future generations, not auctioned
off for private plunder.
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Clean
Air Protection
New
national health standards for smog and soot will save 15,000
lives each year. To meet the new standards, the EPA adopted
new emission rules for power plants and automobiles. Unfortunately,
the auto, coal and oil industries are already working to roll
back these important clean air protections. For example, Senators
Byrd and Murkowski have introduced bills that exempt coal
burning power plants from Clean Air Act regulations. More.
|| View a chart showing the number of state
health violations for smog in 1999.
We
should consider clean air to be a right - and push industries
to develop cleaner technologies that reduce or eliminate air
pollution.
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Safe
Drinking Water
A
new arsenic rule strengthens protections to permit just one-fifth
of the current allowable levels of arsenic in drinking water. This
rule is critical because arsenic causes cancer of the lungs, bladder
and skin. Unfortunately, the Bush administration proposed to withdraw
this protection because of costs to the mining industry and other
polluters. View a chart showing levels
of arsenic contamination in groundwater.
We must restore
America's waterways so they are safe for fishing, swimming and drinking.
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Toxic
Waste Cleanups
The
Superfund law requires that polluters pay to clean up hazardous waste
sites so that innocent taxpayers and victims of pollution don’t have
to cover the costs. Industries like chemical manufacturers and homebuilders
are now pushing to weaken the cleanup standards and shift the cost
of cleaning up the contamination to taxpayers. More. |
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Protecting
Public Lands From Mining
Mining is the largest waste producing industry in the country. Pollution
from mining has contaminated 40 percent of the headwaters in the
western U.S. Today's massive mines contaminate surface and groundwater
with cyanide, arsenic and other toxins. New mines are being proposed
immediately adjacent to people's homes, underneath wilderness areas,
at the headwaters of critical fish habitats, in fragile desert ecosystems,
and amidst the wild lands that provide a home to our few remaining
grizzly bears. In January, after four years of public comments,
research, debate, and study, the government established new, stronger
mining safeguards. After just weeks in office, President Bush and
Interior Secretary Gale Norton have proposed suspending the new
safeguards and replacing them with the old ones.
To send a comment
to protect the safeguards against mining, click
here.
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What
You Can Do:
You can help. Write
your senators and representative today and urge them to protect public
health and the environment by stopping these rollbacks.
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