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January 31, 2005
Politicizing Safety: When Corporations Trump Children
According to a Newhouse News story, Whitman wondered whether the ACC's member companies "spend more money trying to defeat new regulations than they would by simply complying with them."
Whitman and then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge crafted rules requiring the 15,000 most high-risk plants to undertake reasonable security measures and then report that they had done so to the EPA. However, those measures never made it into law.
With few exceptions, chemical industry lobbyists outnumber public health advocates and have greater financial resources at their disposal.
While EWG fights the chemical industry on several issues, one in particular is that of mercury. The heavy metal mercury flows out of smoke stacks, joins rainwater and falls into the ocean where it becomes part of the seafood we eat. EWG work has long studied the dangers to women of childbearing age of eating tuna and other seafood as well as the political maneuverings that disrupt or prevent health messages from reaching consumers. According to The Wall Street Journal, a report that connected coal-fired power plants and children's health risk was delayed for nine months by the Bush administration. Presently, laws that seriously control mercury pollution are a long ways off and the current seafood advisory telling women of childbearing age how much tuna and other seafood they can safely eat could potentially lead to women having babies with over-the-safe-limit levels of mercury in their blood.
Read more on EWG's work on mercury pollution here: http://www.ewg.org/issues/mercury/index.php.
January 18, 2005
U.S. Court Rules Citizens Can’t Challenge Mining Claims
In a landmark decision, citizens of Crested Butte, Colo., were told they have no right to challenge the Interior Department’s giveaway of public land in their backyards.Last year, the Bush Administration sold exploration rights on 155 mountain tops near the community to a multi-national mining company for $875. This prompted a swift challenge from citizens who use the mountains for skiing, camping and hiking.
Now a the Bush-appointed federal judge, Marcia Kreiger, has ruled that under the 1872 mining law, Interior has “sovereign immunity” from lawsuits by citizens, who are merely “unrelated third parties.” The law was originally meant to encourage development of the West, but has now turned into a 21st-century giveaway to industry polluters and multinationals who are allowed to establish claims to public lands for pennies.
Judge Krieger acknowledged that “social issues and concerns have changed” since the law was enacted and that citizens are now concerned with environmental and recreational issues, rather than easy access to mineral rights. Members of Congress have suggested changing the archaic law to better reflect the public’s priorities, but so far nothing has come of it. Until the law is changed, citizens will be powerless to stop the government from giving away our natural treasures for exploitation by oil & gas and mining companies.