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Wetland: Land That Gets Watered?
"Pombo-ize:" To Defeat/Be Defeated?
FEATURED
Elected officials MIA; Instead Wal-Mart and Burger King protecting your health
Back to school: Are we ready? Are we non-toxic?
Fire retardants: Disproportionate risk to small children
Lead: Celebrate its ban, but don't cross it off your list
7 ways to reduce your exposure to PBDEs
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Mining reform law passes House 244-166
There's an old joke that asks, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?"
The answer, of course, is President Grant himself (and, google reveals, his wife), but soon they may have some company. The House voted yesterday in favor of legislation that will reform a mining law that's been on the books since Grant's presidency in 1872. The old law is woefully inadequate when it comes to protecting public lands, and too often lets mining companies off the hook for cleanup -- leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.
According to EWG's own Dusty Horwitt,
“Our research shows that mining claims in the West increased more than 80 percent between January 2003 and July 2007. The mining bill would give land managers the authority to balance mining with other resources such as parks and water supplies just as they can with oil and gas drilling,”
There's a good chance that the Senate's reform bill won't be quite so strong, and President Bush has threatened a veto but appears to be willing to compromise. Hopefully the spirit of the House's bill will stick, because it's time to lay the 1872 mining law to rest.
Western drilling claiming more victims?
Well, it’s finally happened. The out-of-control explosion of oil and gas drilling in the Mountain West has started to claim other victims besides the environment. Politicians who were early supporters of the federal government’s plans to dramatically increase its search for domestic sources of energy may pay for it come the next election.
It has also made for some strange bedfellows, with environmentalists and sportsmen (not always allies) just as upset over what has been happening throughout the west as more drilling rigs are going up. Not only is the environment being put through the ringer as more an more pollution is released as a result of increased drilling, but big game are disappearing from areas where they traditionally could be found in abundance.
A similar thing is happening on public lands as well as mining claims are at record levels right near some of the country’s most well-known national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.
The NRA and environmentalists on the same side
Some members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) are furious with President Bush and “Dead-Eye” Dick Cheney. At first I thought ‘how could this be?’ Vice President Cheney, while not the best of shots, often speaks at NRA annual meetings, and President Bush had NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre down to the ranch in Crawford for a little R and R.
But the problem isn’t rifles, it’s drill rigs. The Washington Post reported that NRA members including Ronald L. Schmeits, second vice president of the NRA, a member of its board of directors and a bank president in Raton, N.M., are angry that the two oilmen have encouraged energy companies to overrun hunting areas with roads and rigs.
"The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters," Schmeits said. "We find that our members are having a harder time finding access to public land."
Continue reading "The NRA and environmentalists on the same side" »
Real green heroes
For a respite from the mainstream media's celebrity-focused environmental coverage, check out the Earth Day edition of Quest from KQED-TV, San Francisco's PBS station. It's an inspiring look back at the "everyday people who helped rescue the Bay Area from environmental disaster." These are the pioneering activists – "environmentalist" wasn't even a word yet – who introduced curbside recycling, halted plans to fill in 70% of the Bay and kept beachfront condos out of West Marin. Notably, many of them were women, the suburban moms once known as "homemakers." Save the Bay's Sylvia McLaughlin talks about how she came to see in that term a responsibility to make the Earth a better home. Their legacy lives on in people like Denny Larson of Global Community Monitor, who is seen giving inner-city kids a toxic tour of their own neighborhood.
Wetland: Land That Gets Watered?
It's all fair enough. Some of these environmental terms sound like we should all know what they are, but in fact have precise technical definitions: watershed, wetland, sediment to name just three. So Interior Secretary Norton is just making things simpler by making a wetland something we can all understand. Apparently, manmade things, such as manmade ponds and golf course water hazards are now wetlands. When we open up the category to include land that receives water that didn't occur naturally, well, we find that we have more wetlands now than we did in 1997.
Read the Field & Stream piece, or watch Comedy Central's "Colbert Report" on the good news (the clip is called "Birdie"). Or watch the same clip at Youtube.
So does this mean the Department of Interior is going to water my lawn for me?
"Pombo-ize:" To Defeat/Be Defeated?
The controversial proposal that was 'Pombo-ized' last fall would have allowed developers and anyone else to buy some 350 million acres of taxpayer-owned land in 12 Western states at prices as low as $1,000 an acre. Dozens of newspapers around the country editorialized against the land grab. Read EWG's analysis of the Pombo proposal and see what land in and near national parks and natural gems was threatened: http://www.ewg.org/reports/dirtcheap/ .
Pombo Operatives in Interior Department
Minnesotans See Their Future – And It Ain’t Green
Let's Talk About Fuel
On Monday alone, we saw the debate over alternative fuel for our automobiles raging in Washington State, Colorado, Indiana and, of course, Michigan.
EWG's work on transportation and energy issues is viewable online at http://www.ewg.org/issues/siteindex/issues.php?issueid=5032
Bush Backpedals On Vow to Break Oil Addiction
Incredible Sulk