Sierra Club says Bush Administration Putting ‘Communities at Risk’
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2002–The Bush administration is trying to fix something that isn’t even broken, the Sierra Club said in a report released Thursday.
The report, “Leaving Our Communities at Risk,” profiled 25 communities across the country, including Nashua, N.H., that will be affected by changes to the current Superfund policies and the Clean Air and Water Acts.
“This report is just the beginning of trying to hold the Bush administration accountable for their policies,” said Deborah Sease, legislative director for the Sierra Club.
President Bush’s administration has announced plans that the Sierra Club said in a statement “condemns many communities to more years of toxic contamination.”
Sease said educating Congress, holding the Bush administration accountable and bringing public pressure to bear on the administration are additional steps being taken.
Currently, New Hampshire has 19 sites listed on the Superfund’s national list for cleanup, said Catherine Corkery, a New Hampshire statehouse lobbyist for the Sierra Club. The Mohawk Tannery in Nashua, she said, has been proposed to be included on the Superfund’s priority cleanup list.
According to Alice Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the New England regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Nashua Mayor Bernard Streeter lacks confidence that the Superfund is the right solution for cleaning up the tannery.
Although Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) wrote a letter in March of 2000 in support of a Superfund cleanup at the site, and Streeter initially agreed, he eventually requested that Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) delay the request until alternative methods could be explored, said Kaufman.
Cleanup of the Mohawk Tannery could cost $15 million to $20 million and take 12 to 18 months to complete under the expedited appropriations request Nashua plans to make to Congress, Streeter said. The request to Congress would be made on the recommendation of the EPA.
“We want to try the expedited route first,” Streeter said. “A Superfund designation is no guarantee that a project will get done, and it could take eight to 10 years”
Part of the president’s plan, the Sierra Club report said, is to let the “polluter pays” tax die. High-polluting corporations have traditionally paid the tax. Although the tax lapsed in 1995 and has not been reinstated, Bush is the first president since the enactment of the Superfund law in 1980 who has not included the tax as part of his budget.
The lack of the tax means fewer and lengthier cleanups, along with a shift of the tax burden to the taxpayer at large, said John DeVillars, the New England administrator for the EPA under the Clinton administration.
DeVillars added that without the tax, the Superfund would be forced to compete with every other federal program for the limited dollars that are available.
The Superfund, funded with $3 billion in 1995 but only $28 million in the current fiscal year, will be financed solely by American taxpayers in 2004 if the tax is not reinstated, the report said.
Additionally, the report said, the administration has announced plans to allow 17,000 major polluters, including oil refineries and chemical plants, to increase their air emissions without installing modern pollution controls, as required by the Clean Air Act.
“When I look at case after case, the Bush administration has put pollution professionals in front of environmental concerns,” Sease said. “The administration is more concerned about their interests than the public’s, and we need to do everything we can to stop these actions.”
According to the report, President Bush has proposed reducing the EPA’s workforce by 200 people during the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1, thereby curtailing the agency’s ability to enforce the clean air and water laws.
“I think this is a statement about their priorities,” DeVillars said. “It demonstrates a lack of will and resolve for environmental laws of the country to be enforced.”
The national headquarters of the EPA did not return repeated phone call requests for comment.
“The strength and the kindness of caregivers that goes into cancer patients, the recognition of the whole system, the network and the great work is really why I’m here today,” Boss said.
Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.), whose own mother died of breast cancer, met with Lewis and Boss during their visit on Thursday.
“I think probably everybody knows someone who has suffered from some form of cancer,” Bass said in a statement. “Every effort should be made to prevent, diagnose, and provide access to affordable treatments for this difficult and often fatal disease.”
Published in The Keene Sentinel, in New Hampshire.
