double whammy in one day
what is bush doing to the environment?! please, if you have any concern for the state of the natural world when your kids are born, vote bush out of office. accusations are flying that he's manipulating EPA science to weaken clean air act regulations, and he's fudging the numbers of salmon to include hatchery fish, to satisfy some endangered species act clause. and his whole act in florida to protect the everglades -- well, consider that it was FLORIDA, THE DISPUTED STATE OF THE 2000 ELECTION. he's making it all sound good so he can get the vote and then if he does win, he'll be like oh well can't do it because it would reduce the amount of mercury in drinking water and we can't have that!


Air Quality Experts Decry New Bush Policy
The EPA modelers say science is being altered to suit objectives. U.S. officials reject notion.
By Elizabeth Shogren
(LA) Times Staff Writer

April 29, 2004

WASHINGTON — Career government experts in the arcane field of air quality modeling have joined to oppose a new Bush administration policy that they say threatens air quality over national parks and wilderness areas.

In a rare internal protest, they contend that science is being manipulated to suit policy objectives.

The air quality modelers in all but one of the Environmental Protection Agency's 10 regions have told their bosses that they believe the policy, which alters the air quality modeling for North Dakota's national parks and wilderness areas, represents "substantial changes from past air quality modeling guidance … and accepted methods."

They also warned that the policy change "could set a precedent" for other regions, according to an internal EPA memo dated April 21.

Veteran EPA officials said the agency's modelers decided to take a stand against the policy because they were offended by what they termed the administration's efforts to use science to mask a policy change that would hurt air quality. They also were worried that the new policy would make it more difficult to protect the air over federal lands.

"I was aghast," said one of the modelers, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The modelers said they decided to write the memo despite fears of repercussions.

"This is what our job is — to protect air quality," the modeler said. "If we don't speak up at a potential threat like this, what are we for?"

Bush administration officials involved in the new policy rejected the notion that they had altered the science to meet their policy aim.

"That's ridiculous," said Bill Wehrum, counsel to the EPA's air office. "Absolutely untrue.

"We've been accused of trying to give the state a break, but that's not the case."

The EPA's regional modelers and the analyses they produce are so deep in the agency's bureaucracy that they escape public notice. But their work can make a crucial difference in determining whether industries can increase pollution and whether the air will become clearer or more healthful.

"This is an unprecedented stand by career EPA scientists who are fighting for integrity in the basic foundation of EPA's air pollution control policies," said Vickie Patton, a former EPA career employee who is now an attorney for Environmental Defense, a national environmental group.

Analysts who follow the way the Bush administration has been running agencies that deal in science said the modelers' complaint echoed critics' concerns that the administration had adjusted scientific analysis — on issues from global warming to AIDS — to meet political objectives. The risk, they said, is that the public would begin to question the credibility of the government's science and the regulations that stemmed from it.

"Americans have great doubts about government in many areas, but where government has always been strong has been on the science," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University. "There hasn't been a consistent perception of government manipulation of the facts. But this administration is doing considerable damage to public confidence in the facts."

Some veteran EPA officials said the case of the new modeling techniques for the air over North Dakota's national parks and wilderness areas was a perfect example.

"The modelers believe it was manipulated in a manner to give a predetermined answer," said another longtime EPA official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Much of the concern of the modelers is that the agreement that was reached with the state of North Dakota allows them to manipulate the data in a way that will demonstrate less of an impact [from polluting power plants] than was actually occurring."

The Clean Air Act provides special protection for the air over national parks and wilderness areas, allowing only minor increases in pollution. Modeling done by EPA's Region 8, which includes North Dakota, found that pollution in the state had increased since 1977, the baseline year, and that the state would have to force reductions in pollution before it could allow more power plants to be built. The state, which has ample supplies of coal, wants to open more plants so it can produce and export energy to other areas.

The modelers specifically criticized the new policy for allowing the state to choose the year it wants as the baseline, which shows whether pollution has increased more than the minimal amount allowed; the higher the pollution in the baseline year, the more pollution that will be allowed in the future. A 2002 analysis by the EPA's Region 8 suggested that allowing facilities to pick their baseline years could more than double the pollution levels.

But administration officials said they let the state pick the baseline years because regulations allowed them to do so.

The EPA modelers also criticized the policy for letting state modelers use average emissions over the whole year, rather than periods of peak emissions.

But Bush administration officials countered that they opted to use annual emissions because there were no good data on peak emissions days from the late '70s.

What troubles the modelers most is that the changes the administration made to modelers' general practice all appear to allow higher levels of pollution. That, in turn, opens the way for the state to allow more power plants without requiring costly pollution controls on existing facilities.

"If you rearrange your science to fit your goal, that's not really science," said the first unnamed EPA official.

But a director in the EPA's office of air quality, planning and standards, Bill Harnett, disagreed.

"It isn't about allowing more pollution," said Harnett, a longtime career official. "What it's about is doing the analysis in a manner consistent with our rules and with what Congress intended."


Hatchery Salmon to Count as Wildlife

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A01

SEATTLE, April 28 -- The Bush administration has decided to count hatchery-bred fish, which are pumped into West Coast rivers by the hundreds of millions yearly, when it decides whether stream-bred wild salmon are entitled to protection under the Endangered Species Act.

This represents a major change in the federal government's approach to protecting Pacific salmon -- a $700 million-a-year effort that it has described as the most expensive and complicated of all attempts to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

The decision, contained in a draft document and confirmed Wednesday by federal officials, means that the health of spawning wild salmon will no longer be the sole gauge of whether a salmon species is judged by the federal government to be on the brink of extinction. Four of five salmon found in major West Coast rivers, including the Columbia, are already bred in hatcheries, and some will now be counted as the federal government tries to determine what salmon species are endangered.

"We need to look at both wild and hatchery fish before deciding whether to list a species for protection," said Bob Lohn, Northwest regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Lohn added that the new policy will probably help guide decisions this summer by the Bush administration about whether to remove 15 species of salmon from protection as endangered or threatened.

From Washington state to Southern California, the decision to count hatchery-bred fish in assessing the health of wild salmon runs could have profound economic consequences.

In the past 15 years, the federal government's effort to protect stream-bred wild salmon has forced costly changes in how forests are cut, housing developments are built, farms are cultivated and rivers are operated for hydroelectricity production. Farm, timber and power interests have complained for years about these costs and have sued to remove protections for some fish.

They are enthusiastic advocates of counting hatchery fish when assessing the survival chances of wild salmon. Unlike their wild cousins, hatchery fish can be bred without ecosystem-wide modifications to highways, farms and dams.

"Upon hearing this news, I am cautiously optimistic that the government may be complying with the law and ending its slippery salmon science," said Russell C. Brooks, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, an industry-funded group that has challenged federal salmon-protection efforts in court.

Word of the new policy was greeted by outrage from several environmental groups.

"Rather than address the problems of habitat degraded by logging, dams and urban sprawl, this policy will purposefully mask the precarious condition of wild salmon behind fish raised by humans in concrete pools," said Jan Hasselman, counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

"This is the same sort of mechanistic, blind reliance on technology that got us into this problem in the first place," said Chris Wood, vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "We built dams that block the fish, and we are trucking many of these fish around the dams. Now the administration thinks we can just produce a bazillion of these hatchery fish and get out from underneath the yoke of the Endangered Species Act."

Six of the world's leading experts on salmon ecology complained last month in the journal Science that fish produced in hatcheries cannot be counted on to save wild salmon. The scientists had been asked by the federal government to comment on its salmon-recovery program but said they were later told that some of their conclusions about hatchery fish were inappropriate for official government reports.

"The current political and legal wrangling is a sideshow to the real issues. We know biologically that hatchery supplements are no substitute for wild fish," Robert Paine, one of the scientists and an ecologist at the University of Washington, said when the Science article was published in late March.

Federal officials said Wednesday that the new policy on hatchery salmon -- to be published in June in the Federal Register and then be opened to public comment -- was in response to a 2001 federal court ruling in Oregon. In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Michael R. Hogan found that the federal government made a mistake by counting only wild fish -- and not genetically similar hatchery fish -- when it listed coastal coho salmon for protection.

To the dismay of many environmental groups, the federal government chose not to appeal that ruling, though it seemed counter to the reasoning behind the spending of more than $2 billion in the past 15 years to protect stream-bred wild salmon.

"There was an inescapable reasoning to Judge Hogan's ruling," said Lohn, chief of federal salmon recovery in the Northwest. "We thought his reasoning was accurate."

He said the Bush administration will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on habitat improvement for salmon.

"We have major problems to overcome, both with habitat and with improving the way hatcheries are operated," Lohn said. "Run right, hatcheries can be of considerable value to rebuilding wild fish runs."