Beating Around the Bush

The Bush administration has made some significant inroads since the president launched a concentrated effort to dismantle the nation’s environmental protection safeguards four years ago. Since taking office in 2000, George W. Bush has promoted the most damaging environmental policies ever espoused by any president.

With this issue, Waterkeeper introduces this new feature to highlight some of the more egregious environmental policies proposed by the Bush administration. With your help, Waterkeeper will continue to do the job that the Bush administration and EPA is failing to do – fight for clean water and take action to protect human health and the environment.

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Instead of working to reduce the amount of raw sewage entering our rivers, lakes and coastal waters, the Bush administration wants to allow more untreated sewage in our nation’s waters. Raw sewage is supposed to be carried by pipes from our homes and buildings to wastewater treatment plants where water and waste are separated. But the pipes that carry this wastewater, and the treatment plants themselves, can be overwhelmed when rainwater seeps into cracked, outdated, and corroded pipes. When this happens, raw sewage spills out onto the streets and directly into the environment. Unfortunately, the administration has a plan.

Instead of fixing the pipes and expanding treatment plants, EPA’s proposed "blending rule" would allow sewer operators to dump raw sewage directly into our waterways as long as they first mix it with partially treated wastewater. This plan threatens the health of millions of Americans and violates the Clean Water Act. Public health officials, state environmental officials, fishermen, marina operators, and thousands of citizens have urged EPA not to adopt this change – we need you to join this effort!

…that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet
Each year in the United States, 1,100 coal-fired power plants spew almost 50 tons of mercury into the air, poisoning our nation’s lakes, rivers, and streams, fouling our water and food supply, and endangering human health. But the Bush administration doesn’t want to inconvenience their friends. They’re asking coal-burning polluters to cut mercury by only 29 percent over the coming years when readily available and affordable technologies could reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent. Sadly, the administration’s plan does not require a single new piece of mercury control technology. Even worse, EPA wants to make a bureaucratic change so coal-burning power plants are no longer recognized, or regulated, by the federal government as a source of mercury contamination.

At whose expense 'tis done?
Current federal wetland rules allow a developer to build on a wetland if they restore an equal or greater amount of the same type of wetland nearby. The idea is to allow development if new wetlands in the same watershed are built to substitute the wetlands that are lost.

But the Bush administration is more concerned with the inconvenience that mitigation causes developers than they are about ecological integrity, water quality, or flooding. That’s why EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are pushing through changes so developers are no longer required to replace destroyed wetlands with new ones in the same watershed. And the replacement wetlands can be a different type than the one destroyed. This means that high-value wetlands can be replaced with low-value wetlands that support fewer plants and animals, and purify less water. This change vastly reduces the costs for developers at the expense of our environment and anyone who lives downstream.

Visit www.waterkeeper.org for more information and to take action to oppose these policy changes that degrade our waterways and threaten our communities.