Here is the letter I sent to <[log in to unmask]>



> The article that mentioned the Bush administration holding closed-door
> meetings with agribusiness companies to shield polluting animal
> factories from enforcement over environmental violations is just one
> example how the Bush administrations policies are doing harm to our
> natural heritage. Here is another example. In 1976, the Federal Land
> Policy and Management Act set up a process to identify federal lands
> eligible for Congress to protect as wilderness. The Bureau of Land
> Management totted up a list of 3.2 million acres of wilderness study
> areas in Utah and added another 2.6 million acres to its inventory of
> wilderness study areas, relying on a different section of the law.
> Utah sued Interior, arguing that the designation of the 2.6 million
> acres was illegal and that it damaged the state's ability to raise
> revenues from things like oil and gas leases on its adjoining school
> trust lands. In April of this year the Interior department announced a
> settlement of the lawsuit in which the state and federal governments
> agree that the designation of the 2.6 million in study areas was
> illegal. If that settlement stands, it will eliminate those lands from
> congressional consideration for wilderness designation.  The deal
> abruptly shuts down ongoing, public planning processes.  Appointees of
> the Bush administration in EPA and Interior are doing what they can to
> accommodate those interests that extract instead of sustain our
> natural resources.
>

Jane Clark wrote:

>This Op-Ed, submitted by Kendra on May 29, appeared in today's Des Moines
>Register.  It was slightly edited, but much of the message was
>word-for-word.  Unfortunately, they deleted this sentence--EPA represents
>the one federal department explicitly intended to protect the environment
>and public health, or in President Nixon's words to wage "war on pollution."
>Reference to Sarah Jespersen's plight was also edited out.  This represents
>another opportunity for  letter-to-the-editor.
>
>Great job, Kendra!
>
>
>The Smell Behind EPA's Closed Doors
>
>Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lost its top official
>when Christie Todd Whitman resigned. Whitman's resignation comes on the
>heels of a new round of criticism against EPA for holding closed-door
>meetings with agribusiness companies in the livestock and poultry industry.
>According to anonymous sources familiar with the secret negotiations,
>Whitman and her staff were planning to shield polluting animal factories
>from enforcement over environmental violations.
>
>Under widespread criticism, EPA is reconsidering the lopsided deal. But
>EPA's next environmental top cop should bear in mind two axioms proved by
>this month's controversy-Americans want the government to vigorously enforce
>the laws that protect our air and water, and they don't like government
>officials making backroom deals with polluting corporations.
>
>Despite the public health and environmental risks posed by crowding
>thousands of animals into factory farms, there is a powerful trend in the
>meat industry towards larger and more concentrated animal factories. Since
>1986 the number of hog operations in America has declined by 72%-a loss of
>over 247,500 operations-while the number of hogs raised has grown.
>
>Confining tens of thousands of animals in factory farms has led to waste
>management problems for the agribusiness industry. Some livestock operations
>are producing "the waste equivalent of a town or even a large city,"
>according to a Senate report. Because animal waste emits toxic airborne
>chemicals like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, neighbors of animal factories
>are increasingly faced with serious health problems. For example a column in
>the Des Moines Register recently described the plight of Sarah Jespersen a
>resident of Atlantic, Iowa who is being forced to live in unbearable
>conditions because of the hydrogen sulfide fumes emitted by a neighboring
>mega dairy. Sarah and her family are no longer able to enjoy their rural
>quality of life because of the toxic odiferous emissions that permeate her
>family's property.
>
>As Sarah's experience demonstrates, animal factories needlessly impose toxic
>burdens on their neighbors.  The technologies already exist to raise animals
>under conditions that minimize air and water pollution from factory farms.
>Americans have been sustainably raising hogs and chickens for 200 years and
>will continue doing so if EPA encourages technological innovation by
>enforcing our safeguards and working with agribusiness to abide by our laws.
>
>Unfortunately, instead of using laws on the books like the Clean Air Act and
>Clean Water Act to compel polluters to clean up their mess, the Bush
>administration has turned a blind eye.  Environmental enforcement at the EPA
>has plummeted across the board.  According to the watchdog Public Employees
>for Environmental Responsibility, new criminal pollution cases referred by
>EPA for federal prosecution are down more than 40 percent since the start of
>the Bush Administration.
>
>Absent leadership from the EPA, advocacy groups and citizens have been
>forced to take matters into their own hands. That is the impetus behind a
>number of citizen enforcement actions in the last few years, including a
>federal lawsuit brought by Sierra Club against Tyson Foods, the agribusiness
>giant.  The Tyson case seeks to hold Tyson accountable for the hundreds of
>pounds of toxic ammonia Tyson contractors spew into the air every day in
>rural Kentucky.  Sierra Club v. Tyson Foods could have serious implications
>for the meat industry, which has avoided meaningful environmental and public
>health safeguards.
>
>Barely a month after the Sierra Club filed suit, EPA began negotiating a
>so-called "safe harbor agreement" with Tyson and other giants in the meat
>industry, giving animal factories far-reaching amnesty for Clean Air Act and
>Superfund violations. Instead of consulting with local residents endangered
>by factory farms or with environmental groups, EPA began secret, closed-door
>negotiations that could invalidate citizen attempts to enforce environmental
>laws.
>
>When the negotiations came to light, neighbors of factory farms and air
>pollution experts immediately criticized their clandestine nature. "This is
>a pattern of where the industry meets behind closed doors with the
>government," one representative for state and local air pollution officials
>told The New York Times. "We are suffering from the effects of toxic
>emissions from local feedlots," said Tom Frantz, a concerned citizen near
>Fresno, California "[and] we object to federal policy devised in a secret,
>back-room deal."
>
>To avoid future missteps, Christie Whitman's successor will do well to
>remember that the EPA's main commitment must be to the health and safety of
>Americans threatened by environmental pollution, not the profit margins of
>polluting corporations.  EPA represents the one federal department
>explicitly intended to protect the environment and public health, or in
>President Nixon's words to wage "war on pollution."  And in the Bush
>administration, if EPA doesn't defend communities at risk from toxic
>pollution, who will?  Exempting polluting companies from clean air and clean
>water laws will benefit companies like Tyson, but it will cost families
>across America a great deal more.
>
>Kendra Kimbirauskas
>Sierra Club
>3839 Merle Hay Rd. Suite 280
>Des Moines, IA 50310
>515.251.3995
>
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