H.R. 2578: Chipping Away at Our Environmental Protections Till They're All Gone

This Tuesday, the House of Representatives will debate and vote on H.R. 2578, the Conservation and Economic Growth Act. H.R 2578 is an omnibus of 14 bills that have passed through committee, all of which are assaults on the laws that protect our nation’s air, water, and land. One measure would remove a section of the Merced River from protections afforded it by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act; another would allow greater and longer grazing by livestock on public lands, a dubious practice with environmental ramifications.

The Conservation and Economic Growth Act includes H.R.1505, a bill authored by Rob Bishop, a GOP Tea Party congressman from Utah. H.R. 1505, also known as The National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, would exempt the Homeland Security Department from any need to comply with environmental and public health laws on federal and tribal lands within 100 miles of the U.S. border. The exemptions would be for all of this country’s most ambitious environmental legislation, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act.

            DHS has not asked for this type of legislation, and it’s unknown whether this bill would have any effect on the department’s effectiveness. What is known is that this bill would affect nature preserves and parkland. One of the National Park Service’s crown jewels, Glacier National Park, would fall entirely under this legislation.

I don’t know if the irony of Bishop’s proposed legislation has been impressed upon him, but if it were made law, one of the most pristine National Parks, home to wolves and moose—They even have grizzly bears up there—would have gaping holes in the amount of environmental protection that our government is willing to give it. As far as operations of the Homeland Security Department, the wolves, bison, and bears would have zero protection in their natural habitats in Glacier National Park.

Does this make any sense?

I live in San Diego, about 20 miles away from the border with Mexico. H.R. 1505 specifically mentions one of our most treasured preserves in the county, the Otay Mountain Wilderness, as an area that would have no environmental protection from the activities of Homeland Security. The preserve has already been assaulted by the building of a border wall. In an adumbration of this bill, that wall was built with the waiving of the same protections that H.R. 1505 seeks to negate.

H.R. 1505, like the rest of the Conservation and Economic Growth Act, does not do away with the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, or other environmental laws, it is nonetheless part of a strategy used by the GOP—and the interest groups whose business interests they represent—of chipping away at environmental laws in such a way that in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years they will be rendered meaningless.

I’ve been following H.R. 1505 for some time, but a big hat tip to my friend Jill Hoslin who notified me today about the developments with this legislation. She is an insightful blogger concerned with border issues. You can check out her blog here: http://www.attheedges.com/

Additionally, our local paper, the San Diego UT, has not been covering this story, but they did publish this op ed by Mark Starr: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/15/tp-a-veterans-voice-protect-san-diegos-public/?page=1#article

More Facts, More Inconvenience, and More Laws For Ignorance

I hope that this is not a trend. As I previously posted, North Carolina is trying to legislate ignorance by requiring that the science of climate change is excluded from studies of sea level rise. Well, it looks like Virginia is following suit with a similar push by that state’s GOP legislators to similarly exclude science from a coastal study in their state.

            The curious thing for me is the manner in which climate change science was characterized by GOP lawmaker Chris Stolle. He called scientific terminology “left wing terms” and “political speech.”

The push to politically isolate environmentalism, which traditionally has always enjoyed broad public support, to a politics of the left goes back at least to the 1980 presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan. Reagan and others characterized environmentalism as left wing and extreme.

            Now in Virginia we have gone to another level. The inconvenient facts, the science that indicates a warming world and rising seas—what concerns environmentalists and is actually a concern for just about everybody else—is now thought of as political, and left leaning political at that. This is big crazy and makes my head spin.

An Image of Environmental and Social Degradation or Kiddie Porn?

Maria Gunnoe, a prominent opponent of mountaintop removal who has won the Goldman Environmental Prize, had been invited to testify at a hearing on the Spruce Coal Mine by the House energy and resources subcommittee.

Besides her testimony, she received something she wasn’t expecting: a questioning by police on suspicion of child pornography.

Gunnoe, who has testified for the committee four times before, had always felt that the members of the committee had not made eye contact with her, essentially dismissing her testimony with visible lack of interest or engagement. So Gunnoe decided to grab the subcommittee’s attention with a compelling image of West Virginians living with mountaintop removal mining. She chose a photo by noted photographer Katie Falkenberg that shows a five-year-old girl sitting in a tub of water polluted by mountaintop mining. The bathwater is a deep disturbing reddish orange. The photo, as well as other images of mountaintop mining can be found here.

The photo was pulled from the presentation by Doug Lamborn, the leader of the energy and mineral resources subcommittee, which is under the House Committee on Natural Resources. A GOP house member, Lamborn was noted as the most conservative member of Congress by the National Journal in 2009 and 2010. He is against energy conservation measures and for ramping up the extraction of domestic fossil fuels.

            Lamborn says that he did not see the photograph and relied on the judgment of his staff, who said that the photo was inappropriate. The hearing concerned recent actions by the EPA, which is currently appealing a ruling by a federal judge that the agency overstepped its authority in vetoing a permit for the Spruce mine.

            After her presentation, police questioned Gunnoe for 45 minutes.

If only we had more people like Gunnoe, who bravely stand up to the power of big money and King Coal. It’s too bad that besides politely ignoring her, the GOP controlled energy and resources subcommittee censors her presentation and harasses her.

            Mountaintop mining has brought West Virginia nothing good. It has destroyed communities, depressed wages, and filled in hundreds of miles of streams as it has flatted hundreds of mountains. It passes the muster of law only because the Appalachians are sparsely populated with individuals who are poorer than the rest of the U.S. and unused to working the levers of power. If things were otherwise, kingpins of Big Coal would be locked up along with the scum who peddle kiddie porn.

North Carolina GOP: Maybe We Can Pretend That Global Warming Will Just Go Away

The state of North Carolina is on the verge of stuffing their fingers in their ears and saying “Blah, blah, blah!”

            And they want a law to do it.

            Apparently GOP legislators of the state don’t like some news that has come out of their state’s Coastal Resources Commission, which said that, due to global warming, an increase of about one meter in sea level can be expected by the year 2100. Coastal North Carolina is low lying. A rise of that much ocean could threaten 2000 square miles of the eastern part of that state.

            Instead of preparing for the rising waters and the threats that it may make on communities and infrastructure, North Carolina GOP lawmakers are circulating a bill that takes those inconvenient findings of the scientists and makes them go away. The proposed legislation restricts the measurement of sea level rise to the state’s coastal commission using historical records. Using any predictions based upon climate science would be against the law.

            Take away that pesky science stuff and all that global warming and rising seas goes away!

            Delaware, Louisiana, California, as well as other states, are preparing for sea level rises of a meter or more. Maine is preparing for a rise of up to two meters. But in Louisiana their GOP lawmakers want to stick their fingers in their ears and shout “Blah, blah, blah! Global warming is not happening!” In the meantime North Carolinians could build houses in coastal areas, only to see them become ruined by rising tides, and the building of protective structures, like higher seawalls, could be delayed needlessly.

            If this bill is any precedent, the Grand Old Party of North Carolina will next make it against the law for meteorologists to predict rain on days when picnics are planned.

Make all that sea level rise stuff go away!

Hat tip to my friend Robin for telling me about this story.

Roadkill From the Ocotillo Express

There are fewer than 1000 Peninsular Bighorn sheep, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just granted permission for ten of those sheep to be “taken,” meaning that people could be moving them, harassing them, or even killing them. The sheep have been listed as endangered since the late nineties, when their numbers had dwindled to just a couple hundred individuals. Since then their numbers have rebounded, largely because of the protected status.

            The sheep are true wonders, beautiful creatures that my wife and I have been lucky enough to get a glimpse of on trips to Anza-Borrego State Park. This decision does not conform in the slightest with the mission of the USFWS to work for the recovery of imperiled plant and animal species.

Bighorn sheep in Anza-Borego State Park

The USFWS granted the taking to allow for the construction of the Ocotillo Express wind energy facility of over 100 wind turbines, many of them expected to be over 400 feet tall, in the desert east of the Imperial County town of Ocotillo. The facility received its final approval from the Interior Department last week.

It’s easy to see that the bad news for the bighorn sheep has been in the works for some time. In 2009 the USFWS diminished the amount of land designated for protection of the Peninsular Bighorn sheep by more than half. Some of the area that lost that status is where they are now building the Ocotillo Express. At the time of the reduction, the USFWS officials said that research since 2001 identified areas that were actually used by the sheep. Well, the research was either wrong, or the “actual” places where many of these sheep roam and live was kinda sorta overlooked by “mistake.”

Additionally, I found this story in the online edition of the East County Magazine, a local publication of the rural backcountry of San Diego County. The San Diego UT, the recognized news source of the major metropolitan area of San Diego, the news source of record, had no story on the taking of the sheep, despite the significance this story has and the ramifications that a decision like this might have on the sheep and other threatened or endangered species.

In the meantime, it’s full speed ahead for the Ocotillo Express, sheep or no sheep.

McCarthyite Propaganda For West Virginia

This is almost hard to believe. This is from a television station in the north central area of West Virginia, where I grew up. It is an editorial in support of the mining companies and mountaintop removal that is masquerading as journalism.

The crudity of this television piece reminds me of McCarthyite red scare propaganda. Despite the crudity of McCarthyism it nonetheless worked, with Congressional hearings, loyalty oaths, and ruined careers and lives. I guess that the folks at this TV station know that, that propaganda doesn’t have to be sophisticated to work. You just have to have the unmitigated gall to use it in the first place.


ref: http://www.wdtv.com/wdtv.cfm?func=view&section=5-News&item=WVa-Lawmakers-Cry-Foul-to-EPAs-Plan-to-Appeal-Mine-Permit-Veto2882

Good News For Appalachia

I have voiced my reservations about the Obama administration’s record on the environment. So it’s heartening to have some good news coming out of Washington. The EPA is appealing a ruling by a District Court judge over the permitting of a huge mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia. This is great news for Appalachia and the rest of our country.

            The mine, which had been permitted by the Army Corps of Engineers, would bury about seven miles of streams near the historic town of Blair, West Virginia. The Corps has been the department issuing mountaintop removal permits since the establishment of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, the legislation that controls mountaintop removal and other surface mining operations, in the late seventies. The EPA is stepping up to the plate here and, in my opinion, doing the job that it should have been doing all along in the case of this horrendous mining practice: protecting the streams and fresh waters of this country.

            In their move to revoke the permit, the EPA said the proposed mine would use “destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and the clean water on which they depend.” I think every mountaintop mine fits that description, so in many ways this move by the EPA is a day late and a dollar short for around 500 mine sites in Appalachia.

            But good news for the environment is so rare, so I am thankful for this recent development. Kudos to the EPA and the Obama administration.