Endangered Species Act Changes Give Agencies More Say

I once worked as a Riverkeeper volunteer on watershed issues. I had a chance to speak with a water quality specialist (scientist) who was then an EPA (Federal) employee. His range of operation included the entire state of Pennsylvania. He said that it was impossible for him to check water quality without the help of citizen volunteers alerting him to areas of interest. That was more than 10 years ago. The Bush Administration has since taken the skin and muscle from the EPA staff so that the Republican’s favorite “robber barons” can run over environmental regulations.

(Several international Mafias and Mafiyas have infiltrated our deregulated financial institutions, but that is another chapter in the Conservative Republican Robberbaron Takeover of the USA.)

Some of our worst pollution has stemmed from illegal dumping of hazardous materials; many times by syndicated organized crime; the very same people that bring you heroin and cocaine. I have seen the effect of TCE water pollution on a small boy. He developed a brain tumor when he was two years old and spent the next 5 years in Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. In my view polluting our air and water is as much a criminal and anti-social act as those that destroy lives by pushing drugs.

From Aldo Leopold:

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of eons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

This new Bu$h proposal is really a blank check for polluters to rape God’s Creation and steal from our progeny.

Jim Pitcherella


Endangered Species Act Changes Give Agencies More Say

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 12, 2008; A01

The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.

The new rules, which will be subject to a 30-day per comment period, would use administrative powers to make broad changes in the law that Congress has resisted for years. Under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.

In a telephone call with reporters yesterday, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne described the new rules as a "narrow regulatory change" that "will provide clarity and certainty to the consultation process under the Endangered Species Act."

But environmentalists and congressional Democrats blasted the proposal as a last-minute attempt by the administration to bring about dramatic changes in the law. For more than a decade, congressional Republicans have been trying unsuccessfully to rewrite the act, which property owners and developers say imposes unreasonable economic costs.

"I am deeply troubled by this proposed rule, which gives federal agencies an unacceptable degree of discretion to decide whether or not to comply with the Endangered Species Act," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who asked for a staff briefing before the proposal was announced but did not receive one. "Eleventh-hour rulemakings rarely, if ever, lead to good government -- this is not the type of legacy this Interior Department should be leaving for future generations."

Bob Irvin, senior vice president of conservation programs at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, questioned how some federal agencies could make the assessments, since most do not have wildlife biologists on staff.

"Clearly, that's a case of asking the fox to guard the chicken coop," Irvin said, adding that the original law created "a giant caution light that made federal agencies stop and think about the impacts of their actions." He said, "What the Bush administration is telling those agencies is they don't have to think about those impacts anymore."
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102299.html