Bush regime environmental record

• Bush Greenwatch is "dedicated to expanding media coverage and public awareness of the many vital environmental and public health issues affected by the administration's anti-environmental agenda, which consistently places the interests of corporate donors above the public good."

• Recognizing their vulnerability on the environment, Bush and his senior appointees have launched a cynical effort to paper over the worst environmental record in history. [1]

• "It's the worst environmental record in American history." says Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director. "The administration consistently favors polluting industries over health and safety." [2], [3]

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(CBS) A government whistle-blower says the Bush administration covered up the reasons for a toxic coal slurry spill in Appalachia that ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. [4]

Jack Spadaro tells Correspondent Bob Simon that political appointees in the Department of Labor whitewashed a report that said an energy company that had contributed to the Republican Party was responsible for the 300-million gallon spill.

Simon's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, April 4, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Spadaro was until recently the head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy and played a key role in investigating the spill, which was 25 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

"It polluted 100 miles of streams, killing everything in the streams, all the way to the Ohio River," says Spadaro of the October 2000 spill that affected West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.

"The Bush administration came in and the scope of our investigation was considerably shortened. I had never seen something so corrupt and lawless in my entire career...interference with a federal investigation of the most serious environmental disaster in the history of the Eastern United States."

Spadaro says his investigation found Massey Energy, the owner of the impoundment containing the viscous and toxic liquid, knew the containment was weak, and in fact, had leaked once before. The company was going to be cited for serious violations that could have resulted in large fines and criminal charges, Spadaro says.

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while George W. Bush gets low marks on the environment from a majority of Americans, few fully appreciate the scope and fury of this administration's anti-environmental agenda. [5]

"What they're doing makes the Reagan administration look innocent," says Buck Parker, executive director of Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law firm.

The Bush administration has been

• gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation.
• It has crippled the Superfund program, which is charged with cleaning up millions of pounds of toxic industrial wastes such as arsenic, lead, mercury and vinyl chloride in more than 1,000 neighbourhoods in 48 states.
• It has sought to cut the EPA's enforcement division by nearly one-fifth, to its lowest level on record; fines assessed for environmental violations dropped by nearly two-thirds in the administration's first two years; and criminal prosecutions -- the government's weapon of last resort against the worst polluters -- are down by nearly one-third.
• The administration has abdicated the decades-old federal responsibility to protect native animals and plants from extinction, becoming the first not to voluntarily add a single species to the endangered species list.
• It has opened millions of acres of wilderness -- including some of the nation's most environmentally sensitive public lands -- to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Under one plan, loggers could take 10 % of the trees in California's Giant Sequoia National Monument; many of the Monument's old-growth sequoias, 200 years old and more, could be felled to make roof shingles.
• Other national treasures that have been opened for development include the million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in Arizona, the 2,000-foot red-rock spires at Fisher Towers, Utah, and dozens of others.

• mountaintop-removal coal mining involves blasting away entire mountaintops to get at coal seams below and dumping the resulting rubble, called "spoil," into adjacent valleys. ... which has buried at least 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed tens of thousands of acres of woodland that the EPA describes as "unique in the world" for their biological diversity.

And then, of course, the White House has all but denied the existence of what may be the most serious environmental problem of our time, global warming.

Few people know the magnitude of the administration's attacks on the environment because the administration has been working very hard to keep it that way.

Like any successful commander in chief, Bush knows that putting the right person in the right place is the key to winning any war. This isn't just a matter of choosing business-friendly appointees for top positions. That's pretty much standard operating procedure for Republican administrations. What makes this administration different is the fact that it is filled with anti-regulatory supporters deep into its rank and file -- and these bureaucrats, unlike James Watt, are politically savvy and come from the very industries they're charged with regulating. The result is an administration uniquely effective at implementing its ambitious pro-industry agenda -- with a minimum of public notice.

Steven Griles is one of industry's moles within the Bush administration. Before coming to work as deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles was one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, with a long list of energy-industry clients, including the National Mining Association and several of the country's largest coal companies. [6]

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• Christopher Drew & Richard A. Oppel Jr., How Industry Won the Battle of Pollution Control at E.P.A., New York Times, March 6, 2004.