Democratic Party of Evanston

On the Issues

Environmental Protection

Demand US support the UN world environmental protection programs, as well as restore enforecement power to and replace leadership of FDA, EPA, and USDA to protect the people from industrial produced toxins, air pollution, etc.

Note the following information and/or links are not endorsed by the Board of Directors of the Democratic Party of Evanston nor do they necessarily represent the views of the Board or the organization.

THE WORLD OF GEORGE BUSH

HE’S TRASHING THE ENVIRONMENT--OFFICIALLY--WITH LITTLE MEDIA SCRUTINY

In some of the most calculated moves still barely reported by the mainstream media, Bush has appointed to our regulatory agencies those very agency heads who had spent their entire professional lives trying to gut environmental and safety laws. Now they can do it with impunity, and with the blessings of their commander in chief.

Across the board, the enforcement branches of the FDA, USDA, EPA and NRC have found their budgets gutted. In fact, the direct connection between a wealthy, polluting, but contributing business and Bush’s willingness to just look the other way has become the only way.

--The Clean Air Act has been limited to the point that upwards of 17,000 facilities nationwide will be able to increase toxic emissions. (While the states are individually trying to counter these trends, there are no invisible fences that will protect toxic emissions as they travel

The result: our children will be at greater risk for asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases.

President Bush's call to spend more than $1 billion over five years to develop a hydrogen-powered car to wean us from our addiction to Middle East oil—is a disguised danger.

Certainly, fuel cells that use renewable resources like wind and solar power to extract hydrogen from water promise America a safe, clean energy solution. However, in a sop to the energy industry, the White House wants to extract hydrogen instead from coal and natural gas (without controlling carbon emissions), thereby increasing global warming and fouling our landscape. Worse, the president wants to build a new generation of nuclear power plants specifically for hydrogen production.

--The FDA has embraced blindly all Genetically Engineered seeds—calling them “equivalent to traditional seeds.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. Independent science has identified serious problems—both in the guts of humans and animals, and in the environment. (Allergies and tumors) In addition, Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormones are allowed in the commercial milk supply—a proven cause of prostate and breast cancer. Our food is NOT labeled. It is a mandate that we know what is in our food.

--EPA has been de-clawed. Politically-connected polluters are now allowed to emit their toxins into the air and water. Our waterways are becoming more polluted and known toxins are allowed. Again, children are at higher risk from Organochlorines and Organophosphates emissions than ever.

--NRC has been allowed lax standards and the push is on to develop more nuclear power plants, with their potential for damage to the air and water, and their potential for accidents. Low level nuclear radiation is both allowed by NRC and a cancer causer.

--USDA has weakened even more its safety and health standards at slaughter houses. No wonder so many pounds of meat are being recalled. Salmonella and listeria is on the rise, as house inspectors close their eyes to foul, often dangerous conditions. Now the government has gone back to 1906, when the first egregious abuses of this industry were exposed by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle. The future is the past; slaughterhouses are again allowed to inspect their own meat. We can guarantee more illness and possible death from residues of fecal matter and urine contamination, from bovine cancers, measles and bovine TB. My cover story in Mother Jones, “Dirty Beef,” (July/August, 1992) details the kind of product that comes from beef that is no longer inspected by qualified USDA inspectors. Congress was apprised of this practice back in 1993 and stopped it for a while. But, thanks to the pressure from agri-giants like ConAgra, the USDA inspectors are disappearing again. Beef carcasses now whip through the inspection lines at nearly 400 head an hour—way too fast for meaningful checking and way too fast for the safety of slaughterhouse workers—many of them undocumented immigrants with little English skills. This compares badly to international practices where the assembly line in Australia is 170 per hour and 135 per hour in Europe. As a labor intensive process, workers are documenting serious injuries.

Factory farms—where cattle, pigs and chickens are pushed into tiny cages, unable to move, denied even the most basic standards for decent handling. Cattle are fed poorly—not grass but grain tempered with reminants from bone and diseased carcasses. Eggs are derived from molting—or starving the chickens that in turn are forced to produce more eggs—which could be contaminated with salmonella. The stress on all these animals impacts on the quality of their meat and on the quality of their lives.

We also have massive pollution from the runoff of manure and urine—which usually is carted to open lagoons nearby. The damage to the surrounding environment is beyond description: Giant pools of poison. The smells, the pollution in the water tables, the destruction of surrounding property values all combine to render these communities more than hell holes for the few small farmers left in the area.

This is just a start. Our food supply is becoming contaminated and the air, ground and water more polluted. If we do not do something, our children and older citizens will be at great risk.

Let’s start with the schools and work from there into the supermarkets

Below is a press release and link to a letter sent by national environmental and public interest groups to members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees regarding Yucca Mountain provisions in the administration's 2004 budget request.

Press Release: Feb. 13, 2003

Congress Should Rein in Yucca Mountain Spending -Group Letter to Appropriators Criticizes Budget for Proposed Nuclear Dump

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress should object to provisions in the Bush administration's 2004 budget affecting the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, national environmental, public interest and public health organizations said in a letter sent today to House and Senate appropriators.

Last summer, Congress voted to allow the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to proceed with a license application to transport 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste to a repository at Yucca Mountain, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev. Critics of the project have raised concerns about the dangers of transporting nuclear waste, federal regulatory rollbacks that have weakened environmental standards for the project, and outstanding technical issues surrounding the suitability of the site.

"None of our longstanding concerns about the Yucca Mountain project have been resolved," the groups wrote in the letter. "More than ever, at this crucial juncture, the project requires careful congressional oversight and budget scrutiny."

The groups urged appropriators to withhold full funding for the Yucca Mountain program in 2004, budgeted at $591 million - a 28 percent increase over the funding levels agreed to in this year's omnibus appropriations bill. The groups also criticized the administration's proposal to stop funding monitoring and oversight activities carried out by the state of Nevada.

The groups also drew attention to a new proposal to reserve funds for the Yucca Mountain project within discretionary cap adjustments, a measure expected to be considered by House and Senate budget committees later this spring. This would inappropriately limit the discretionary
authority of appropriators to balance various budget priorities, essentially granting the DOE a blank check for Yucca Mountain spending, the groups said.

"Fiscally as well as environmentally, this unusual maneuver would be grossly irresponsible, particularly given the DOE's track record of cost overruns and financial mismanagement in its nuclear programs," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen.