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March
3, 2002
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
Terry
Diggs
Why
Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecaudorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
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EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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March 3, 2002
EPA Regulator Quits
in Disgust
Dear Christie: Take
This Job and Shove It
by Eric Schaeffer
Christine Whitman
Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004
Dear Ms. Whitman:
I resign today from the Environmental
Protection Agency after twelve years of service, the last five
as Director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement. I am grateful
for the opportunities I have been given, and leave with a deep
admiration for the men and women of EPA who dedicate their
lives to protecting the environment and the public health. Their
faith in the Agency's mission is an inspiring example to those
who still believe that government should stand for the public
interest.
But I cannot leave without sharing my
frustration about the fate of our enforcement actions against
power companies that have violated the Clean Air Act. Between
November of 1999 and December of 2000, EPA filed lawsuits against
9 power companies for expanding their plants, without obtaining
New Source Review permits and the up to date pollution controls
required by law. The companies named in our lawsuits emit an
incredible 5.0 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year (a
quarter of the emissions in the entire country) as well as 2
million tons of nitrogen oxide.
As the scale of pollution from these
coal-fired smokestacks is immense, so is the damage to public
health. Data supplied to the Senate Environment Committee by
EPA last year estimate the annual health bill from 7 million
tons of SO2 and NO2: more than 10,800 premature deaths; at least
5,400 incidents of chronic bronchitis; more than 5,100 hospital
emergency visits; and over 1.5 million lost work days. Add
to that severe damage to our natural resources, as acid rain
attacks soils and plants, and deposits nitrogen in the Chesapeake
Bay and other critical bodies of water.
Fifteen months ago, it looked as though
our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics, when
EPA publicly announced agreements with Cinergy and Vepco to
reduce Sox and Nox emissions by a combined 750,000 tons per
year. Settlements already lodged with two other companies -
TECO and PSE&G - will eventually take another quarter million
tons of Nox and Sox out of the air annually. If we get similar
results from the 9 companies with filed complaints, we are on
track to reduce both pollutants by a combined 4.8 million tons
per year. And that does not count the hundreds of thousands
of additional tons that can be obtained from other companies
with whom we have been negotiating.
Yet today, we seem about the snatch defeat
from the jaws of victory. We are in the 9th month of a "90
day review" to reexamine the law, and fighting a White
House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying
to enforce. It is hard to know which is worse, the endless delay
or the repeated leaks by energy industry lobbyists of draft
rule changes that would undermine lawsuits already filed. At
their heart, these proposals would turn narrow exemptions into
larger loopholes that would allow old "grandfathered"
plants to be continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase)
without modern pollution controls.
Our negotiating position is weakened
further by the Administration's budget proposal to cut the civil
enforcement program by more than 200 staff positions below
the 2001 level. Already, we are unable to fill key staff positions,
not only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs,
and the proposed budget cuts would leave us desperately short
of the resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated
corporate defendants we face. And it is completely unrealistic
to expect underfunded state environmental programs, facing their
own budget cuts, to take up the slack.
It is no longer possible to pretend that
the ongoing debate with the White House and Department of Energy
is not effecting our ability to negotiate settlements. Cinergy
and Vepco have refused to sign the consent decrees they agreed
to 15 months ago, hedging their bets while waiting for the
Administration's Clean Air Act reform proposals. Other companies
with whom we were close to settlement have walked away from
the table. The momentum we obtained with agreements announced
earlier has stopped, and we have filed no new lawsuits against
utility companies since this Administration took office. We
obviously cannot settle cases with defendants who think we are
still rewriting the law.
The arguments against sustaining our
enforcement actions don't hold up to scrutiny.
Were the complaints filed by the U.S.
government based on conflicting or changing interpretations?
The Justice Department doesn't think so. Its review of our enforcement
actions found EPA's interpretation of the law to be reasonable
and consistent. While the Justice Department has gamely insisted
it will continue to prosecute existing cases, the confusion
over where EPA is going with New Source Review has made settlement
almost impossible, and protracted litigation inevitable.
What about the energy crisis? It stubbornly
refuses to materialize, as experts predict a glut of power plants
in some areas of the U.S. In any case, our settlements are
flexible enough to provide for cleaner air while protecting
consumers from rate shock.
The relative costs and benefits? EPA's
regulatory impact analyses, reviewed by OMB, quantify health
and environmental benefits of $7,300 per ton of SO2 reduced
at a cost of less than $1,000 per ton. These cases should be
supported by anyone who thinks cost-benefit analysis is a serious
tool for decision-making, not a political game.
Is the law too complicated to understand?
Most of the projects our cases targeted involved big expansion
projects that pushed emission increases many times over the
limits allowed by law.
Should we try to fix the problem by passing
a new law? Assuming the Administration's bill survives a legislative
odyssey in today's evenly divided Congress, it will send us
right back where we started with new rules to write, which
will then be delayed by industry challenges, and with fewer
emissions reductions than we can get by enforcing today's law.
I believe you share the concerns I have
expressed, and wish you well in your efforts to persuade the
Administration to put our enforcement actions back on course.
Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and our greatest environmental
President, said, "Compliance with the law is demanded as
a right, not asked as a favor." By showing that powerful
utility interests are not exempt from that principle, you will
prove to EPA's staff that their faith in the Agency's mission
is not in vain. And you will leave the American public with
an environmental victory that will be felt for generations to
come.
Sincerely,
Eric V. Schaeffer,
Director
Office of Regulatory Enforcement
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