The Struggle Continues by Carl Pope (Huffington Post)

[applegrove]

The Struggle Continues
by Carl Pope
(Huffington Post)
December 9, 2006

Washington, DC -- "The Bush Administration's assault on science and the public health may have lost some of its swagger after November 7, but the reactionaries haven't given up. A week before the election, the Assistant Secretary of EPA for Water, Benjamin Grumbles, required that Agency scientists submit for political censorship any scientific findings that a proposed development project would cause significant damage to wetlands and aquatic resources.

This kind of political review is triggered by any findings that the project will result in "substantial and unacceptable" impacts; EPA scientists are, however, free to find a project unobjectionable. Kyla Bennett, a biologist and lawyer who formerly worked for EPA's wetlands program, and is now the New England Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), pointed out that, "The aim and effect of this policy is to stifle EPA's own staff from protecting wetlands." PEER also documented that since similar controls were put in place at the Fish and Wildlife Service, no biologist there has filed a single objection to any project.

Since inadequate wetland protection is at least partially responsible for the Bush Administration's declining support among otherwise loyal hunters and anglers, this new effort to give developers a free hand to destroy waterways (without having to issue a regulation formalizing the policy) seems a tempting target for Congress. Indeed, these are exactly the kind of shenanigans that might give John Dingell, an ally of sportsmen who will head the Energy and Commerce Committee, a certain grim pleasure in eviscerating as he opens his campaign of robust oversight of executive agencies.

...........END"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/the-struggle-continues_b_35892.html