NEXT PAGE -->
|
| * * * COMPANIES & PRODUCTS * * * |
|---|
Updated Daily!
| * * * IN-HOUSE RESOURCES * * * |
|---|
DEFENDING ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA
July 12, 2000
"If we had written this plan we wouldn't be standing here with half a million postcards telling the Forest Service to improve it."
- Debbie Sease, Sierra Club Legislative Director, responding to accusations that environmental groups wrote the Administration's Roadless proposal at yesterday's press conference
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) TAKE ACTION: Time Running Out For Wild Forest Comments
2) NY Report: GE, We See Right Through You
3) Southwest: More Wild Forest Hearing Victories!
4) Kansas EVEC: Staying Cool By Working Hard
1)TAKE ACTION: Fax wild forest comment to Forest Service by July 17th!
Please take the time to write a personal letter to the Forest Service
-- demanding immediate protection of all our last wild forest roadless areas from all damaging activities -- because the Forest Service counts handwritten comments differently.
You can fax your letters directly to the Forest Service using the following toll-free number:
1-877-703-2494
When faxing, you can still address your letters to:
USDA Forest Service-CAET ATTN: Roadless P.O. Box 220190 Salt Lake City, UT 84122
Please tell Chief Mike Dombeck, USDA Forest Service, that you support a final plan that protects all roadless areas 1000 acres or more from logging, road building, and other destructive activities. Tell the Forest Service that their final plan must protect the Tongass National Forest in Alaska immediately. Letters should also address why wild forests are important to you and your region.
For more information, or to email your comments, please visit https://www.sierraclub.org/takeaction/wildlands/ Be sure to personalize your email.
WILD FOREST UPDATE:
* Half a million wild forest comments on display at U.S. Capitol
At a press event at the U.S. Capitol yesterday, leaders of the environmental community spoke in front of a massive wall of boxes stuffed with postcards and handwritten letters. The half a million postcards urge the Forest Service to adopt a final plan that bans road building, logging, and other destructive activities in areas of 1000 acres or more and immediately protects the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The press conference got good coverage from the Associated Press, Reuters, and Alaska Public Radio.
* Forest Service public meetings a huge success for wild forests!
Across the country, people who support full protection for wild forests outnumbered those who oppose protection of these areas -- both in comments and in overall turnout. The great majority spoke in favor of strengthening the draft Forest Service plan. Supporters of wild forest protection dominated all of the 10 regional meetings. Overall, an estimated 7,500 turned out to demand greater protection for our wild forests, and pro-roadless comments outnumbered anti-protection comments by almost 3 to 1!
2) Hudson River: The Nation's Most Beautiful River Ravaged by GE
"Our friends at General Electric have not only polluted the Hudson, their current public relations campaign is polluting our airwaves as well". That is how NE Regional Director Chris Ballantyne described GE'e recent ads. GE's misinformation campaign tells us how the Hudson River has miraculously cleaned up itself. The nation's largest superfund sight, the Hudson has suffered from GE's pollution for decades.
The EPA will soon unveil possible ways to clean up to deadly PCB's which were dumped into the Hudson by GE for more then 30 years. Since the practice was made illegal in the 1970's, GE has tried to shy away from cleaning it up. The Sierra Club is asking GE to do what every mother has said at one time: You make a mess you clean it up.
3) Wild Forest Domination in the Southwest - Grassroot Action!
-- Albuquerque, NM --
Approximately 150 total people attended, and we dominated the comments 65-13. Thanks to our pre-hearing rally, featuring Dave Foreman giving a stem-winder, our organizer Garrick Delzell got the first 50 speaking slots filled with our folks. Media coverage for the hearing included two TV stations as well as print.
-- Phoenix, AZ --
The Phoenix hearing represented a major comeback event for forest roadless protection on the Tonto NF. In December at the scoping meeting, the ORVers outnumbered enviros heavily. This time around, the ORV crowd turned out but so did our side as a result of Sierra Club organizing. Local organizer Julie Sherman did phone banks to followup our statewide mailings, and chapter staffer Sandy Bahr and our office AA Kristen Felan pitched in on calls and logistical support for a prehearing rally/reception on the patio outside the hearing room.
200 people attended the hearing, with 33 enviros v. 12 antis speaking. Our comments included a number of people who spoke to specific roadless areas they knew, and we even had a woman who'd just moved down here from Alaska who spoke at length about the Tongass NF.
4) Kansas EVEC: Braving the Heat
The 97 degree temperatures didn't stop nearly 30 volunteers from from walking door to door on Saturday with our voting charts. This is a great turnout for the Wakarusa group, which is celebrating its first full year of revitalization.
All of the Lawrence media showed up to help us spread the word that Rep. Dennis Moore has voted to protect our air and water. The event generated 40-second television news story on Channel 6, article and color photo in the Lawrence Journal World and was mentioned every hour from Friday to Saturday on a Lawrence radio station.
In Kansas City, the phones at the EVEC office are ringing off the hook thanks to letters to the editor in the Kansas City Star and Johnson County Sun simply telling readers to call if they want a voting chart!
"Saving these woods from the ax and saw, from money changer and water changer, and giving them to our country and world is in many ways the most notable service to God and Man." - John Muir, February 6, 1908, in a letter to President Teddy Roosevelt thanking him for the creation of the Muir Woods National Monument on January 9, 1908.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1)TAKE ACTION: Here We Go Again, Interior Spending Bill Full of Riders
2)Trade: Not Quite There
3)Sprawl: Highlight an Area Near You!
1)**TAKE ACTION: Please urge your Senator to stand up to the practice of using must-pass funding bills to pass anti-environmental riders. Vote against additional riders to be offered on Senate floor tomorrow and support efforts to strike anti-environmental riders from the Interior Appropriations bill.**
The Interior Appropriations bill is expected to be debated on the Senate floor on Tuesday and we expect a number of high-stakes environmental votes. At present, the bill contains insufficient funding levels to carry out critically needed natural resource conservation programs. Moreover, as in years past, the legislation contains a number of riders that would undermine our nation's land management and environmental protection programs.
And as if the current slate of riders in the legislation isn't enough, we expect at least three highly controversial efforts to add additional anti-environmental riders during floor debate. Please call your senators and urge them to VOTE AGAINST the following amendments:
- A rider by Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) to derail the Forest Service's Wild Forest/Roadless Initiative;
- A rider by Senator Jesse Helms to transfer lands from Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge to the Army Corps for the construction of dual jetties in Oregon Inlet that will waste taxpayer money and cause severe coastal erosion;
- A rider by Sen. Craig to prohibit the Interior Department from implementing its new regulations restricting snowmobile use in our National Parks.
Please urge your Senator to VOTE FOR and amendment to be offered by Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) to strike a provision that would prohibit environmental review of grazing permits that are due to be renewed.
In addition, the Sierra Club urges Senators to support any other efforts on the Senate floor to remove the many riders that were attached to the Interior Appropriations bill including provisions that would:
- Block funding for federal efforts to combat global climate change;
- Halt cooperative management and protection of America's rivers by denying funds for the Heritage River Initiative Program;
- Delay the National Forest Planning Process;
- Block action to protect the Mark Twain National Forest from destructive lead mining operations;
- Block establishment of the proposed Kankakee National Wildlife Refuge in IL and IN;
- Delay protection for Colorado's White River National Forest by delaying completion of its forest plan;
- Delay implementation of grizzly bear and gray wolf recovery efforts under the ESA;
- Prevent the study of restoration efforts for Glen Canyon and the Colorado River;
- Exempt the White Mountain National Forest in NH from the Forest Service's Roadless Initiative;
- Authorize 28 new "stewardship projects " in our National Forests that are designed not for positive ecological benefits, but as a vehicle for increased timber production;
- Reprogram Forest Service funding to achieve set timber harvest targets to the detriment of recreation, watershed restoration, fish and wildlife habitat and normal agency operations;
- Extend a controversial program to charge fees for the public to recreate in their public lands.
Finally, please urge your Senators to support amendments that would enhance environmental quality, such as an amendment to be offered by Senators Richard Bryan and Peter Fitzgerald to transfer funding from the destructive logging program into responsible fire reduction programs.
2)Administration "Feels our Pain" over Trade Policy -- Sort of
US Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky today released long-awaited draft guidelines on environmental review of trade agreements. Clearly, the White House has "felt our pain" about its grievously anti-environmental trade policy, one that has put endangered sea turtles and food safety on the chopping block.
The guidelines would require a scoping of potential environmental problems as future trade negotiations get underway. Based on this scoping, negotiators would have to consider alternatives that promote environmental protection and avoid harm. If thoroughly implemented, the review could help to decrease tensions over trade agreements.
Clearly the President wanted this initiative to heal relationships with environmentalists, strained by repeated battles over its trade policies. Amb. Barshevsky, reportedly, gave credit to Vice President Gore for the guidelines during her briefing.
Yet the draft guidelines still exhibit a major gap: nowhere do they provide for public release of draft negotiating texts. Without access to the draft texts, it will be impossible for the public to analyze or comment on potential impacts of future trade agreements on our health and environmental laws.
The President may be in a mood now to "build his legacy." He has until November, when the final assessment guidelines are due, to get it right. But so far, his trade and the environment legacy is more mole hill than mountain.
For further information, e-mail dan.seligman@sierraclub.org or dial (202) 675-2387
3) WEIGH IN ON SPRAWL IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
What does sprawl mean to you? What about smart growth?
As part of our Challenge to Sprawl Campaign, we are asking you to nominate projects and developments that exemplify sprawl or smart growth to you for inclusion in an upcoming sprawl report. Sprawl and smart growth are relatively new additions to the environmental community's vocabulary.
Please visit the sprawl section of the Sierra Club website at www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/ and click 'Nominate a development'. Please fill answer as many questions in the survey as you can. It should take you no more than 20 minutes to fill out. Please read all directions and provide as much detail as possible. If you don't have all the information requested below please submit what you do have and we'll contact you if we need more. ***We have extended the deadline for submissions to JULY 14th.*** Please send us your nominations as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, or want to find out more about our Challenge to Sprawl Campaign, please call Deron Lovaas at 202-675-2392 or by e-mail at deron.lovaas@sierraclub.org; or George Sorvalis at 202-675-6693 or by e-mail at george.sorvalis@sierraclub.org
"[Members of Congress] realize that the public wants to protect the environment, retain clean water and air, and restrain pollution. If legislators believed they were doing what the public wanted in this regard, there would be no reason to sneak a proposal onto a spending bill in the dead of night.
"The practice [of inserting riders] is abhorrent, and the American people should contact legislators to protest the danger it represents to full disclosure and discussion of the policies that affect our natural world." -- 'Kansas City Star' editorial, "Congress has sneaky ways with 'riders'", June 25, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) TAKE ACTIONS:
A: Protect Rivers and Wetlands -- Reform the Army Corps
B: Safeguard Forests, Wolves, Bears, and Rivers; Curb Global Warming and Grazing by Fighting Dangerous Riders
2) Study Links Air Pollution to Urban Deaths
3) From Coast to Coast, Citizens Unite to Protect Wild Forests
TAKE ACTION 1A) Support the Army Corps Reform Act of 2000.
BACKGROUND:
The need to reform the Army Corps of Engineers is greater than ever:
* No Oversight -- The absence of civilian and congressional oversight has allowed Corps planners and project-boosters to bend the rules to support questionable projects. Examples include Upper Mississippi River locks, Yazoo pumps, Big Sunflower dredging, New Madrid levee, Columbia River deepening, Delaware River deepening, and the C&D Canal deepening.
* Self-Promoting Agency -- The Corps has become a self-perpetuating agency, promoting rather than analyzing projects.
* Benefit-Cost Analysis Flawed -- Corps methods for predicting benefits and costs are fundamentally flawed. Half of the segments of the Inland Waterway System have few or no barges, and flood losses have doubled.
* Inadequate Mitigation -- In many cases, the Corps only replaces a fraction of the habitat their projects destroy. In some cases, the Corps has simply failed to mitigate for the environmental impacts of levees, dams and channels, or mitigation projects have failed to produce promised benefits.
* Species loss -- Corps projects are one leading cause of freshwater species loss and endangerment in North America, according to scientists. But the Corps continues to repeat the environmental mistakes of the past.
Call or email your Representative and urge her or him to co- sponsor the Army Corps Reform Act of 2000, which will be introduced by Representative Ron Kind (D-WI) this week.
The Army Corps Reform Act of 2000 will:
* Require independent review for large ($25 million or more) or controversial projects;
* Require full, concurrent mitigation for project impacts;
* Empower the Corps' Environmental Advisory Board to oppose projects when impacts cannot be cost-effectively or successfully mitigated;
* Require monitoring of completed projects;
* Create a stakeholder advisory group to guide project development; and
* Make economic benefits and environmental restoration co-equal.
EMAIL OR CALL TODAY! You can call your Representative by calling the Congressional Switchboard at 202-225-3121. Or visit CongressMerge at https://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/index.html to identify your Representative and get direct phone numbers.
TAKE ACTION 1B) Safeguard Wildlands -- Halt Harmful Senate Riders
In an effort to make the Senate rush through pending appropriations bills, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) is threatening to bring up the Senate Interior Appropriations bill to the floor for debate tomorrow (6/29). Although it seems unlikely, we may see votes on this controversial bill on Thursday. At present, the bill contains insufficient funding levels to carry out critically needed natural resource conservation programs. Moreover, as in years past, the legislation contains a number of riders that would undermine our nation's land management and environmental protection programs.
We expect a number of amendments to strike these anti-environmental riders from the Interior funding bill and we are urging Senators support for these efforts and any efforts to fend off attempts to add other harmful riders during House floor debate. In addition, we are urging Senators to vote for a number of pro-environmental amendments aimed at stopping federal programs that are harming our environment.
We expect a number of Senators to offer amendments on the floor to STRIKE anti-environmental riders presently in the Interior bill that would:
- Prohibit environmental review of grazing permits due to be renewed;
- Block funding for federal efforts to combat global climate change;
- Halt cooperative management and protection of America's rivers by denying funds for the Heritage River Initiative Program.
- Delay the National Forest Planning Process;
- Block action to protect the Mark Twain National Forest from destructive lead mining operations;
- Block establishment of the proposed Kankakee National Wildlife Refuge;
- Delay protection for Colorado's White River National Forest by delaying completion its forest plan;
- Delay implementation of grizzly bear recovery efforts;
- Thwart recovery efforts for the gray wolf in Oregon;
- Prevent the study of restoration efforts for Glen Canyon and the Colorado River;
- Exempt the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire from the Forest Service's Wild Forest/Roadless Initiative; and
- Extend a controversial program to charge fees for the public to recreate in their public lands.
We also expect Senators to try to attach additional harmful riders designed to undermine environmental protections during debate on the House floor including an amendment by Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to derail the Forest's Service Wild Forest/Roadless Inititative.
The Senate needs to hear from the public that the practice of using must-pass funding bills to advance anti-environmental riders must end. Please urge your Senators to vote to strip these harmful riders from the Interior Appropriations bill and support amendments that may be offered to strengthen environmental and natural resource protection programs.
2) Study of the Nation's 90 Largest Metropolitan Areas Links Deaths with Air Pollutants
A new scientific study has found that air pollution from tailpipes, powerplants, and other sources is causing measurable increases in deaths and hospitalizations, as reported by 'The New York Times' today. https://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/062800sci-environ-poll ute.html
The study's authors did not give numbers of deaths, but Robert Perciasepe, who heads the EPA's air pollution program, said repeated short-term exposure during days when there is elevated particle levels translates into "thousands of deaths per year."
The study found a 1-percent rise in the death rate for each small increase of tiny particles in the air and a 2- to 4-percent increase in the hospitalization of the elderly.
Statisticians consider this study to be very reliable because it integrates data from a large area and looks at death rates and particulate concentrations over time, in a variety of different weather conditions.
While EPA's Perciasepe said that this study "substantially validates some of the basic science behind regulations," Ronald White of the American Lung Association said, "This is additional scientific evidence that supports toughening the standard for particulate matter."
3) From Coast to Coast, Citizens Unite to Protect Wild Forests
At public meetings in community centers, high schools and auditoriums around the country, wild forest supporters have turned out by the hundreds to comment on the Forest Service's roadless plan and to urge the forest service to protect all areas from road building and logging and to protect the Tongass immediately. Here are some highlights from this week's round of hearings:
Arlington, Virginia: About 250 supporters from Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia packed two public meeting rooms in the Hyatt Hotel. Public comments ran about 100 in favor of stronger protection and 20 against. Activists walled the room with postcards supporting wild forests and President Teddy Roosevelt came back to Washington to voice his support for greater protection.
Columbia, South Carolina: 140 people, including 100 Sierra Club members attended the meeting. During the comment period, 44 people testified for the proposal and 9 testified against. Eight of the 10 Sierra Club groups participated in the event, and activists heard from our Teddy Roosevelt look-alike at a barbeque before the hearing.
Rapid City, South Dakota: In this town, historically a logging-industry stronghold, we showed roadless opponents that South Dakotans love our wild National Forests. At the hearing, 52 speakers favored greater protection and 46 were opposed. Supporters included Native Americans from the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock reservations who demanded an end to the exploitation of their sacred Black Hills.
Juneau, Alaska: 56 people spoke in favor of forest protection and 6 spoke against. We received good press coverage from the Associated Press ("Juneau residents testify for roadless Tongass Forest") and the Juneau Empire ("Residents back ban on roads"). People testifying for stronger protection included two retired biologists, an ecology professor, a former Louisiana Pacific logger, a road engineer, a council member, and several tourists.
San Bernardino, California: 32 Sierra Club members attended and spoke in support of protecting wild forests. Only one ORV user opposed to greater protection attended. Activists presented around 950 postcards supporting Wild Forests, including 9 from county supervisors.
Reno, Nevada: 30 people supporting wild forest protection attended versus 20 who were opposed. People testifying in support included hikers, senior activists, back country horsemen, and a bus driver who shaved his chest to look like a checkerboard logging cut.
Concord, New Hampshire: We dominated this hearing, where we were outnumbered during December's scoping comment meeting. One hundred roadless supporters attended, versus 25 opponents. Volunteers from throughout New England who treasure the White Mountain National Forest traveled to attend the hearing.
NEXT PAGE -->
|
| * * * COMPANIES & PRODUCTS * * * |
|---|
| * * * IN-HOUSE RESOURCES * * * |
|---|