During an administration in which all three branches of government debated greenhouse gas regulation, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) was busy suppressing references to a landmark 2000 national assessment on climate change and delaying the congressionally-mandated update of that document. In 2005, Rick Piltz, a senior associate at CCSP, blew the whistle and resigned over politicization that he felt “undermine[d] the credibility and integrity of the program” — a 13-agency research effort overseen by the White House. Piltz testified in an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that reported White House officials heavily edited scientific documents and controlled which climate scientists could speak to the media. Philip A. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, spearheaded the editing for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) — including 181 edits made to CCSP’s 2003 strategic plan. CEQ deleted nine references to the national assessment — a document that sought to identify key climatic vulnerabilities in the United States. The oversight investigation highlighted other reports by CCSP and the Environmental Protection Agency in which material on climate change was significantly edited or deleted altogether. Cooney resigned after the revelations of his edits (and then went to work for Exxon-Mobil), but the administration called it normal procedure for political appointees to edit work by government scientists. Officials said it was done to echo a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report, but the oversight committee characterized the practice as cherry-picking science. Meanwhile, CCSP failed to meet a required November 2004 deadline to update the national assessment, electing instead to wait and issue 21 separate reports over a multi-year period. Those delays prompted criticism from the Government Accountability Office and the National Research Council. An environmental coalition sued the administration for its failure to issue an integrated report of its findings, and in 2007 a U.S. district judge ordered that assessment to be issued before June 2008. CCSP issued a report the following May, prompting whistleblower Piltz to say that “[a]fter seven years of denial, disinformation, cover-up, and delay, in its waning months, the Bush administration is finally beginning to allow the publication of reports that acknowledge this scientific reality.” The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not respond to a request for comment, but in a press release the office’s associate director said, “This assessment represents a comprehensive look at the effects of climate change for the United States and will be yet another tool for the nation’s decision-makers to use when planning for the future.”

Follow-up:
As of December 8, CCSP had completed 14 of its 21 technical reports on climate change. It plans to issue the final seven by the end of 2008. The program also issued the first draft of an integrated report in July, which the administration said “will provide a single coherent analysis of the current understanding of climate change science.”

Image: U.S. Climate Change Science Program's 2009 report

As the most industrialized nation, the United States has been the largest historical contributor to the fossil fuel emissions that have placed the planet in peril of dangerous warming. Yet the government has failed to lead the way to a national or international solution. The Clinton administration participated in the 1997 U.N. negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, for a treaty that would begin to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the developed world. But faced with tough Senate opposition, the Clinton White House never brought up the treaty for a ratification vote. President Bush rejected Kyoto early on as “fatally flawed,” but did not work to negotiate an alternative. Instead he advocated for further scientific research and emphasized that progress could be made with voluntary cutbacks. A Climate Leaders program was established, now involving 232 companies, many of which have reduced carbon emissions through energy efficiency measures — but most have set no goal at all. And the United States, which has seen no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2000, is on track for a 16 percent increase through 2030. Meanwhile China, which is quickly building coal plants to power its burgeoning economy, has surpassed the United States in annual carbon dioxide emissions. Scientific evidence has mounted that global warming is causing glacial melt and the disappearance of the polar ice caps, and it may also have a role in more intense hurricanes and worsening forest fires. Since 2007 the United States has been the lone holdout among developed nations in not signing the Kyoto accord, and while U.N. talks on a successor treaty proceed, most nations were awaiting the change in administration in Washington before tackling difficult details. President Bush argued that he has taken a “rational, balanced” approach to climate change, stressing the importance of technology. In 2007 he launched separate meetings of “major economies” on the climate, parallel to the U.N. talks. In 2008 the group agreed climate change was ''one of the great global challenges of our time,” and that worldwide emissions should be cut in half by 2050. But they developed no road map for getting to a target viewed by many as too modest. The years of inaction have been costly. The scientific consensus view, reported by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is that the world faces widespread water and food shortages, spreading disease, and mass migration of people from low-lying areas. Said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri last year, “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future.”

Follow-up:
President-Elect Obama says “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear,” that climate change is one of the most urgent issues facing the nation and the world. He promises a new chapter in which the United States will “engage vigorously” in negotiations to a successor treaty to Kyoto, and will work with Congress to establish national limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But his administration will have to face down strong opposition from the nation’s largest business lobbies, who argue that imposition of a climate change policy would amount to a burdensome tax on an economy that is already on its knees.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

In a tag-team move that shortchanged the public’s knowledge of environmental hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) loosened reporting requirements on the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Congress created the TRI database in 1986 to allow the public to track toxic chemical emissions. The 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, and a subsequent West Virginia chemical plant leak inspired a system in which facilities discharging or disposing of at least 500 pounds of toxic chemicals per year were required to report totals to a public database. The system seemed to work for two decades. But despite American Chemistry Council data showing a near three-quarters reduction in toxic emissions since the program was enacted, in 2005 the EPA proposed raising the reporting threshold tenfold, while allowing facilities to report only every other year. The EPA said it was aiming to reduce the burden on industry to gather and report data on roughly 650 chemicals. The proposal met opposition from a dozen state attorneys general and health groups such as the American Lung Association and the Breast Cancer Fund. Even the American Petroleum Institute expressed doubts that the agency’s approach would achieve its goal of reducing the burden on industry. In addition to a critical letter from its own Science Advisory Board, the EPA received an overwhelming public response, with comments from 122,420 individuals and groups — all but 34 of whom expressed disapproval. Despite these objections, the EPA formally changed the rule in December 2006. The rule did stop short of the proposed 5,000-pound threshold, instead quadrupling the old reporting requirement from 500 to 2,000 pounds of annual toxic emissions. The Government Accountability Office found that more than 3,500 facilities would no longer have to report detailed information about their toxic chemical releases as a result. The EPA press office did not respond to a request for comment, but has argued that the changes will save industry $6 million a year in reduced monitoring costs, and will reduce the burden on small companies that contribute only a tiny share of the nation’s emissions.

Follow-up:
On February 14, 2007, members of the House and Senate drafted “valentine” legislation to the American public in the form of the Toxic Right-to-Know Prevention Act. The bill has not yet been voted on by either legislative body, so will likely need to be reintroduced in the 111th Congress. In its transition report for the Obama administration, the GAO said that the EPA should ensure information is “effectively collected and communicated to the public.”

Photo credit: Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The Bush administration has consistently drawn ire from the scientific community for its propensity to ignore, manipulate, and suppress science. From its earliest days, the administration demonstrated a lack of interest or, say critics, even disdain for science by allowing key scientific posts to go unfilled for over a year — including Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, National Institutes of Health director, and surgeon general. The FDA job took 20 months to fill, while the eventual surgeon general, Richard Carmona, ultimately accused the administration of political interference. In addition, a presidential science adviser was not chosen for nine months, and then was demoted in status from “assistant to the president” to “adviser.” When critics began to accuse the administration of making politically-tinged appointments to science advisory panels in 2002, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman offered what would become a frequent refrain — “every administration does that.” But by August 2003, minority staff for the House Government Reform Committee countered by launching an investigation arguing that this administration was unique in having “repeatedly suppressed, distorted, or obstructed science to suit political and ideological goals.” The investigation chronicled lapses in scientific integrity across the government — from the National Cancer Institute, which falsely connected abortions to breast cancer, to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which killed a climate change section from a key report. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the minority report was “riddled with distortion.” The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), however, followed with its own analysis in 2004 that included a statement denouncing the administration’s tactics — signed by thousands of scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science. White House science adviser Dr. John Marburger consistently rebuffed criticisms, which continued to grow. Reporters and oversight bodies frequently investigated instances of political interference, such as the Department of Interior inspector general’s report on an official who manipulated science to help land developers, or a House investigation of political edits to climate change research. Even the nation’s most famous scientific voice on global warming, Dr. James Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was censored by a 20-something political appointee reportedly out to “make the president look good.” In April 2008, a UCS survey of 1,586 EPA scientists reported that 60 percent had experienced political interference in their work during the past five years, with 10 times as many scientists saying interference increased than said it decreased. Surveys of the FDA, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found similar grievances by scientists. The White House did not reply to a request for comment, but Dr. Marburger has previously rebutted charges of politicized science and called the 2004 UCS report “deeply flawed.” “Science advice should not reflect political views,” he said in an online forum hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Public officials who make policy need to be able to distinguish between opinion and science, and the policy process is not well served by mixing the two.”

Follow-up:
A number of congressional oversight hearings have examined individual lapses in scientific integrity, and the Government Accountability Office included in its recommendations for the presidential transition specific suggestions to deal with the “perceived politicization of science,” such as ensuring scientific committees are independent and balanced. In an October letter, President-Elect Obama said environmental science, research, and education were damaged by politics and ideology. “In an Obama administration, the principle of scientific integrity will be an absolute,” he wrote.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

Over the course of the Bush administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has been hit with troubling — and repeated — reports of politically inappropriate activity at the agency. The litany of concerns prompted Earl Devaney, the department’s inspector general (IG), to claim that “short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.” In one controversial 2002 episode, political appointee Anne Klee helped negotiate the proposed purchase of mineral rights — estimated by the Minerals Management Service to be worth $68 million — from the powerful Collier family, which at one time owned 1.25 million acres of Florida land. According to IG Devaney, department officials including Klee were in constant conflict with career agency staff members and provided “incomplete” information in order to arrange a tentative sale price of $120 million, plus up to $350 million in tax breaks for the sellers; the deal eventually fell apart. In 2004, Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles was cleared of ethics violation charges, but in 2007, he pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the U.S. Senate about his connections with infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to whom he provided “advice and intervention on issues within DOI,” according to prosecutors; Griles was sentenced to ten months in prison. A second official from the department received two years probation and a fine for failing to report gifts from Abramoff while working as an overseer for the Northern Marina Islands, which retained Abramoff as a lobbyist. Also in 2007, the deputy assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Julie MacDonald, admitted to leaking internal documents — in violation of federal regulations — about endangered species to pro-industry groups, including the Chevron Corporation and the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. MacDonald became the subject of an IG investigation after an anonymous complaint surfaced charging that she “bullied, insulted, and harassed” professional staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service to make them alter their scientific findings to favor developers and industry. “A lot of that is true,” the IG report quoted Dale Hall, the Fish and Wildlife Service director, as saying. Although the report concluded MacDonald violated federal regulations, there was no finding of illegal activity. In May 2007, several scientists from inside and outside the department testified to Congress that appointed officials at Interior “knowingly used flawed science” and that “official manipulation of Endangered Species Act science has become pervasive.” A Fish and Wildlife Services spokesman acknowledged that "there were issues," but said the agency has "acted to curb the problem" and can now "vouch for the integrity of the process."

Follow-up:
Julie MacDonald resigned in May 2007 after the inspector general issued a report about her actions. The IG report led to the creation of a scientific code of ethics to ensure that the agency’s actions are based on science, not politics. The IG has also begun inquiries into the agency’s delay in putting polar bears on the endangered species list, and into the cases of eight endangered species that may have been impacted by MacDonald’s influence. In December 2008 the inspector general issued a report that MacDonald’s influence was wider than expected and stated that “her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every [Endangered Species Act] decision issued during her tenure.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own science advisory board has joined a host of critics questioning the agency’s decision not to set a drinking water standard for perchlorate, a rocket fuel ingredient that can hinder brain development. Perchlorate has shown up in more than 150 drinking water systems in 35 states, and the EPA has wrestled with what to do about it for years. Critics charge that the agency has been reluctant to act because the pollutant is released by the politically influential aerospace industry and Department of Defense. In 2002, EPA scientists found that perchlorate posed a danger to human health at concentrations greater than one part per billion (ppb), but the agency told staff members not to talk about the issue, pending further study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). An NAS panel reported in 2005 that it could not find a conclusive link between perchlorate and health hazards, but the panel acknowledged that there had been no research examining the relationship between perchlorate exposure and highly vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and their babies. In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a study finding that perchlorate exposure endangers fetal brain development in one-third of pregnant American women at levels of 7 ppb. But the EPA announced in October 2008 that it would set no safety standard for perchlorate, arguing that a new regulation would not present a “meaningful opportunity” for reducing health risks. The agency’s own advisory board disagreed: “Given perchlorate’s wide occurrence and well-documented toxicity to humans, the [Science Advisory Board] strongly believes that there must be a compelling scientific basis to support a scientific determination not to regulate perchlorate as a national drinking water contaminant,” the board chair wrote. In response to the criticisms, an EPA official stated that the agency “is committed to sound science and transparency in decision making.”

Follow-up:
The EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee criticized the agency’s decision and the Scientific Advisory Board urged a three-month extension of the public comment period on the decision. But the EPA said the comment period would end on November 28, with a determination finalized in December after two independent scientific peer reviews are completed. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, vowed she “will do everything in [her] power” to reverse any decision to not regulate perchlorate.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

In 2002, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the way for a resurgence of environmentally damaging mountaintop coal mining, using a rule change that legalized filling valleys with debris. The result: the drive for low-cost coal is blasting the peaks off the Appalachian Mountains and forever changing the lives of the people beneath them, who say that federal policy to boost energy production has forsaken the environment. In mountaintop removal, the coal industry uses explosives to blast away summits that expose seams of coal, and huge machines push the debris into the valley below. It puts fewer miners at risk than traditional underground mining. But across Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated — in a report produced as part of a lawsuit settlement — that mountaintop removal has filled in some 1,200 miles of streams and completely destroyed another 700 miles. With once-lush hillsides stripped of vegetation and the natural drainage patterns altered, communities below blame the mining for flooding and drinking-water pollution. Until the federal government’s 2002 rule change, mountaintop mining had ebbed in the late 1990s thanks in part to lawsuits. Now, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) is proposing another rule change that critics say would further loosen the reins on industry, by easing requirements that mining not affect local water supplies. OSM maintains that Congress envisioned mountaintop mining and construction of valley fills in streams when it passed the federal surface mining law in 1977. An OSM spokesman told the Center that the agency’s job is to minimize the impacts and “to balance environmental protection and production of the nation’s coal supply.” The agency says its new proposal would not increase mountaintop mining, but would have a “positive effect” by clarifying what that law requires for operations near streams. “OSM is committed to carrying out our program with rules that are clear and assure minimization of adverse impacts to the environment and coalfield citizens,” the agency spokesman said. But citing “significant concerns” with the proposed rule, Senators Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, and Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate OSM’s rulemaking procedures, the EPA’s role in them, and the government’s overall policy on mountaintop removal.

Follow-up:
Despite opposition from the governors of Tennessee and Kentucky and lawsuit threats by environmentalists, the EPA signed off on OSM’s rule change on December 3, 2008. During the campaign, President-Elect Obama expressed “serious concerns about the environmental implications” of mountaintop mining, but stopped short of calling for a ban on the practice. Coal companies may also face a new struggle as one of the nation’s largest lenders, Bank of America, cited environmental concerns in announcing December 3 it would phase out financing of companies “whose predominant method of extracting coal” is mountaintop removal.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) lengthened and complicated the government’s process for assessing the potential dangers of toxic chemicals, according to a March 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Though hundreds of new chemicals enter the marketplace each year, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database, which is used to develop human risk assessments, includes information on only about 540 of them. The GAO found that while the EPA set a goal for finalizing 50 such chemical risk assessments annually, the agency had fallen well behind, with only four finalized over the previous two years. Yet recent changes to IRIS not only delayed the process, according to the GAO, but swept away transparency. The new rules allow other executive agencies to sit in from the beginning of the assessment process, including the Department of Defense, which has a multibillion-dollar interest in the decision to regulate and clean up certain chemicals. The rules also allow these agencies to perform and sponsor their own research or even suspend the assessment process for up to 18 months. Authority over interagency review goes to OMB. Changes made to these assessments during the interagency process are not disclosed, because OMB considers them to be internal executive branch communications; they are therefore not made available to the public. OMB says this practice protects the “deliberative” process. The GAO’s investigation, however, said the practice “lack[s] transparency” and “limits . . . credibility.” An analyst at government watchdog OMB Watch summarized the approach as extending the OMB’s role from making decisions based on risks to also assessing those risks themselves. The OMB, meanwhile, maintains that the EPA has final authority. “We recognize that people outside of EPA use this system and have significant knowledge and expertise to offer,” the EPA formally stated. “These improvements to the IRIS process will ensure that we continue to have assessments of the highest quality and a system that’s easy to understand and participate in.”

Follow-up:
Four months after a House subcommittee hearing, Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, introduced the Integrated Risk Information System Authorization Act in September 2008 to produce more scientific information on chemicals. That legislation awaits consideration. The GAO again highlighted its own recommendation for more transparent practices in a presidential transition report released in November. In December, a National Research Council report found that EPA’s risk assessment process “is bogged down by unprecedented challenges” and “should be streamlined to ensure the appropriate use of available science, technical accuracy, and tailoring to the specific needs of the problem.”

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

An eye-opening series of reports in fall 2008 by the Department of the Interior’s inspector general disclosed a stunning level of corruption at the Minerals Management Service (MMS), and a coziness with industry officials that included a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” at the agency. MMS is responsible for collecting royalties from companies for the right to produce oil and gas from federally controlled land and water; in 2007, MMS collected more than $9 billion in oil and gas royalties, making it one of the largest sources of income for the United States government. The agency also runs the Royalty-in-Kind program out of its Denver office, through which it takes delivery of oil and gas from energy firms in lieu of cash payments, and then sells it to refiners. The inspector general concluded that officials in the MMS Royalty-in-Kind program “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” The IG said that one-third of Royalty-in-Kind officials were taking bribes and gifts, and noted that former MMS officials received contracts from their friends still in the department. Out of 718 bid packages awarded by MMS between 2001 and 2006, 121 were modified by the agency — and all but three of the modifications benefited the oil companies. The inspector general said that these relationships have cost taxpayers $4.4 million in lapsed collection fees, but due to the sloppy administration at MMS, the real cost may go undiscovered. In a separate report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that MMS is plagued by inefficiency in collecting royalties, and that there is no way to backtrack and figure out how much has actually been lost. Currently, oil companies submit their own data and MMS simply takes them at their word, rather than independently confirming that the numbers are correct — what the inspector general has referred to in a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne as a “Band-Aid approach to holding together one of the federal government's largest revenue producing operations.” A separate GAO report found that the United States is not collecting fair market price for royalties on public resources — which may be seriously limiting the amount of money taken in by MMS, and hence, the taxpayers.

Follow-up:
The Government Accountability Office has issued recommendations to make MMS more efficient in gathering revenue, but they have yet to be implemented. One MMS official, Jimmy W. Mayberry, pleaded guilty to a felony conflict-of-interest charge and was sentenced in November to two years of probation and a $2,500 fine. Two other officials retired; for unknown reasons, the Department of Justice has declined to pursue charges. While there have been changes that have “strengthened review,” the Inspector General’s Office says further improvements are needed. The MMS press office did not respond to a request for comment, but, after declaring that he was “outraged” by the findings, Secretary Kempthorne has begun a series of changes aimed at cleaning out corruption in MMS. The House and Senate each acted on legislation intended to reform MMS, increase oversight and accountability, and impose penalties for oil executives who give improper gifts to Interior employees. However, none of the measures made it through both houses of Congress, so the process will need to begin again in the 111th Congress.

Days after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the air was safe to breathe, but that proved to be a dangerously optimistic assessment. Nearly two years later, EPA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported that the EPA “did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement,” as “air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern.” The OIG also discovered that the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) significantly revised EPA press releases “to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” Samples showed asbestos levels between double and triple EPA’s danger limit, but CEQ edits defined the results as “slightly above” the limit. EPA was instructed to clear all statements to the media through the National Security Council, giving National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s office final approval. While the EPA pointed to its recommendations that workers and volunteers on site take precautions such as using respirators, OIG said “EPA’s basic overriding message was that the public did not need to be concerned about airborne contaminants.” Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman maintains that her assurances referred to lower Manhattan in general and not the Ground Zero site. Yet, first responders like Vinny Forras told CBS, “We were being told ‘Don’t worry about it.’” Forras is one of the nearly seven out of 10 World Trade Center responders who reported new or worsened lung problems, according to a 2006 study by Mount Sinai Hospital.

Follow Up:
Representative Jerrold Nadler and Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrats of New York, have led congressional inquiries of the EPA. “We never got the information we needed,” Clinton said. “We are left with a federal agency that is completely unprepared if this kind of air quality disaster were to happen again.” Two EPA indoor air cleanups were criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In response to a request for comment, an EPA spokeswoman noted that the agency wrote to senators in September 2008 saying that it “is disappointed that the final GAO report continues to foster a misleading impression” about the EPA work. A Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Whitman cannot be held personally liable for any of her statements of reassurance about Ground Zero air quality, overruling a District Court judge who in 2006 called Whitman’s actions “shocking.” Meanwhile, the bipartisan 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which called for research as well as medical monitoring and treatment for those exposed to Ground Zero toxins, failed to move through the House in 2008. Legislation signed by New York Governor George Pataki in 2006 and expanded in 2008 by Governor David Paterson allows uniformed municipal workers with health problems caused by 9/11 to exit their jobs with three-quarters disability or file for it if they have already left.

Photo credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The fine particle pollution that blasts into the air from diesel vehicles and power plants is a health threat well-understood by scientists — causing an estimated 20,000 deaths a year and hospitalizing many more in the United States. But faced with this issue, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the first time in three decades ignored the advice of its Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) on air quality standards. Agency administrator Stephen L. Johnson said his 2006 ruling on National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particulate matter was “based on the best available science,” as required by the Clean Air Act. But it wasn’t clear what science he was referring to. The CASAC’s disagreements with the parent agency were echoed by the American Medical Association, American Thoracic Society, American Lung Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and American Public Health Association. EPA did issue a rule requiring that daily exposure levels to fine particulate matter be cut nearly in half by single or multi-county “areas,” to fit just within the revised window recommended by CASAC. But when the committee also recommended toughening the annual air standard for fine particulate matter, EPA disregarded the request. CASAC said that maintaining the current annual standard “does not provide an ‘adequate margin of safety’” The Union of Concerned Scientists cites more than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies published since particulate matter standards were last set in 1997 linking fine particle solution to “strokes, heart disease, respiratory ailments, and premature death.” The EPA press office did not respond to a request for comment, but its fact sheet said the agency “selected levels for the final standards after completing an extensive review of thousands of scientific studies,” and also “carefully reviewed and considered public comment.”

Follow-up:
Two members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a letter to EPA’s Johnson in March 2007 asking why the agency had not yet finalized states’ implementation of new particle standards and other environmental standards issued as far back as 1997. The EPA responded at the end of March, saying it was giving states several years to implement rulings; the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club then sued EPA in an effort to speed up the process. The litigation is still pending. In its presidential transition report, the Government Accountability Office suggested re-visiting and strengthening the particulate matter program.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

Eight years after the creation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), a long-term initiative to save the Everglades region, the effort has failed to make significant progress in rescuing what the plan calls “a dying ecosystem.” Approved by Congress as part of the 2000 Water Resources Development Act, CERP was pegged to cost the state of Florida and the federal government $7.8 billion dollars and was expected to take 30 years to complete. But the costs have since ballooned and the 30-year end date now looks increasingly optimistic. The goal of the project, which covers 18,000 square miles, is to “restore, protect, and preserve the water resources of central and southern Florida.” According to a congressionally-mandated report by the National Research Council, not a single CERP project had been completed as of September 2008. Although the plan calls for some 50 major projects, as of July 2008 at least four were under construction, while four pilot projects were in the installation phase. Florida has committed more than $2 billion for the plan, but the federal government has appropriated only several hundred million dollars — far below what the project calls for. Federal funding for the plan has been tied up in a complex system where each project must go through a yearly review, authorization, and funding request phase. CERP has also been criticized for deficiencies in statewide planning. The Everglades, meanwhile, continues to deteriorate. Scientists warn that 67 endangered species are imperiled and that the region’s unique ecosystem, which has already shrunk to half its historic size, may soon suffer irreversible losses. If that happens, local wildlife may not be the only victims — at risk is the water source for millions of residents, as well as such industries as commercial and recreational fishing, farming, and tourism.

Follow-up:
The National Research Council (NRC), part of the congressionally-chartered National Academy of Sciences, has suggested a reorganization of how CERP receives money, with projects funded in a multiyear format and grouped together to allow for better planning. A CERP spokesman said in a statement that the project agrees with the NRC’s findings that CERP has been hurt by limited federal funding and a complex and lengthy federal planning process. If not addressed, he added, the funding issues could create “additional constraints to CERP and restoration progress in the coming years.” The same spokesman confirmed that there are no set dates for the projects to be completed.

Photo credit: National Park Service

A 2007 Center for Public Integrity investigation found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program had lost critical momentum and massive amounts of funding since the turn of the century, bringing further risk to the quarter of the nation’s population living within three miles of a hazardous waste site. The Center found the start rate for site cleanups from 2001 to 2006 had fallen by two-thirds from the previous six-year period, and while EPA completed construction work at an average of 79 sites per year from 1995 through 2000, that rate dropped to an average of 42 per year from 2001 to 2006. Officials argued this was due to the increased complexity of newer sites after previous cleanups picked the “low-hanging fruit,” but that failed to explain the decline in money retrieved from industry to reimburse EPA for cleanups — from more than $300 million in 1999 to just about $60 million in 2006. When Congress created the Superfund program in 1980, lawmakers established a trust fund supported by a tax on petroleum products and chemicals, and enabled EPA to push responsible parties to reimburse the agency after cleanups. The Superfund tax comprised more than two-thirds of that trust fund until 1995, when Congress allowed the tax to expire. After that, the bulk of trust fund money came from Congressional appropriations, which have been declining when adjusted for inflation. As a result, the trust fund balance declined from $4.7 billion at the start of fiscal year 1997 to $173 million at the start of fiscal year 2007. Experts said the erosion of the trust fund meant the agency no longer had the money to clean up sites first and stick industry with the bill afterward. Also, the Center reported that a policy change in 2000 led to a rise in what are called site-specific accounts, which collect millions of dollars from polluters for exclusive rather than general fund use. That move, combined with bankruptcies and a dwindling trust fund, left hundreds of so-called “orphan” sites without adequate funding to clean up the mess. Some lawmakers who oppose more funding argued that soaring administrative costs were to blame for Superfund’s woes, but a 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report challenged those claims, and found that total Superfund expenditures fell 29 percent since 1999. The funding fell despite the fact that 114 toxic waste sites found within 10 miles of 25 million Americans were determined by EPA to be “not under control” in 2007 — with dangerous and occasionally carcinogenic substances threatening the public by poisoning the soil, water, or air. The EPA press office did not respond to a request for comment, but the head of its Superfund program told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in August 2007 that “EPA funded all new cleanup construction projects that were ready for construction funding” in 2007, after subjecting them to a “rigorous prioritization project.”

Follow-up:
Efforts to reintroduce the Superfund tax have failed in recent sessions of Congress, and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, admitted in 2008 that she did not then have the votes for such a measure. House Democrats introduced a bill in 2007 and Senate Democrats introduced a Polluter Pays Act in 2008, but neither attempt left committee. GAO’s presidential transition report revisited the Superfund problem and offered a number of recommendations for the next administration; most prominently, the report recommended that EPA push harder to assure that firms handling hazardous substances demonstrate their ability to pay for possible environmental cleanups. In November, the EPA announced that in FY 2008 it completed construction at 30 sites and recovered $232 million for past work. The agency cited additional accomplishments, such as securing $1.9 billion in private party commitments, but said it was not able to fund all new projects ready for construction.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency

The Bush Administration’s regulatory approach to toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants was struck down by a federal court that concluded the government flouted health law in a manner reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The National Academies’ National Research Council has found that some 60,000 newborns a year are at risk for neurological problems such as impaired motor function due to mercury—the largest source of which is coal-fired power plants. The Food and Drug Administration urges pregnant women to limit fish intake due to widespread contamination with mercury that made its way into the food chain. In its waning days, the Clinton administration listed mercury as a toxic substance subject to strict regulation as a health threat, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under President Bush, proposed a rule to reclassify mercury from coal-fired plants under a different section of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA’s rule would have set an overall limit on mercury, while giving coal plants flexibility to meet the goal or purchase “emissions rights” from other plants—known as a “cap-and-trade” program. The EPA said it would have cut the mercury being released in the air by 70 percent by 2018 — an improvement, but less strenuous than the 90 percent reduction by 2008 that was hoped for under the Clinton administration determination. In issuing the new rule and reclassifying coal plant mercury, the EPA used language lifted — in some cases verbatim — from utility industry law and lobby firm Latham & Watkins, as well as West Associates, a research and advocacy group. It was subsequently revealed that the EPA’s own air policy administrator was unaware of the private firms’ involvement, and that insertion of the language had actually been pushed by the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Energy. Critics, including the EPA’s own Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, said the plan could help create “hot spots” around power plants that would disproportionately hurt communities living in the shadow of smokestacks, because mercury emissions do not disperse evenly. Allowing dirtier power plants to purchase additional pollution credits would add to that burden. EPA’s own inspector general found that the agency’s approach “was compromised.” Ultimately, New Jersey led a group of states that challenged the mercury rules, and in February 2008, a federal appeals court delivered a unanimous ruling throwing out EPA’s reclassification of mercury from one section of the CAA to another. The court said EPA’s explanation “deploys the logic of the Queen of Hearts, substituting EPA’s desires for the plain text [of the CAA].” But EPA has argued that the Clinton administration’s original finding on mercury was “erroneous,” based on anticipated environmental effects rather than on health effects. The EPA says it took into consideration the health effects, the control technologies and the potential impacts on the electricity system in coming up with its cap-and trade approach, which it said would “achieve substantial, cost-effective reductions in mercury emissions from power plants.”

Follow-up:
The Bush Administration on October 17, 2008 asked the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s ruling, calling it an “erroneous decision” which “deprives EPA of authority — expressly granted by Congress — to pursue alternative regulatory measures in combating air pollution.” The Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), a power company coalition, also filed its own petition with the Court in September 2008. The UARG argues that the Washington, D.C., Circuit, which struck down the reclassification, ignored Supreme Court precedent in the case. The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to take the case; in the meantime, no federal program to limit coal plant mercury is in place.

Photo credit: National Park Service

A cascading series of problems — quality control, litigation, and cost overruns among them — has delayed the opening of a viable repository for high-level nuclear waste until at least 2020, but it’s still not clear the project will ever be successfully completed. The inability to find such a permanent site has left growing amounts of spent fuel and other high-level radioactive waste at 121 sites nationwide. The roots of the issue date back to 1982, when passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act created the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) within the Department of Energy (DOE). That office was charged with overseeing construction of a national repository for radioactive waste by the year 1998. When President Bush took office in 2001, the most viable, if controversial site, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, was still years away from operational status. But matters have only grown worse. By failing to use the fees long-imposed on nuclear plants to finance a facility, the government has faced dozens of breach-of-contract lawsuits from industry; many of those cases are still pending, but the government has already paid out millions of dollars in court awards or settlements. Congress approved the Yucca site in 2002, but the DOE repeatedly failed to meet its goal to complete the next step of submitting a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The DOE has faced vigorous opposition from the state of Nevada as well as some members of Congress who control the program’s purse strings, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that chronic quality assurance problems have also plagued the effort. In 2005, the disclosure of e-mails from geologists indicated that environmental documents may have been falsified, forcing the DOE to spend millions re-analyzing the science behind the project. Further slowing progress, the U.S. Court of Appeals found fault with an Environmental Protection Agency decision to plan “only” for 10,000 years of regulatory compliance at Yucca Mountain. It took until October 2005 for the DOE to enact a “New Path Forward” on how the project would proceed. A new OCRWM director was able to meet a revised goal of June 30, 2008, for submitting the license application to the NRC. DOE officials recently told Congress that under a best-case scenario, costs for the Yucca Mountain repository would reach $90 billion — $19 billion above its 2007 estimate and $33 billion more than the administration estimated in 2001. The site, moreover, would not open until 2020 at the earliest. But concerns about everything from transporting the waste to Yucca’s ability to store it safely could yet derail the project altogether — leaving America without a central repository for growing amounts of high-level nuclear waste that will remain deadly for thousands of years. The OCRWM press office did not respond to a request for comment, but Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a September statement, “I am confident the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rigorous review process will validate that the Yucca Mountain repository will safely store this waste in a manner that is most protective of human health and the environment.” OCRWM’s director referred the Senate to a National Academies finding that shipping spent fuel is thousands of times less risky than shipping other common hazardous material.

Followup:
President-Elect Obama and the new Congress could play a major role in determining whether the repository is built and if so, at what pace. Many key legislators, especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who hails from Nevada, support striking down the plan. The NRC, which will hold public hearings at a date to be determined, must respond to DOE’s application and issue or deny authorization by June 2011.

Photo credit: White House

More than a decade after the creation of its Office of Children’s Health Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has marginalized the agency’s only center for assessing risks to children, according to government auditors. Children are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards: Asthma and autism are on the rise, while four children’s diseases of environmental origin cost the nation an estimated $55 billion per year. The Office of Children’s Health Protection was founded in 1997 by the Clinton Administration, which also that year issued an executive order creating the Presidential Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children. Neither group has fared well. A September 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation found that the EPA had failed to effectively engage or value the input of the office’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (CHPAC). And President Bush allowed the task force to expire in 2005, leaving the EPA with no “high-level infrastructure or mandate” for children’s environmental health and safety, according to the GAO. Largely ignored by EPA officials, the committee on its own wrote more than 70 letters with hundreds of recommendations over the past decade. The GAO looked at three air quality standard proposals on particulate matter, ozone, and lead, and found that EPA officials either “did not acknowledge, was noncommittal, rejected, or offered only to consider [CHPAC recommendations] along with comments from the general public.” The EPA argues that much of the committee’s value comes from its verbal input during presentations and discussions. An EPA spokesman said the agency does indeed appreciate and rely on the committee’s advice and will “continue cross-agency collaborations to address the recommendations.”

Follow-up:
The release of the 2008 GAO report coincided with a hearing by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. EPA Assistant Administrator George Gray emphasized the agency’s accomplishments and commitment to children’s health, and told Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, that “the agency is working to understand and to consider” the GAO’s recommendations but “I can’t give you a timeline right now.” Clinton responded that “the timeline is that nothing has happened.” Clinton introduced legislation to reestablish the task force — which is still awaiting consideration.

Photo credit: Department of Housing and Urban Development

A Clinton-era initiative to combine civil and military meteorological programs into one massive new satellite system has been complicated by structural failures, delays, and cost overruns that could potentially hinder the nation’s ability to monitor climate. The National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) — an interagency effort of the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — is supposed to launch four new satellites to replace an aging set that provide data to weather forecasters, climatologists, and the military. The $6.5 billion price tag for the system in 1995 kept climbing until DOD was forced to completely restructure the program in June 2006; as part of that restructuring, the number of new satellites envisioned was reduced from six to four. The Department of Commerce Inspector General — which has jurisdiction over NOAA — found that the project suffered from “poor management oversight and ineffective incentives.” After the program was restructured, the price tag jumped to an estimated $12.5 billion, with a three- to five-year launch delay, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that both the funding picture and the schedule could continue to get worse. The restructuring forced DOD to prioritize space weather monitoring over climate monitoring for the new program, which led to a reduction in the number of satellites and sensors that will monitor the climate. NPOESS has taken steps to mitigate the loss of those climate sensors, but the program still faces a number of hurdles, including problems in quality control and testing delays. If current satellites fail, warned the GAO in 2006, “there could be a gap in environmental satellite data.” The NOAA press office did not respond to a request for comment, but a NOAA under secretary told Congress he would be “the first to acknowledge” the government’s problem-strewn track record, while Under Secretary of Defense John J. Young said he was “disappointed with the failure of NPOESS management to complete actions.” Specialists in global warming worry that the troubled program could cause uncertainties in climate change monitoring at a time when there is finally broad consensus about the need to act on the problem. Both presidential candidates stumped on the need to combat global warming, a phenomenon that President Bush also said is a “serious problem.”

Follow-up:
A summer 2008 report by the GAO found that the NPOESS program had made substantial progress, but also that “key milestones have been delayed and multiple risks remain.” NPOESS is working to make progress in those areas, while the GAO is currently developing another update tentatively due around spring 2009.

Photo credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Ever since Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force took up the issue in 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has looked for ways to loosen the New Source Review (NSR) rules that require old power plants to meet modern pollution standards. NSR amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1977 exempted existing power plants, allowing them to maintain their pollution levels until they were retired, expanded, or significantly modified. In 1999, the EPA and the Department of Justice launched an enforcement campaign after discovering that 70 percent of coal-fired power plants in the United States had violated this arrangement by modifying their facilities while passing it off as “routine maintenance.” This allowed the aging plants to emit tens of millions of tons of pollutants that pose health risks such as respiratory problems and heart disease. After Cheney’s task force examined the NSR, the EPA proposed a series of rules in 2002 and 2003, which critics say undercut the NSR rules and related enforcement cases. The new rules called for power plants to be reviewed only at higher emission levels than previously established, while simultaneously widening the definition of routine maintenance. The U.S. Court of Appeals struck down that routine maintenance rule in 2006. By then, the EPA had proposed further changes allowing power plant operators to “modify” their facilities as long as maximum hourly emissions do not rise — while making no requirements for annual emissions. Internal documents revealed the Air Enforcement Division of the EPA strongly opposed the proposal.

Follow-up:
Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, wrote the EPA in June 2008 saying that the agency’s proposed rules for aging power plant emissions would result in “exacerbating pollution problems” and increasing global warming emissions. The EPA press office did not respond to a request for comment, but, on December 10, 2008, an EPA spokesman told reporters the agency would drop its pursuit of the rule change, despite working hard to complete it in recent weeks. “We didn’t want to be faced with putting a midnight regulation in place,” he told The New York Times.

Photo credit: Environmental Protection Agency