Senate rejects attempt to revive Superfund tax
Split along party lines, senators rejected an amendment on Mar. 25 that would have reinstated a tax on polluters to help pay for cleaning up Superfund toxic waste sites. Since 1995, when Congress allowed the tax to expire, the special trust fund for Superfund cleanup created from taxes on chemical and petroleum companies has shrunk from $3.6 billion to $28 million. The 1980 Superfund law says polluters should pay to clean up the environmental messes they made. Government-secured commitments from companies directly responsible for creating some of the nation’s most hazardous waste sites have been paying for about 70 percent of the cleanups each year. The other 30 percent has been financed by the dwindling trust fund and increasingly by general tax revenues appropriated by Congress. The Treasury will pay almost four-fifths of the Superfund program costs under Pres. Bush’s 2004 budget request. Republicans who rejected the new amendment feel it unfairly penalizes companies who follow sound environmental practices but those in support of the new amendment say the GOP is in league with corporate polluters. (AP)

EPA ‘comfortable’ with military exemptions
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christine Whitman said last Wed. her agency was “very comfortable” with legislation sought by the Pentagon that would exempt it from a broad range of environmental laws. The Pentagon, supported by the Bush administration, wants laws governing endangered species, marine mammals, air and water quality, and the cleanup of explosives and munitions eased at defense facilities around the nation. The Pentagon says these laws hamper military training and preparedness. Environmentalists are worried the proposed legislation will lead to an open-ended inclusion of environmentally damaging activities under the umbrella of “readiness,” and will hinder efforts of state agencies to regulate and clean up defense training and industrial sites. (AP)

US leaders push Europe to allow biotech crops
US lawmakers are urging the Bush administration to formally challenge the European Union’s (EU) moratorium on new genetically modified (GM) crops. Official World Trade Organization action is the “only course that would send a clear and convincing message to the world that prohibitive policies on biotechnology, which are not based on sound science, are illegal,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said on Mar. 26. He also said the moratorium is “indefensible” and based on prejudice and misinformation. The EU has refused to grant import licenses for GM, or biotech, food for the past four years because many Europeans are worried about possible health and environmental risks. EU officials are not slated to decide on any new policies affecting GM foods until October. (ENS)

Brazilian activists outraged over GM soy
A decision by the Brazilian government to permit sales of the genetically modified soy harvested this year in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, which has been grown in violation of a court ban, drew howls of outrage last week from consumer defense organizations and environmentalists. The “provisional measure,” a temporary presidential decree, authorizes domestic and international sales of GM soy until Jan. 31, 2004 when the ban will go back into effect and all GM soy will be burnt. By overriding the court’s ban, the legislative decision violates the constitution, which guarantees the independence of the three branches of state and violates Brazil’s Consumer Defense Code, while tolerating the illegal planting of transgenic soy over the next year. (IPS)

Whales now safe in waters around Fiji
The government of Fiji has declared the island nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to be a whale sanctuary. The decision establishes the Fijian Whale Sanctuary within the 200 nautical miles of the EEZ. The sanctuary covers 1.26 million square kilometers of water used by migrating humpback whales for breeding and calving. The declaration was widely applauded by conservationists and Pacific Ocean governments. Australia, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Samoa have all either declared their EEZ’s to be sanctuaries or have passed laws to protect marine mammals in their waters. Australia’s Environment Minister congratulated Fiji’s move and encouraged other Pacific Island states to follow suit. (ENS)

US taxpayerssubsidize cleanup of altered corn
The Agriculture Dept.’s (AD) settlement with the Texas company ProdiGene that mishandled gene-altered corn, portrayed three months ago as a stringent crackdown designed to send a message to other potential violators, actually involved a no-interest $3.5 million government loan that means Americans will effectively subsidize cleanup efforts. ProdiGene was charged with failing to follow government regulations for growing experimental, genetically altered crops. The AD did not release the information at the time it announced the settlement. An AD spokesperson said there was no intent to deceive the public: “It wasn’t that we made a conscious decision not to release it. It didn’t occur to us.” But the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that recently discovered the payment terms, believes the government misled the public, calling it “a conscious decision to create an illusion that this was a more severe penalty than it really is.” (Washington Post)

Clean Air Act changes going unnoticed by public
Quietly disclosed on New Year’s Eve, 2002, the Bush administration’s proposed revisions to a little known provision of the Clean Air Act have not been of great interest to the American public. But critics and supporters of the changes to the New Source Review program contend these revisions could dramatically alter the nation’s regulation of clean air, with possible far-reaching implications for public health, energy production, and environmental protection. The new rule revisions will affect regulation of air pollution from the nation’s 17,000 power plants and industrial facilities, which emit the majority of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide in the US, pollutants that are leading contributors to smog, soot, haze, and acid rain.
Established in 1977, the New Source Review program requires that an air pollution source install the best pollution control equipment available when building a new facility or modifying existing ones. Supporters say the proposed changes will give industry greater clarity on the costs and regulatory implications of routine maintenance and will not result in increased pollution. Opponents say the proposal essentially guts the NSR program. Provisions to NSR changed last year by the Bush administration have incurred legal challenges from state attorney generals. Those changes were bad, say critics, but the new ones are even worse. (ENS)

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