ENVIRONMENT

The ghosts of Ground Zero

By Katherine Stapp

New York, New York, Feb. 1 (IPS) -- When President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union address Wednesday night, he will undoubtedly mention the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What he won’t talk about, critics say, is the ongoing failure of federal watchdogs like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make downtown Manhattan safe for workers and residents, thousands of whom are still sick from exposure to toxins like asbestos, dioxin and PCBs.

“The EPA is mandated to clean up buildings contaminated in terrorist attacks, and the EPA has refused to obey the law,” says New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler.

Nadler sent a letter to the president on Oct. 29, 2004 repeating concerns that “starting two days after the attack, the EPA initiated a strategy of misleading the public and providing false assurances about air quality.”

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Taxpayers handed $1.5 billion bill for Bush forest giveaways

Washington, DC, Feb. 1 (ENS) -- The first national forest plans written under the Bush administration’s “Healthy Forest” rules are big money losers for the taxpayer, according to agency documents compiled by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national association of natural resources professionals employed by various levels of government.

Plans from three Rocky Mountain forests would cost in excess of $1.5 billion from unprofitable timber sales and associated expenses.

In each of these three cases, the Forest Service rejected the “environmentally preferred alternative” identified in the required review under the National Environmental Policy Act even though the environmentally preferred alternative was less costly.

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