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0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 8, 2001 | by Sean Paige

EPA to Utah Town: Get Scrooged!

Showing typical bureaucratic obstinacy and inflexibility, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) flatly has refused a request by Park City, Utah -- site of the 2002 Winter Olympics -- that it temporarily suspend hazardous-waste cleanup work in and around the town until after the Olympic torch has been snuffed out and the crowds have gone home.

This, despite the fact that the old mining town is not, by EPA's own admission, a highly dangerous site. The agency has been working on "cleaning up" the popular ski resort since the mid-1980s.

Town fathers thought it might dampen the festivities to have government scientists in blue moon suits wandering among the sports fans and sniffing the air, soil and water for deadly contaminants. But the wheels of environmental remediation apparently must keep turning, no matter how slowly, Olympics or no Olympics.

"We said, `No, we can't do that,'" EPA remediation manager Jim Christiansen recently said in response to the town's request, while at the same time acknowledging that the area is of minor importance in the grand toxic scheme of things. "It's not a risk we need to go out and fix right away," Christiansen says. "It's been around for decades."

In one concession, however, EPA agreed temporarily to suspend public meetings on remediation efforts during the games -- but then only because the agency reportedly worries that all the excitement somehow will detract from its efforts to "educate" the otherwise happy and healthy residents of Park City about the unspeakable toxic horrors lurking all around them as they golf, snowboard, bike, hike and live the good life.

Odd, isn't it, how often the EPA orders extended cleanup activities at old Rocky Mountain mining towns that since have become world-class resorts and then never seems to want to leave?

Fish and Wildlife Service Suffers Green Fatigue

Wilting under a never-ending barrage of environmental lawsuits which have sapped it of man-hours and resources, a shell-shocked U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently ordered a pause in its listing of new endangered species, possibly until the end of the fiscal year, so it can catch its breath. "We just don't have the staff or the funding to do anything that isn't ordered by the court," agency spokesman High Vickery said in regard to the action.

Environmental groups promptly responded to the news -- by suing. In fact, they seemed to be falling over themselves to take USFWS to court. "Everybody's itching to go after this thing," said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity. "That is a red flag that says `sue me,'" said Bill Snape at Defenders of Wildlife.

Green groups have been suing to speed the agency's designation of "critical habitat" for more than 1,200 U.S. species listed as threatened or endangered. USFWS, however, has been able to complete habitat designations for only about 10 percent of protected species because the process is convoluted, contentious and costly. The agency says it would rather devote its time and resources to listing new species and leave the habitat designations for later.

While either approach may be bad news, depending on one's assessment of the Endangered Species Act, Greens are pushing hard for the habitat designations because they eventually could make millions of acres of public and private land off-limits to development, as happened recently in California. It's not necessary that the species actually be found living in the designated areas -- only that it might someday choose to live there.

Cooking the Books

In a case of one government agency taking a "can-do" attitude to potentially criminal extremes, an Army investigation has confirmed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- renowned builder of locks, docks, jetties, dams and congressional pork-barrel projects aplenty -- did in fact manipulate data and cook the books to justify $1 billion in lock projects along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.

In addition to confirming the allegations of whistle-blower Donald C. Sweeney, the Army's inspector general also reported finding "strong indications" that the corps' "institutional bias" in favor of big, expensive projects may have led to similar fact-fudging elsewhere.

Sweeney, who worked as a technical manager on the river projects, was removed from his position after alleging in February that a top corps official had pressured him and other employees to alter a cost-benefit analysis showing that the project's costs exceeded any potential economic benefits.

Though Sweeney reportedly was "heartened" to have been vindicated, it remains to be seen what sanctions the corps is likely to suffer as a result, given its continued popularity with members of Congress as a prodigious builder of pork projects.