The Bush administration, which has unswervingly favored the chemical and power industries on environmental and health protections, plans to once again relax government regulation of toxic substances in favor of weaker standards being promoted by industry.
At issue are national standards regulating the amount of selenium that can be discharged into waterways by power companies, farmers and mining operations. The current standards for selenium were established after the toxic metal caused mass deformities of waterfowl in California's Central Valley during the 1980s.
Now the administration has drafted a plan, supported by industry scientists, that would weaken current standards in two ways, according to an August 31 story in the Sacramento Bee. [1]
According to the Bee, EPA plans to switch from a water-based to a fish-based standard, meaning the government would stop measuring how much selenium was getting into the water and start looking at how much had been absorbed by local fish. The draft calls for a concentration of 7.91 parts per million in fish, whereas current standards allow no more than 5 parts per million in water.
Scientists in other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, oppose the plan to weaken the standards. They say the higher levels of selenium will cause birds to lose more than 50 percent of their offspring, the Bee reports. They also say the proposed standard is based on a flawed analysis of a study that vastly overstated survival rates for contaminated fish.
Selenium comes from a variety of sources around the country, including phosphate mines in Idaho, copper mines in Utah, mountaintop coal mines in West Virginia, coal-burning power plants and farms. It is the latest in a series of toxic substances for which the administration has sought to weaken regulations.
Earlier the Bush administration weakened the U.S. position on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), substantially reduced efforts to clean up mercury pollution, and sought to replace the Clean Air Act with its far less effective, "Clear Skies" program, which experts say would actually increase the number of deaths from air pollution each year.
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NOTE: Thanks to an outpouring of citizen protests (BushGreenwatch, Sept. 8), the U.S. Forest Service announced on Wednesday that it will extend the public comment period to November 15 on its plan to rescind the Roadless Forest Conservation Rule. The rule calls for 58.5 million acres of America's National Forests to be protected from logging, mining and drilling. The Service had earlier set a deadline of September 14 for public comments. Comments may be sent to: http://ga1.org/campaign/roadless?source=hp.
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SOURCES:
[1] "Battle Over Toxic Metal: EPA Appears Set to Relax Standards for Selenium, Which Led to Deformities in Waterfowl in 1980s," Sacramento Bee, Aug. 31, 2004.
