[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 53 (Thursday, April 22, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4245-S4246]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EARTH DAY

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, Earth Day usually marks the beginning of 
the President's and his green team's migration out to our Nation's 
parks, forests, and wildlife refuges.
  Since this is an election year, I am sure they are ramping up their 
efforts to greenwash their environmental record with very nice photo 
ops.
  Greenwash, like whitewash, doesn't stick. You have only to open the 
daily newspaper to see the laserlike focus the Bush administration has 
taken to rolling back our environmental laws, and while doing so 
rewarding special interests and corporate polluters. The starkest 
example is their outright assault on the most bipartisan environmental 
law of the 20th century, the Clean Air Act. I say bipartisan because 
leading Republicans and leading Democrats across the political 
spectrum, in the House and in the Senate, came together to pass the 
Clean Air Act. My predecessor, the senior Senator from Vermont, Bob 
Stafford, was one of those leaders.
  You would think of all acts, one that would be put together by 
Republicans and Democrats would be safe from assault by this 
Administration. That is not the case.
  By stealthy executive fiat, the Administration has dismantled the 
Clean Air Act bit by bit to let polluting industries off the hook when 
it comes to cleaning up dirty coal-fired powerplants that each year 
belch hundreds of thousands of tons of soot and toxic pollutants--
pollutants like mercury.
  The administration's actions to retreat from strong mercury controls, 
to undermine current lawsuits against the biggest utility companies, 
and to allow new coal-fired powerplants to be built without the best 
controls amounts to a triple whammy for public health and the 
environment.
  We often speak about being family friendly in this body. How do we 
tell a pregnant mother or a parent with small children how family 
friendly it is to allow more mercury into our air and into our water 
and the fish we eat.

  When the Clean Air Act was passed, Congress gave coal-fired 
powerplants a grace period to either clean up or shut down. At the end 
of the Clinton administration, we were making real progress toward 
meeting that goal. States such as my State of Vermont, which have been 
the dumping ground for toxic pollutants like mercury for decades, were 
finally going to get some relief. But, unfortunately, the only people 
letting out a sigh of relief now are the CEOs and corporate attorneys 
in the boardrooms of multibillion dollar energy companies. They are the 
only ones celebrating this Earth Day.
  Despite all of the administration's public relations tactics, I 
believe the American people are catching on, and enough is enough. To 
date, this Administration has made well over 300 rollbacks to our 
environmental protections. Think of that, three years in office and 
they have had 300 rollbacks of our environmental laws.
  There is certainly a lot about which the American people should be 
outraged. But I think it is important to take note of the strong 
bipartisan and growing outcry about the Administration's latest retreat 
from the Clean Air Act in the form of its mercury proposal.
  Senators Snowe, Jeffords, Dayton, and I were joined by 41 other 
Senators in calling on the administration to withdraw its mercury 
proposal. The concerns are building so swiftly they may soon reach 
critical mass.
  Look at this map. It gives some indication why the concerns are so 
great and why the objections are bipartisan.
  This is the Environmental Protection Agency's own map: ``Mercury 
Deposition in the United States.''
  This is the Canadian border along here. Look how the mercury, because 
they are willing to violate and allow

[[Page S4246]]

violations of the Clean Air Act, comes across. Look how it inundates 
the States in this area. My own State of Vermont is basically hidden 
under the deepest red of mercury pollution on the chart.

  The new EPA proposal to reduce mercury emissions was supposed to 
bring the powerplants into the 21st century and clean up their 
emissions. It does not do that. It falls short of what is necessary and 
falls far short of what is possible.
  Despite the Administration's best efforts to use every tactic in its 
public relations arsenal to convince Americans more mercury in the 
water, food, and environment over a long period of time is the best we 
can do, it is not working.
  In the last 2 months, much has come to light about the 
Administration's close collusion with polluting industries and devising 
its policy on mercury. The lobbyists from the industry sent their 
proposal to the Administration. The Administration does not even 
pretend to look at this scientifically or be independent. They just 
take it verbatim. They might as well have kept the letterheads from 
some of these companies. Instead of using the EPA letterhead, they 
could put ``Polluters 'R Us,'' or whatever industry sent to them. There 
are 20 examples where industry helped ghostwrite the mercury proposal.
  In a way, it is almost humorous that they would be so blatant about 
turning this over to the polluters, except that it suggests a very 
serious breach of the public rulemaking process and undermines the 
public trust in EPA's ability to be an independent decision-maker and 
perform its mission to protect human health and safeguard the natural 
environment.
  This Administration has a credibility problem about its approach to 
the Clean Air Act and to mercury pollution. New warnings about mercury 
risk from tuna, increasing numbers of pregnant women with mercury 
levels above safe levels, more newborns being born with high mercury 
levels, all are adding up to widespread and growing public demand for 
prompt action. We know from reports in the New York Times that the Bush 
administration employed a favorite tactic of sweeping science under the 
rug when it was drafting the mercury proposal.
  But we cannot ignore the facts. This chart shows the estimates of 
newborn children and women with unsafe mercury blood levels. They have 
doubled. These are some of the estimates from EPA scientists about 
which the White House wished the American people did not know.
  Anyone who has children or grandchildren should worry about this 
issue. Anybody who is expecting a child should worry about what this 
administration is doing. Anybody who has young children should worry 
about what they are doing. The estimate of women of childbearing age 
with mercury levels above what EPA considers safe has doubled. 
Apparently, the administration does not want the public to know that 
their mercury proposal does not go far enough fast enough to protect 
mothers and newborns from mercury.
  The same strategy is to ignore career staff and public health experts 
in the administration's proposal to write a giant loophole into the 
Clean Air Act New Source Review, called NSR. For anyone who has not 
seen it, I suggest a careful reading of the New York Times magazine 
article from several weekends ago titled ``Up In Smoke'' to see how the 
Bush administration strategically placed industry lawyers in key 
positions at EPA, spending the last few years helping the biggest 
utility companies in the country get off the legal hook of pollution 
control plans. They put the fox in to guard the henhouse. They have 
said to industry--and these are industries that contributed mightily to 
this administration--they have said: We will set aside the nonpartisan 
nonpolitical scientists; we will set aside the people whose sworn duty 
is to be here to protect the American public; we will put your lawyers 
in place, and we will let them write the rules for the rest of the 
country.
  Agency experts repeatedly warned the political appointees at the EPA 
that through new policy, this new NSR policy would undercut the 
lawsuits.
  And they went even further. They gave industry even more than they 
asked for and now industry attorneys are going to court where cases 
have been brought and are saying they should be dismissed because of 
the administration's actions. This is a very real problem in States 
like mine, if you are downwind.
  If Government wins the NSR cases despite the administration's back-
door tactics and hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic pollutants will 
be cut.
  Unfortunately, the Bush administration is not satisfied. Retreating 
from strong mercury controls, undermining the NSR cases, is not enough. 
We now have reports that say the administration is considering new 
guidelines to States to limit their ability to require that new coal-
fired plants use the best available technology to reduce emissions. 
That should set off alarm bells in the Northeast.
  This chart shows where new proposed plants are. The power industry 
has plans to build nearly 100 new coal-fired powerplants in the United 
States over the next 10 years, but the administration is trying to make 
darn sure they do not have to put in the kind of technology necessary 
to cut pollutants. These plants, located mostly in the Midwest and 
Great Lakes, will add thousands of pounds of new pollutants to our 
Nation's air.
  Over the last several decades, we have learned what comes out of the 
plants ends up in the lakes, rivers, and streams, as well as the food 
supplies of the children in the Northeast.
  If coal really is making a come back, as people predict, we should 
ensure it is not at the expense of our health and environment. On every 
front, the Bush administration is selling American technology and 
American ingenuity short. The administrations is setting the bar way 
too low, and they have set the clock for far too long. The technology 
exists to go much further. The administration needs to start putting 
the public interest ahead of special interests and tell the industry to 
use it. Just think of that, putting the public interest ahead of 
special interest. What a novel idea. If we did that, the American 
people would much better served.
  I hope the administration will withdraw its industry-ghostwritten, 
scientifically unjustifiable mercury rule, withdraw its NSR policy and 
drop plans to allow new powerplants to be built without the best 
environmental controls. I worry that the industry stalwarts within the 
administration will continue with their schemes to let corporate 
polluters off the hook.
  Remember, this is the same White House that tried to put more arsenic 
in our drinking water. The American people know their real slogan is, 
``Go ahead and pollute, we don't give a hoot.''
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HATCH. What is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 3\1/2\ minutes on the majority side 
for morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). The Senator from Utah.

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