Don’t Let The Door Hit You

Even in the waning days of his administration, President George W. Bush is promoting business over restoration in our region. In stark contrast to the heady days of his presidential campaign when he stood on our northern coast and promised restoration, Bush has instructed his lackeys at the Environmental Protection Agency to exempt water transfers from the Clean Water Act and lobby Congressional leadership to give us less money to clean up the stinky, hazardous areas of concern.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is suing the EPA for creating a loophole in the CWA that would allow lots of pollution to go right into our lakes. This careless act would allow polluted sediments to get into our drinking water; it would mix warm water with cold waters and salt water with fresh destroying habitats and bringing more invasive species into the Lakes; it would even free up chemicals to make their way into the irrigation waters that produce our food – yuck!

“The Bush EPA continues to create environmental loopholes that will degrade New York’s waterways, prevent fishermen and others from enjoying our streams, and put the Great Lakes at risk,” Attorney General Cuomo told the Hudson Valley Press. “Some of New York’s most prized water bodies – including the Long Island Sound, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson River – could be harmed by the EPA’s illegal rule. As long as the actions of the Bush EPA break the law and threaten our environment, we will continue to fight back.”

In fact, this EPA took incredulous to new heights when the Assistant Administrator for Water, Ben Grumbles wrote to the leadership on the Hill begging them not to increase the funding in the Great Lakes Legacy Act! The House approved tripling the funding of the GLLA in order to finish off the clean-up of the 31 AOC’s in the next ten years, so that we could have clean, healthy drinking water as well as make the lakes swimmable and fishable again. Astonishingly, Toledo Blade Commentator Tom Henry points out, Bush directed Grumbles to lobby against the increased funding. With the recent crash of all things financial, the US Senate did reduce the funding to the current rate for the next two years. We’ll never know if Grumbles had anything to do with the change of heart.

All this goes to show that no matter who wins the White House in November we need to loudly promote an EPA that is going to be Great Lakes friendly. The candidates can promise all they want on the road to the White House but until they appoint a Great Lakes Czar to take our fresh water into the next century it is all talk

• Posted by Tiffany Danitz Pache on October 7th, 2008
• Tags: Areas of Concern, Barack-Obama, bush-administration, Candidate-for-President-2008, environment, Environmental-Protection-Agency, EPA, Great-Lakes-restoration, Great-Lakes-Restoration-Conference, John-McCain, New-York-Attorney-General-Andrew-Cuomo
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