Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/13/2008 8:02:35 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Environmentalists See Golden Opportunity in Obama Administration Twenty-eight green groups compiled 359 pages of suggestions, hoping for a green revival post-Bush. By MARK CLAYTON
Dec. 11, 2008—
The toxic lead-tainted earth that crunches under Rebecca Jim's feet when the environmental activist visits Tar Creek in northeast Oklahoma reminds her that in the United States today, the "polluter doesn't pay."
Lead and zinc mining over a century turned Tar Creek orange, poisoned residents, and made it the nation's first Superfund toxic cleanup site in 1983. But a quarter century later, the federal cleanup fund is broke and the 40-square-mile area dubbed the "worst toxic waste site in the nation" by the Environmental Protection Agency is still a mess.
High on the Christmas wish list for Jim and other environmentalists is fixing Tar Creek by restoring the Superfund with fees on polluting companies. Such funding would also help clean up some 1,200 other languishing sites nationwide -- and that's just the beginning.
An enormous environmental tally awaits the incoming administration of Barack Obama. After an eight-year pitched battle with the Bush administration, environmentalists see a golden opportunity to begin making progress on issues ranging from climate change and water pollution to mountaintop-removal coal mining and energy efficiency in autos and buildings.
The massive environmental mountain awaiting Obama's administration is chronicled in a 359-page wish list of hundreds of problems the environmental community is eager to start addressing once President Bush leaves town.
High on the list is retightening regulations made lax in myriad ways or even gutted during the Bush years to favor industry, these greens say.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
...as the World Cools.
BS! Most of EPA's Superfund money went to finance studies, prepare reports, pay gov't empoloyees wages and to pay lawyers. Too little of it went to cleaning up actual Superfund sites.
I remember reading an article in Readers Digest in the early 80’s about these toxic waste site cleanups by the EPA. Even back then the EPA was maligned as worse than useless, spending millions getting nothing done except studies. One wonders why the article didn’t ask the question why this stream in Oklahoma is still such a mess if the govt has had more than 20 years to clean it up? Doesn’t the obvious conclusion present itself to the writer?
It’s a rhetorical question.
Lessee, and then there’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki, last I looked they are not desolate ruins. I’ve been there no more than 16 yrs. after the bombs were dropped and talk about some rebuilding going on, amazing.
An extended member of our family was in an Infantry unit that moved into the area (Hiroshima), part of the security forces that established themselves in a concrete, windowless plant still standing. Many of his buddies are still quite healthy and they are all in their 80s.
I guess their “superfund” worked pretty well!
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