The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is
not all wet, after all: After outraged public comment
from environmentalists and sportsmen alike, the Bush administration
has backed off plans to remove “isolated” wetlands — those
that are dry for more than six months out of the year — from
protection under the Clean Water Act. Proposed changes to the law
would have tainted those streambeds with everything from coalbed
methane wastewater to sewage (HCN, 12/22/03: Clean water changes
could sully Western streambeds).
The EPA
is still blowing a lot of hot air, however, and another
high-level employee is leaving (HCN, 3/18/02: The Latest Bounce).
Bruce Buckheit, director of the agency’s air enforcement
division announced he’s retiring early. Buckheit denies
he’s leaving to protest the current administration’s
cozy relationship with polluters, but he was quoted in national
newspapers as saying, “If there was interesting and useful work in
the power plant sector, I’d still be here.” Another top EPA
official just resigned: Buckheit’s boss, J.P. Suarez, is
going to work for Wal-Mart.
Speaking of
Wal-Mart, the king of big-box stores is cracking down on
dissent: When Joe Chumley, a Roswell, N.M., grocer, protested the
chain’s practice of running smaller stores out of business,
he was charged with criminal trespassing and banned from entering
any of the nation’s more than 2,500 Wal-Mart stores (HCN,
3/17/03: Taosenos take on Wal-Mart). The next day, 35 of
Chumley’s defenders — employees and loyal customers
alike — returned to the store to protest.
Tired of sparring with Los Alamos National
Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy, New Mexico
is abandoning negotiations and going to court to force the lab to
clean up its Cold War-era waste (HCN, 11/24/03: New Mexico goes
head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut). When the Energy Department
responded by withholding $43 million for cleanup at the lab,
Governor Bill Richardson blasted back at the agency, saying such
tactics amount to “extortion” and reveal the department’s
“marked lack of environmental leadership.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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