This has to be bigger...

[EricMM 0]

Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House

 

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A27

 

Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

 

Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.

 

These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

 

"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He added that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."

 

Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.

 

Once in 2002, Milly said, Interior officials declined to issue a news release on grounds that it would cause "great problems with the department." In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' "

 

Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.

 

"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."

 

Several times, however, agency officials have tried to alter what these scientists tell the media. When Tans was helping to organize the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference near Boulder last fall, his lab director told him participants could not use the term "climate change" in conference paper's titles and abstracts. Tans and others disregarded that advice.

 

None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.

 

The assertion that climate scientists are being censored first surfaced in January when James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times and The Washington Post that the administration sought to muzzle him after he gave a lecture in December calling for cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. (NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin issued new rules recently that make clear that its scientists are free to talk to members of the media about their scientific findings and to express personal interpretations of those findings.

 

Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told the crowd.

 

NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. responded by sending an agency-wide e-mail that said he is "a strong believer in open, peer-reviewed science as well as the right and duty of scientists to seek the truth and to provide the best scientific advice possible."

 

"I encourage our scientists to speak freely and openly," he added. "We ask only that you specify when you are communicating personal views and when you are characterizing your work as part of your specific contribution to NOAA's mission."

 

NOAA scientists, however, cite repeated instances in which the administration played down the threat of climate change in their documents and news releases. Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy.

 

In 2002, NOAA agreed to draft a report with Australian researchers aimed at helping reef managers deal with widespread coral bleaching that stems from higher sea temperatures. A March 2004 draft report had several references to global warming, including "Mass bleaching . . . affects reefs at regional to global scales, and has incontrovertibly linked to increases in sea temperature associated with global change."

 

A later version, dated July 2005, drops those references and several others mentioning climate change.

 

NOAA has yet to release the report on coral bleaching. James R. Mahoney, assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, said he decided in late 2004 to delay the report because "its scientific basis was so inadequate." Now that it is revised, he said, he is waiting for the Australian Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to approve it. "I just did not think it was ready for prime time," Mahoney said. "It was not just about climate change -- there were a lot of things."

 

On other occasions, Mahoney and other NOAA officials have told researchers not to give their opinions on policy matters. Konrad Steffen directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a joint NOAA-university institute with a $40 million annual budget. Steffen studies the Greenland ice sheet, and when his work was cited last spring in a major international report on climate change in the Arctic, he and another NOAA lab director from Alaska received a call from Mahoney in which he told them not to give reporters their opinions on global warming.

 

Steffen said that he told him that although Mahoney has considerable leverage as "the person in command for all research money in NOAA . . . I was not backing down."

 

Mahoney said he had "no recollection" of the conversation, which took place in a conference call. "It's virtually inconceivable that I would have called him about this," Mahoney said, though he added: "For those who are government employees, our position is they should not typically render a policy view."

 

Tans, whose interviews with the BBC crew were monitored by Laborde, said Laborde has not tried to interfere with the interviews. But Tans said he did not understand why he now needs an official "minder" from Washington to observe his discussions with the media. "It used to be we could say, 'Okay, you're welcome to come in, let's talk,' " he said. "There was never anything of having to ask permission of anybody."

 

The need for clearance from Washington, several NOAA scientists said, amounts to a "pocket veto" allowing administration officials to block interviews by not giving permission in time for journalists' deadlines.

 

Ronald Stouffer, a climate research scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, estimated his media requests have dropped in half because it took so long to get clearance to talk from NOAA headquarters. Thomas Delworth, one of Stouffer's colleagues, said the policy means Americans have only "a partial sense" of what government scientists have learned about climate change.

 

"American taxpayers are paying the bill, and they have a right to know what we're doing," he said.

 

Whitehouse policy should not dictate science!!!!!!

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Global warming does not exist...right?

[Guest NYankees]

Does this mean we are going to have a Day After Tommorow???

[theintensifier 0]

Eventually, yes.

[2GOLD 0]

Does this mean we are going to have a Day After Tommorow???

 

Awesome. I might outlive my grandchildren someday.

[NoCalMike 0]

My response to this thread is basically "So what else is new!?!"

 

If it isn't, or should I say, if it HASN'T BEEN obvious SINCE his Inaguration in 2000, that Bush refutes any science that would "hurt" big buisness, I don't know what is.

[Art Sandusky 0]

I generally respect George Will, but his piece trying to refute Time's cover story this week is kinda bad.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

Day After Tomorrow? No, even the most advocative global warming scientists said that most of that movie was bunk.

 

But some climate change? Maybe. We'll all be dead though. We'r ejust going to help our kids be very tan

[Ravenbomb 0]

yes, there's going to be a day after tomorrow. It'll be Saturday (or Sunday, depending on your time zone)

[Guest InuYasha]

The only way Bush could drop out of the Kyoto Accord without looking like a total dipshit, even though he did, was to try to deny that global warming happens. My family still doesn't believe me when I tell them that the actor that portrays the Vice President in The Day After Tomorrow was chosen specifically to look like Dick Cheney.

[The Czech Republic 0]

This is where I blow off any serious concerns by saying "global warming? It snowed like last week, I froze my ass off all March"

[SuperJerk 0]

This is the part where I mention that an increase in average temperature still mathematically allows for extremes.

[Justice 0]

And this is where I mention that temperature has been increasing steadily for a few hundred years now.

[Guest The Satanic Angel]

I will also point out the increasing severity of hurricane seasons..

[MrRant 0]

I'd like to point out that Professor Chaos' plan is apparently working.

[Brett Favre 0]

It snowed yesterday.

[EricMM 0]

And further and further:

EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality

Plan Would Affect Towns That Find Complying Costly

 

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, April 1, 2006; Page A04

 

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits.

 

The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation

 

About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards.

 

Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards.

 

"We're taking the position both public health protection and affordability can be achieved together," Grumbles said in an interview this week. "When you're looking at small communities, oftentimes they cannot comply with the [current] standard."

 

But Erik Olson, a senior lawyer for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the move a broad attack on public health.

 

"It could have serious impacts on people's health, not just in small-town America," Olson said. "It is like overturning the whole apple cart on this program."

 

The question of how to regulate drinking water quality has roiled Washington for years. Just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton imposed a more stringent standard for arsenic, dictating that drinking water should contain no more than 10 parts per billion of the poison, which in small amounts is a known carcinogen. President Bush suspended the standard after taking office, but Congress voted to reinstate it, and in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued a study saying arsenic was more dangerous than the EPA had previously believed. The deadline for water systems to comply with the arsenic rule was January of this year.

 

The proposed revision was unveiled in early March in the Federal Register and is subject to public comment until May 1. Administration officials said the number of comments they receive will determine when it would take effect.

 

EPA's new proposal would permit drinking water to have arsenic levels of as much as 30 parts per billion in some communities. This would have a major effect on states such as Maryland and Virginia, which have struggled in recent months to meet the new arsenic rule.

 

Last summer, the Virginia Department of Health estimated that 11 well-based water systems serving 9,500 people in Northern Virginia might not meet the new standard for arsenic.

 

Maryland has a high level of naturally occurring arsenic in its water, and its Department of the Environment has estimated that 37 water systems serving more than 26,000 people now exceed the 10-parts-per-billion arsenic limit. These include systems serving several towns as well as individual developments, mobile home parks, schools and businesses in Dorchester, Caroline, Queen Anne's, Worcester, Garrett, St. Mary's and Talbot counties.

 

General Manager George Hanson's Chesapeake Water Association in Lusby, Md., serves 4,000 town residents with four wells. Three of them meet the new arsenic standard, but one well has 14 parts per billion in its water. He estimated that cleaning it up would cost between $1 million and $4 million.

 

"It's some of the most beautiful water I've ever seen. The arsenic is the only thing that fouls the entire system," Hanson said, adding that he and other community water suppliers are hoping the new EPA proposal will offer them a way out. "They're waiting for someone to help them."

 

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, complying with federal drinking water standards is not supposed to cost water systems more than 2.5 percent of the median U.S. household income, which in 2004 was $44,684, per household served. That means meeting these standards should not cost more than $1,117 per household.

 

Under EPA's proposal, drinking water compliance could not cost more than $335 per household.

 

Several public officials and environmental experts said they were just starting to review the administration's plan, but some said they worry that it could lead to broad exemptions from the current federal contaminant standards cities and larger towns must also meet. Besides arsenic, other water contaminants including radon and lead pose a health threat in some communities.

 

James Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said he and others are concerned that the less stringent standard will "become the rule, rather than the exception" if larger communities press for similar relief.

 

Avner Vengosh, a geochemistry and hydrology professor at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, said he was surprised by the administration's proposal because North Carolina officials are trying to keep arsenic levels as low as 2 parts per billion.

 

"It's a bit ironic you have this loosening in the EPA standard when local authorities are making it more stringent," Vengosh said, adding that many rural residents "have no clue what they have in the water."

 

National Rural Water Association analyst Mike Keegan, who backs the administration's proposal, said the current rule is based on what contaminant levels are economically and technically feasible, rather than what is essential to preserve public health.

 

The administration may face a fight on Capitol Hill over the proposal. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped write the 1996 law, said EPA's proposal, "if finalized, would allow weakened drinking water standards, not just in rural areas, but in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States."

 

This is Bush's EPA.

[Guest]

It snowed yesterday.

It snowed in Malibu about a month ago.

[Guest InuYasha]

And further and further:

EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality

Plan Would Affect Towns That Find Complying Costly

 

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, April 1, 2006; Page A04

 

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits.

 

The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation

 

About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards.

 

Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards.

 

"We're taking the position both public health protection and affordability can be achieved together," Grumbles said in an interview this week. "When you're looking at small communities, oftentimes they cannot comply with the [current] standard."

 

But Erik Olson, a senior lawyer for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the move a broad attack on public health.

 

"It could have serious impacts on people's health, not just in small-town America," Olson said. "It is like overturning the whole apple cart on this program."

 

The question of how to regulate drinking water quality has roiled Washington for years. Just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton imposed a more stringent standard for arsenic, dictating that drinking water should contain no more than 10 parts per billion of the poison, which in small amounts is a known carcinogen. President Bush suspended the standard after taking office, but Congress voted to reinstate it, and in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued a study saying arsenic was more dangerous than the EPA had previously believed. The deadline for water systems to comply with the arsenic rule was January of this year.

 

The proposed revision was unveiled in early March in the Federal Register and is subject to public comment until May 1. Administration officials said the number of comments they receive will determine when it would take effect.

 

EPA's new proposal would permit drinking water to have arsenic levels of as much as 30 parts per billion in some communities. This would have a major effect on states such as Maryland and Virginia, which have struggled in recent months to meet the new arsenic rule.

 

Last summer, the Virginia Department of Health estimated that 11 well-based water systems serving 9,500 people in Northern Virginia might not meet the new standard for arsenic.

 

Maryland has a high level of naturally occurring arsenic in its water, and its Department of the Environment has estimated that 37 water systems serving more than 26,000 people now exceed the 10-parts-per-billion arsenic limit. These include systems serving several towns as well as individual developments, mobile home parks, schools and businesses in Dorchester, Caroline, Queen Anne's, Worcester, Garrett, St. Mary's and Talbot counties.

 

General Manager George Hanson's Chesapeake Water Association in Lusby, Md., serves 4,000 town residents with four wells. Three of them meet the new arsenic standard, but one well has 14 parts per billion in its water. He estimated that cleaning it up would cost between $1 million and $4 million.

 

"It's some of the most beautiful water I've ever seen. The arsenic is the only thing that fouls the entire system," Hanson said, adding that he and other community water suppliers are hoping the new EPA proposal will offer them a way out. "They're waiting for someone to help them."

 

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, complying with federal drinking water standards is not supposed to cost water systems more than 2.5 percent of the median U.S. household income, which in 2004 was $44,684, per household served. That means meeting these standards should not cost more than $1,117 per household.

 

Under EPA's proposal, drinking water compliance could not cost more than $335 per household.

 

Several public officials and environmental experts said they were just starting to review the administration's plan, but some said they worry that it could lead to broad exemptions from the current federal contaminant standards cities and larger towns must also meet. Besides arsenic, other water contaminants including radon and lead pose a health threat in some communities.

 

James Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said he and others are concerned that the less stringent standard will "become the rule, rather than the exception" if larger communities press for similar relief.

 

Avner Vengosh, a geochemistry and hydrology professor at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, said he was surprised by the administration's proposal because North Carolina officials are trying to keep arsenic levels as low as 2 parts per billion.

 

"It's a bit ironic you have this loosening in the EPA standard when local authorities are making it more stringent," Vengosh said, adding that many rural residents "have no clue what they have in the water."

 

National Rural Water Association analyst Mike Keegan, who backs the administration's proposal, said the current rule is based on what contaminant levels are economically and technically feasible, rather than what is essential to preserve public health.

 

The administration may face a fight on Capitol Hill over the proposal. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped write the 1996 law, said EPA's proposal, "if finalized, would allow weakened drinking water standards, not just in rural areas, but in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States."

 

This is Bush's EPA.

Cheap Bastard CEO: "I can't afford to comply with the new EPA regulations"

Bush's EPA: "That's okay. We'll just lighten the restrictions until you can meet them."

CB CEO: "Say, could you lower them a little more? I can't quite afford that 5th house in Sacramento yet."

Bush's EPA: "Sure, why not. It's not like were enforcing these things anyway."

[Art Sandusky 0]

I will also point out the increasing severity of hurricane seasons..

This is completely unrelated. Hurricane seasons' intensities have always been cyclical. That's why we make such a big deal out of El Nino.

[Guest The Satanic Angel]

I was wrong and I can admit it.

 

Aren't there some mod priviledges for that?

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

And further and further:

EPA May Weaken Rule on Water Quality

Plan Would Affect Towns That Find Complying Costly

 

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, April 1, 2006; Page A04

 

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits.

 

The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation

 

About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards.

 

Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Water, said the agency was trying to satisfy Congress, which instructed EPA in 1996 to take into account that it costs small rural towns proportionately more to meet federal drinking water standards.

 

"We're taking the position both public health protection and affordability can be achieved together," Grumbles said in an interview this week. "When you're looking at small communities, oftentimes they cannot comply with the [current] standard."

 

But Erik Olson, a senior lawyer for the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the move a broad attack on public health.

 

"It could have serious impacts on people's health, not just in small-town America," Olson said. "It is like overturning the whole apple cart on this program."

 

The question of how to regulate drinking water quality has roiled Washington for years. Just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton imposed a more stringent standard for arsenic, dictating that drinking water should contain no more than 10 parts per billion of the poison, which in small amounts is a known carcinogen. President Bush suspended the standard after taking office, but Congress voted to reinstate it, and in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued a study saying arsenic was more dangerous than the EPA had previously believed. The deadline for water systems to comply with the arsenic rule was January of this year.

 

The proposed revision was unveiled in early March in the Federal Register and is subject to public comment until May 1. Administration officials said the number of comments they receive will determine when it would take effect.

 

EPA's new proposal would permit drinking water to have arsenic levels of as much as 30 parts per billion in some communities. This would have a major effect on states such as Maryland and Virginia, which have struggled in recent months to meet the new arsenic rule.

 

Last summer, the Virginia Department of Health estimated that 11 well-based water systems serving 9,500 people in Northern Virginia might not meet the new standard for arsenic.

 

Maryland has a high level of naturally occurring arsenic in its water, and its Department of the Environment has estimated that 37 water systems serving more than 26,000 people now exceed the 10-parts-per-billion arsenic limit. These include systems serving several towns as well as individual developments, mobile home parks, schools and businesses in Dorchester, Caroline, Queen Anne's, Worcester, Garrett, St. Mary's and Talbot counties.

 

General Manager George Hanson's Chesapeake Water Association in Lusby, Md., serves 4,000 town residents with four wells. Three of them meet the new arsenic standard, but one well has 14 parts per billion in its water. He estimated that cleaning it up would cost between $1 million and $4 million.

 

"It's some of the most beautiful water I've ever seen. The arsenic is the only thing that fouls the entire system," Hanson said, adding that he and other community water suppliers are hoping the new EPA proposal will offer them a way out. "They're waiting for someone to help them."

 

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, complying with federal drinking water standards is not supposed to cost water systems more than 2.5 percent of the median U.S. household income, which in 2004 was $44,684, per household served. That means meeting these standards should not cost more than $1,117 per household.

 

Under EPA's proposal, drinking water compliance could not cost more than $335 per household.

 

Several public officials and environmental experts said they were just starting to review the administration's plan, but some said they worry that it could lead to broad exemptions from the current federal contaminant standards cities and larger towns must also meet. Besides arsenic, other water contaminants including radon and lead pose a health threat in some communities.

 

James Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said he and others are concerned that the less stringent standard will "become the rule, rather than the exception" if larger communities press for similar relief.

 

Avner Vengosh, a geochemistry and hydrology professor at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, said he was surprised by the administration's proposal because North Carolina officials are trying to keep arsenic levels as low as 2 parts per billion.

 

"It's a bit ironic you have this loosening in the EPA standard when local authorities are making it more stringent," Vengosh said, adding that many rural residents "have no clue what they have in the water."

 

National Rural Water Association analyst Mike Keegan, who backs the administration's proposal, said the current rule is based on what contaminant levels are economically and technically feasible, rather than what is essential to preserve public health.

 

The administration may face a fight on Capitol Hill over the proposal. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who helped write the 1996 law, said EPA's proposal, "if finalized, would allow weakened drinking water standards, not just in rural areas, but in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States."

 

This is Bush's EPA.

Cheap Bastard CEO: "I can't afford to comply with the new EPA regulations"

Bush's EPA: "That's okay. We'll just lighten the restrictions until you can meet them."

CB CEO: "Say, could you lower them a little more? I can't quite afford that 5th house in Sacramento yet."

Bush's EPA: "Sure, why not. It's not like were enforcing these things anyway."

 

Yet these people get mad when somebody lowers the standard in school testing. Oh well, we're all going to die anyway. Let the republicans have ALL the money and power I'll just keep picking cotton. Then a big hurricane can come along and kill ALL of us indiscriminately. Hooray for money and power!.

[Gary Floyd 0]

WE DIDN'T LISTEN!!!

[EricMM 0]

Tra la la...

Montana Pollution Rules Draw Federal Objections

 

By Juliet Eilperin

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, April 9, 2006; Page A04

 

Federal energy officials are opposing new rules by Montana to force companies that extract methane gas from underground coal beds to clean up the water pollution caused by drilling operations, even as state officials cite an unreleased 2003 federal report that says cleanup costs are relatively inexpensive.

 

The Denver office of the Environmental Protection Agency produced the report but never published it, saying it related to a proposed drilling application that was dropped.

 

A Montana consulting firm obtained a copy of the EPA report, however, and handed it over to Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D). Last month, Montana's Board of Environmental Review, citing the EPA paper and other economic studies, voted to force coalbed methane companies to leave the state's streams as clean as they were before drilling started, although the companies do not have to clean up existing pollution.

 

"We want to develop energy in Montana, but we want to do it right," Schweitzer said in an interview. "Here's the bottom line with the federal government: They're usually not helpful, and they weren't this time, either."

 

The Energy Department and the Wyoming congressional delegation are backing companies that are trying to block Montana's new rules, on the grounds that they could hamper energy development. The department submitted analyses by two of its national laboratories concluding that the state's regulations were "unnecessarily stringent" and "inconsistent."

 

Wyoming's two senators and one House member wrote that the regulations, "under the guise of environmental benefit, could severely limit [coalbed methane] production without any significant additional protection for water quality or existing water uses in Wyoming or Montana." Wyoming's governor, Dave Freudenthal (D), has also written to the EPA asking the agency to block Montana's new rules.

 

Bruce Williams, vice president of operations at Fidelity Exploration and Production Co., said Montana is asking his company to use technology that only recently came onto the market.

 

"It's not as clear-cut as folks want to make it out to be," said Williams, whose Colorado-based company operates more than 520 coalbed methane natural gas wells in Montana. "There's technology out there, but we haven't tried it, and it took two years to get permission from the state to try it."

 

The debate centers on how best to mitigate the environmental impact of coalbed methane extraction, which provides 9 percent of the nation's natural gas supply and requires pumping water from underground to release the methane. At the end of the process, drilling companies are left with water high in salinity and sodium that is often dumped into nearby streams, where it can damage soil, crops and wildlife.

 

Mark Fix, a Montana rancher who chairs a community group that pushed for the state regulations, said the alfalfa crop on his 9,700-acre cattle ranch has suffered since gas companies started dumping water from drilling 100 miles upstream.

 

"If they dump too much water, it will just destroy our soils and destroy our crops," Fix said.

 

EPA and state officials who conducted analyses of what it would take to prevent more pollution agreed that the energy firms can afford to do it, though industry officials said it could hinder their operations.

 

The 2003 EPA draft report, obtained by The Washington Post from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Natural Resources News Service, which investigates environmental matters, said requiring companies to hold the contaminated water in storage ponds "would not have a major impact on production or any of the financial parameters measured by the economic model of any of the geographic regions investigated [Wyoming, Montana or Indian Country]." More expensive strategies include cleaning the water through reverse osmosis.

 

Schweitzer, Montana's governor, said the state estimates that the cost of complying with the regulations would amount to 8 percent of what companies receive for their gas; Williams said it would cost between 9 and 13 percent, and would "result in increased costs and fewer opportunities for a landowner and operator to work together to manage the water."

 

Environmentalists in Montana and Wyoming said they suspect that the administration suppressed EPA's initial estimate of cleanup costs.

 

"We do think EPA deliberately sat on this report because the powers that be in the administration and the industry didn't want it to get out," said Jill Morrison, a community organizer at the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo.

 

The EPA has not taken a position on Montana's regulations. Spokeswoman Jessica Emond said the agency conducted the 2003 cleanup cost analysis because it was preparing to rule on a permit application concerning Montana's Crow reservation.

 

"The development never occurred," Emond said, adding that the EPA then shelved the report as having limited use.

 

Energy Department spokeswoman Megan Barnett said the department views the coalbed methane supply "through environmentally safe channels [as] a valuable part of the nation's energy mix."

 

Schweitzer, however, said he was convinced that his state needs the restrictions.

 

"The place where people are developing coalbed methane is the place where people make a living irrigating," he said. "The coalbed methane company is going to come and go in 10 years. But that rancher and his family have been there for 150 years. Who's going to take care of that rancher's grandchildren when there's no water?"

 

Might as well change the name to the BPA, the Business Protection Agency...

[Jingus 0]

What do you expect? Conservatives have control over the White House, the supreme court, and Congress. Ergo they can do pretty much whatever they want. And conservatives have always in general thought that environmental concerns were overblown and that people having money was more important than animals having habitats. (And as a person myself, I can't completely disagree with that statement.) But the extent that the EPA has been castrated recently is pretty awful.

 

If you truly believe in global warming, I mean old-school global warming caused by polluting humans that will soon kill us all, you need to read Michael Crichton's State of Fear. Read all the endless, exhaustive research that Crichton stacks up against the global warming theory. It destroyed any belief in GB that I had, and should be enough to make even the most fervent believer have a moment or two of doubt.

 

The book's best point: the biggest problem with any scientific debate is that there's no such thing as statistics we can completely trust. Every statistic is subject to numerical inaccuracies, bias on the part of the compilers, or any of a thousand other variables that can throw off the accuracy of the information.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

If you truly believe in global warming, I mean old-school global warming caused by polluting humans that will soon kill us all, you need to read Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

 

lol

[Jingus 0]

Why lol?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

One this issue I would tend to trust, I dunno, the US National Academy of Sciences & the national science academies of all the G8 nations, the Union of Concerned Scientists, IPCC, etc. more than a scifi writer and his book that has been pretty well ripped to shreds.

[Jingus 0]

Just read the book and check on all his research before automatically dismissing it sight unseen.

[EricMM 0]

He caught you Jingus, he got you.

 

But, fuck man, he's not a fucking scientist.

 

He's an author and rhetorician, and he got you. But, you know, facts can go either way. He's a distinct minority in this.