• Court Orders Release of Documents in Utah Wilderness Deal
  
• Study Finds Judicial Politics Central to Environmental Rulings
  
• Congress Approves Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan
  
• Tennessee Uranium Fuel Project Receives Third and Final Approval
  
• Whistleblowers Ignored, Investigations on the Wane
  
• Record Forest Acreage Logged to Prevent Fires
  
• Unions, Environmentalists Like Clean Energy’s Economic Potential
  
• Hydrogen Economy Far From Reality
  

Court Orders Release of Documents in Utah Wilderness Deal

The ruling relates to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the deal filed by The Wilderness Society in April 2003.

The Bush administration turned over some 5,000 pages related to the deal, but the conservation group filed suit in August 2003 for additional information, alleging that Interior Department officials had failed to search all the relevant offices for relevant documents.

In a ruling released late Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton agreed and ordered the administration to either turn over the documents within 30 days or provide a legal explanation for withholding them.

“It is clear that the defendants in this case failed to perform an adequate search,” Walton wrote in his ruling.

The decision is a victory for environmentalists who believe the deal violated federal law and undermined longstanding federal protection of wilderness quality public lands.

Ten conservation groups are currently challenging the legality of the settlement brokered by Interior Department Secretary Gale Norton and then Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, who is now U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator.

A hearing on that challenge is likely to occur early next year before the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Colorado.

The issue centers on protection of wilderness quality lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

During the Clinton administration, the BLM identified an additional three million acres in Utah that qualified for wilderness protection over those detailed by the agency in its prior inventory.

The reinventory prohibited development of these additional lands until Congress determined whether the areas merited permanent protection.

Although a 1996 challenge by Utah officials to the reinventory was rejected by the courts, the state renewed its challenge in March 2002 and in April 2003 Norton and Leavitt announced the controversial settlement.

The settlement overturned the wilderness designation of the three million acres in Utah, but also impacted BLM lands across the West.

The BLM, which is under the authority of the Interior Department, manages some 260 million surface acres across the West – more land than any other federal agency.

The settlement in effect prohibited the BLM from inventorying its lands to determine if they deserve wilderness protection and made it easier for the agency to open lands under its authority to oil and gas development.

Tens of thousands of acres of wilderness quality lands have been opened up to oil and gas leasing since the deal was struck.

Conservationists note that such leasing could lead to road and pipeline construction and other industrial development that can destroy an area’s wild nature.

“When BLM makes a decision to never again even consider wilderness study protection for spectacular places like Utah’s Desolation Canyon, Colorado’s Roan Plateau, and New Mexico’s Otero Mesa, the public has a right to know why,” said said Leslie Jones, an attorney for The Wilderness Society. “The federal court’s ruling says the government can not use bogus excuses to hide how the deal was reached.”

Study Finds Judicial Politics Central to Environmental Rulings

The study finds that federal judges appointed by Republicans are far more likely to side with business, industry and pro-development interests over environmentalists than those appointed by Democrats.

“It is not surprising that judges appointed by Republican presidents would be more sympathetic to business interests at stake in NEPA litigation than Democratic appointees,” said Leslie Carothers, the President of ELI. “What is surprising and troubling is the degree of difference between Democratic and Republican appointees in making decisions in these cases, and the clear polarization of their positions along party lines.”

NEPA, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1969, orders the federal government to consider the environmental impact of it actions, consider alternatives and inform the public of its assessments and decisions.

Environmentalists consider NEPA the “Magna Carta” of U.S. environmental policy.

Recent NEPA cases governed the management of over 40 million acres of public forest, whether snowmobiles should be allowed access to Yellowstone National Park, the construction or removal of dams, opening public lands to oil and gas development, and many other critical environmental issues.

Because NEPA is enforced almost exclusively through lawsuits brought by citizens and public watchdog groups, the judiciary plays a central role in the law’s implementation.

ELI researchers reviewed 325 NEPA cases decided in federal trial and appellate courts from January 21, 2001 through June 30, 2004.

In federal district courts, the study found that a plaintiff with pro-environmental goals were successful 59 percent of the time before a Democratic appointee, compared to 28 percent before a Republican-appointed judge.

Plaintiffs with pro-development or industry goals were successful only 14 percent of the time before Democratic appointees, but 58 percent – over four times as often – before Republican appointees.

In the 23 cases decided so far by President George W. Bush’s district court appointees, environmental plaintiffs successfully advanced NEPA claims in just four instances.

Similar results were observed in the federal courts of appeals, where cases are argued before three-judge panels.

From January 2001 through June 2004, environmental plaintiffs in NEPA cases enjoyed a 52 percent chance of success before panels composed of two Democratic appointees and one Republican appointee, and a 75 percent success rate before panels composed of three Democratic appointees.

The ELI study found that if those plaintiffs drew a panel with two or three Republican appointed jurists, however, their chances were one in 10.

ELI’s full report can be found here: www.endangeredlaws.org/downloads/JudgingNEPA.pdf.

Congress Approves Nuclear Waste Reclassification Plan

Tennessee Uranium Fuel Project Receives Third and Final Approval

This license amendment allows Nuclear Fuel Services to begin using the oxide conversion building (OCB) and effluent processing building (EPB) for the BLEU project.

Special nuclear material refers to plutonium, uranium-233, or uranium enriched in the isotopes uranium-233 or uranium-235. In this case, the BLEU project will involve the blending of high-enriched uranium with natural unenriched uranium to produce low-enriched uranium.

The oxide conversion and effluent processing operations, according to an NRC document, will convert low-enriched uranium liquid into a uranium oxide powder form. “The powder then will be shipped to another facility for fabrication of fuel for a commercial [nuclear] power reactor,” the document states.

In July the NRC issued a finding that processing operations proposed for the oxide-conversion building and an effluent-processing building at the Nuclear Fuel Services facility in Erwin will have “no significant impact” on the environment, and therefore, an environmental impact statement will not be prepared.

But the NRC environmental assessment indicated that low levels of chemical and radioactive elements will be released to the environment as the result of the proposed OCB and EPB processing operations.

“Based on information provided by NFS [Nuclear Fuel Services], the safety controls to be employed for the proposed action appear to be sufficient to ensure planned operations will have no significant impact on the environment,” the NRC document said.

Monitoring programs are already in place to ensure that any releases of chemicals or radioactive elements remain within allowable federal and state limits, the NRC document states.

The Nuclear Fuel Services plant is near the Nolichucky River, which is upstream from Greene County and is the main water source locally.

Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley, the State of Franklin Group of the Sierra Club, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, and Tennessee Environmental Council have been fighting the licensing on the grounds that it will cause harm to the environment.

The groups have been seeking a full environmental impact statement, covering both past and potential hazards, to make the public aware of the potential dangers the project poses.

Another petitioner, Kathy Helms-Hughes of Butler, has been fighting the project on the grounds that it may pollute water springs northeast of the facility which are the source of drinking water for the city of Elizabethton and the communities of Hampton and Valley Forge.

The NRC approved the first amendment to Nuclear Fuel Services' license, for a uranyl nitrite building, in July 2003. A second amendment, for the blended, low-enriched uranium preparation facility, was approved in January.

NFS also submitted changes to its security plan to address physical protection of the new buildings, as well as changes to its nuclear materials control plan to support the amendment request. These changes were approved in the NRC’s safety evaluation report for the license amendment.

The BLEU project is part of a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program to reduce stockpiles of surplus high-enriched weapons grade uranium through re-use or disposal as radioactive waste.

Reuse is considered the favorable option by DOE because weapons grade uranium is converted to a form unsuited for weapons production, the product can be used for peaceful purposes, and the commercial value of the uranium can be recovered. Re-use is also considered preferable because it avoids unnecessary use of limited radioactive waste disposal space.

Notice of the approved license amendment was published October 12 in the Federal Register.

Whistleblowers Ignored, Investigations on the Wane

The study by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) centers on statistics gathered by the Office of Special Counsel, which is charged with reviewing reports by federal employees of official misconduct and then overseeing investigation of credible charges.

PEER reports that the number of whistleblower reports has nearly doubled since the 2001 fiscal year, increasing from 380 cases to a reported 535 cases in fiscal year 2003.

Only 11 of the total 1,091 cases were referred to agency heads for investigation.

The backlog of pending whistleblower reports has more than doubled, to 690 from the backlog of 287 cases in FY 2001.

By law, the Office of Special Counsel is supposed to make a determination as to whether a report merits investigation within 15 days.

PEER’s analysis finds this deadline is almost never met, with many matters left hanging for months or years.

“Time and again, whistleblowers have proven critical to protecting the public but their courage is wasted if their warnings just gather dust in a file drawer,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The only thing special about the Office of Special Counsel is its lack of speed.”

Out of a total of more than 2,300 pending complaints, the Office of Special Counsel has not represented a single whistleblower in an enforcement action to remedy retaliation.

More than 83 percent of surveyed federal workers with personnel complaints said they were dissatisfied with results obtained by the Office of Special Counsel while less than seven percent expressed satisfaction.

After a decline, backlogs of pending personnel complaints are beginning to rise, even though the Office of Special Counsel is investigating fewer cases than ever before - only six percent were accepted for investigation in FY 2003.

“This year, Congress failed to pass even modest reforms to the Whistleblower Protection Act due in large part to the opposition of the Bush administration,” Ruch said. “As it stands now, the protections for federal whistleblowers are a beacon of false hope for thousands.”

Record Forest Acreage Logged to Prevent Fires

This treatment is logging that federal officials say is necessary to clear potential fuels that can burn quickly if fires are started by lightning or through human activities.

James Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Agriculture Under Secretary Mark Rey, and Interior Assistant Secretary Lynn Scarlett were joined in Bend yesterday by U.S. Congressman Greg Walden, a Republican, for a tour of a forest project.

By October 1, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. land management agencies had "treated" four million acres and exceeded their 2004 goal of 3.7 million acres, the the agency heads announced.

Of these acres, some 2.3 million were in the wildland urban interface, "where houses meet or intermingle with wildland vegetation," they said.

The visit was intended "to celebrate the initiative's successes in restoring forest and rangeland health and protecting communities from wildland fire."

But the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in a statement late Tuesday took issue with the officials' claim that the logging treatment has protected all the communities that could have been safeguarded.

"The Bush administration has no firm definition for what it means by 'wildland urban interface," the NRDC said. "But if agency officials say that only 2.3 million of the four million acres were in the wildland urban interface, that means that even by their own vague accounting 1.7 million acres were in remote areas far from communities."

"This kind of logging does not protect homes or communities and can even make fires worse," the NRDC said. "It means the administration missed an opportunity to protect an additional 1.7 million acres surrounding at-risk communities. And it means that 1.7 million acres were logged in a giveaway to timber companies under the guise of fire protection, and many homes remain unprotected."

But the Bush administration officials see the logging in a different light. They say the communities themselves identified areas in need of logging for hazardous fuels reduction.

"Collaborative efforts are the key to identifying lands for treatment," said Scarlett. "Public land managers have formed partnerships with state, Tribal and local parties to identify the areas in the greatest need of treatment. Together, we are investing in the future of communities and our natural resources by reducing the threats from wildland fire."

Unions, Environmentalists Like Clean Energy’s Economic Potential

The study, authored by the California research firm Redefining Progress, centers on a suite of clean energy policies that will increase energy efficiency, renewable energy, and improve fuel economy.

The authors say their policies, in addition to creating jobs and lowering energy costs, will help reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil by 1.7 billion barrels a year, boost annual gross domestic product by $123 billion by 2025, and cut half the current amount of greenhouse gases emitted annually.

"Producing 20 percent of our electricity with renewable energy by 2020 will create good jobs and save consumers money while reducing our growing dependence on energy imports from politically unstable regions around the world," said Alden Meyer, Director of Strategy and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

"It is time to switch from the polluting energy resources of the past to the advanced clean energy technologies of the future," Meyer said. "The technologies we need are available today. All it takes is the political will."

The report was released by UCS, the Sierra Club, the United Steel Workers, the Service Employees International Union, UNITE/HERE, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The organizations say the path outlined in the report stand in stark contrast to the policies of the Bush administration, which they contend do little to increase energy efficiency or renewable energy.

"It is time to explode the myth that you can't create high-paying jobs, and protect the environment at the same time - that's a false choice" says Dave Foster, District 11 Director of the United Steelworkers. "You can design policies that are good for the environment while creating competitive new jobs - and this new report illustrates how to do that now."

The study can be found at: http://www.redefiningprogress.org/bluegreen/SmarterCleanerStronger.pdf

Hydrogen Economy Far From Reality

A new report by the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) and their environmental affiliates finds that the transition to a hydrogen economy is not a panacea to solve the nation’s energy woes.

“The public needs to look under the hood and kick the tires before buying most of the hydrogen schemes being sold today,” said Rob Sargent, senior energy policy analyst with the National Association of State PIRGs and affiliated environmental organizations.

“If the fossil, nuclear and automobile industries succeed in getting hydrogen policies and investments to supplant energy efficiency and renewable energy, it will undermine the real potential of hydrogen to dramatically improve our economy and our quality of life.”

Hydrogen has long been touted as the next great energy revolution. It can be easily produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen - when used for power the only byproducts are water and heat.

The report specifically focuses on the potential use of hydrogen in cars and trucks, which has been touted as a “zero emission” replacement for the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.

It concludes that the economic, environmental and energy security impacts of a hydrogen-powered transportation system depend greatly on the sources of energy used to create the hydrogen.

The key to the environmental friendliness of the hydrogen economy is how the fuel is produced – and this is where critics say the Bush administration, which frequently touts its hydrogen initiative, has got it all wrong.

They believe the administration is keen to use fossil fuels and nuclear power to produce hydrogen, a policy that environmentalists say will lock the United States into a “black hydrogen” future.

“Hydrogen is only beneficial to the environment and public health if it is renewable,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, energy advocate with Environment California Research & Policy Center. “Therefore, any state of federal program that seeks to commercialize hydrogen-powered vehicles must resist subsidies to environmentally damaging sources of hydrogen, such as coal and nuclear power, while emphasizing an aggressive pursuit of renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

The report notes that a slew of technological barriers continue to stand in the way of a successful rollout of hydrogen vehicles and fueling infrastructure.

It echoes the findings of a study released earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences that noted even under the best case scenario the hydrogen transition will do little to cut oil imports or greenhouse gas emissions during the next 25 years

The National Academy panel said there is little existing capacity for hydrogen production, which remains expensive, and fuel cell technologies face challenges of storage, cost, reliability and safety.

It called on the U.S. government to simultaneously pursue a hydrogen initiative along with strategies to enhance energy efficiency and develop alternative energy sources.

The study can be found here: http://newenergyfuture.com/reports/Hydrogen10_04.pdf