The 82nd Rainforest Thread ~

September 3, 2008
National Briefing | Washington
E.P.A. Kills Water Project in Delta
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Environmental Protection Agency killed a federal plan to build the world’s largest water pump in the Mississippi River Delta. It is the first time since 1990 that the E.P.A. has vetoed a project proposed by the Army Corp of Engineers. The $220 million proposal would have moved six million gallons of water a minute from 67,000 acres of wetlands along the Yazoo River. The agency said the project would cause unacceptable damage to fish, wildlife and waterfowl.

September 5, 2008
Editorial
Death of a Boondoggle

The Yazoo Pumps are dead. This time for real.

In a victory for clean water and wetlands protection, the Environmental Protection Agency has killed a crazy yet seemingly indestructible scheme hatched more than 60 years ago by Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers to build a giant pumping station in the Mississippi Delta north of Vicksburg.

Billed as a flood-control project by its Senate champions, the pumps would have cost $220 million and drained thousands of acres of valuable wetlands and hardwood forests merely to serve the interests of a handful of soybean farmers who already drink liberally from the public trough. The wetlands marked for destruction already provide considerable flood protection.

The project had been kept alive by a succession of Mississippi legislators and by other members of Congress eager to protect their own deals with the corps. The retirement of one backer, Senator Trent Lott, apparently gave Stephen Johnson, the E.P.A. administrator, the opening and the courage that he needed to kill it.

Mr. Johnson " - along with agency scientists and environmental groups like American Rivers who kept up the pressure " deserves further credit for standing up to the corps, which few of his predecessors have been willing to do. Under the Clean Water Act, the agency can technically overrule the corps, but rarely does.

Over the years, the cozy relationship between the corps and its pork-loving paymasters in Congress have produced one environmental outrage after another. There are other dubious projects in the works, so one can only hope that Mr. Johnson’s decisions signals a long period of vigorous oversight.

GOING WITH THE FLOES Last summer, warming temperatures melted more of the Arctic ice cap than at any time since measurements have been taken. This summer’s data indicate that 2007’s melt was not a one-year anomaly. With the ice still melting, the total amount of Arctic sea ice was approaching last year’s low, and polar bears, which use ice floes as platforms on which to fish and rest, were spotted swimming in the open sea. Some were headed toward the edge of the ice shelf, 400 miles away " far beyond their endurance.

In as little as five years, said a NASA scientist, Jay Zwally, the North Pole in summer will be ice-free. “Climate warming is also coming larger and faster than the models are predicting,” Dr. Zwally said. “Nobody’s really taken into account that change yet.”

Change? Did the man say change? He must be a Democrat. Or a Republican.