The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 825,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/...5-06-2015.html
After years of wolf recovery, many states have called open hunt on them & many other species because you can't make money off the land that is their protected habitat.
Obama has been moderate compared to what GOP plans.
New Study: Obama Administration Has Dramatically Increased Use of
Obscure Provision to Weaken Federal Protections for Threatened Species
Broad Exemptions Sidestep Endangered Species Act’s Intent,
Allowing Oil, Gas Drilling, Logging, Other Habitat Destruction
January 28, 2016
WASHINGTON— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has dramatically increased use of an obscure provision in the Endangered Species Act in recent years to exempt activities that harm “threatened” species, including oil and gas drilling, logging, ranching and development, according to a
new report released today by the Center for Biological Diversity.
Under the Obama administration, the Service has finalized eight, and proposed two, of the so-called “4(d) rules” that exempt primary threats to federally protected species, including the lesser prairie chicken, the
American wolverine and, most recently, the
northern long-eared bat. Those 10 4(d) exemptions constitute nearly half of all such rules issued in the 42 years since passage of the Act.
No single presidential administration has approved more of these damaging, industry loopholes than the Obama administration.
“We're very troubled that the Service is now using these 4(d) rules — which were designed to help protect species — to authorize the very activities threatening species' survival,” said Tanya Sanerib, a senior attorney with the Center. “These damaging exemptions are nothing more than a bow to political pressure from the very special interests that oppose protection of endangered wildlife in order to protect their bottom lines.”
Called “4(d) rules” for the provision in the Endangered Species Act from which they hail, such rules are supposed to put in place conservation measures for threatened species to prevent them from becoming endangered. But the Obama administration has increasingly been using them to allow the very activities that caused species to be at risk in the first place.
The Center found that 19 of the 75 4(d) rules enacted for domestic species since 1975 have authorized activities the Service identified as threats to species when listing the species as threatened. Of those 19 rules, eight — 42 percent — were adopted by the Obama administration. The administration proposed two other problematic 4(d) rules, for the American wolverine and bi-state population of sage grouse. But rather than protecting these species, the agency caved to considerable political pressure and withdrew protection altogether; thus those two 4(d) rules were never finalized. Counting the proposed exemptions for the wolverine and bi-state sage grouse, the administration has been responsible for 48 percent of all problematic 4(d) rules that allow sweeping habitat destruction in areas where imperiled species have been protected as “threatened.”
“Our report illustrates that increasingly politics — not science or the law — is dictating Endangered Species Act decision-making,” said Sanerib. “The Obama administration is robbing the lesser prairie chicken, American wolverine, streaked horned lark and other endangered animals of critical protections that are a lifeline to their survival.”
A number of the harmful 4(d) rules issued by the Obama administration have come in direct response to political opposition to protection. In the case of the northern long-eared bat — a species experiencing declines of more than 96 percent across much of its range — the Service initially proposed the species for protection as an endangered species. But after logging, wind-energy and oil and gas interests complained, the agency downgraded the species to threatened and issued a 4(d) rule that allows virtually all of these activities to proceed in the bat’s forest habitat.
The bat, as well as several other imperiled species, clearly should have received the more protective “endangered” designation, which would not have allowed use of 4(d) rule exemptions for ongoing habitat destruction. The lesser prairie chicken is left with as little as 8 percent of its historic habitat. As few as 300 wolverines are believed to remain in the lower 48 states.
“The American public overwhelmingly supports protection of endangered species,” said Sanerib. “We’re very disappointed to see this type of highly political decision-making about protected species under the Obama administration, particularly when the survival of North American wildlife species hangs in the balance.”
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/threatened-species-01-28-2016.html
Another indication of how much radiation from fracking and its planned enlargement will matter - remember fracking is exempt from the Clean Water Act - a crime against our citizens and lands!
EPA Proposal Allows Radiation Exposure in Drinking Water Equivalent to 250 Chest X-Rays a Year
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
quietly issued proposals Monday to allow radioactive contamination in
drinking water at concentrations vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The new guidance would permit radiation exposures equivalent to 250 chest X-rays a year. Environmental groups are calling the proposal “shocking" and “egregious."
https://assets.rbl.ms/6641868/980x.jpg
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) quietly issued proposals to allow radioactive contamination in drinking water at concentrations vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The EPA proposed
Protective Action Guides (PAGs) would allow the general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than is now legal. For example, radioactive iodine-131 has a current limit of 3 pico-curies per liter (pCi/L), in water but the new guidance would allow 10,350 (pCi/L), 3,450 times higher. For strontium-90, which causes leukemia, the current limit is 8 pCi/L; the new proposed value is 7,400 pCi/L, a 925-fold increase.
“Clean water is essential for health," Dr. Catherine Thomasson, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said. "Just like lead, radiation when ingested in small amounts is very hazardous to our health. It is inconceivable that EPA could now quietly propose allowing enormous increases in radioactive contamination with no action to protect the public, even if concentrations are a thousand times higher than under the Safe Drinking Water Act."
The Bush Administration in its last days unsuccessfully tried to put forward
similar proposals, which the incoming Obama Administration pulled back. Now, in the waning months of the Obama Administration, the EPA's radiation office is trying again.
“These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush Administration—really unprecedented and shocking," Diane D'Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said.
The Bush Administration proposal for strontium 90 was 6,650 pCi/L; the new proposal is 7,400 pCi/L. For iodine-131, the Bush proposal was 8,490 pCi/L; the new proposal is 10,350 pCi/L. For cesium-137, the proposal was for 13,600 pCi/L; Obama “beats" Bush with a value of 16,570 pCi/L.
All radionuclides can cause
cancer and other health and reproductive problems; there is no completely safe level. Strontium causes bone cancer and leukemia. Babies, children and females are at even greater risk than adult males.
PAGs apply not just to emergencies such as “dirty bombs" and
Fukushima-type nuclear power meltdowns but also to any radiological release for which a protective action may be considered—even a radiopharmaceutical transport spill. The proposed drinking water PAG would apply not to the immediate phase after a release, but rather to the intermediate phase, after the release has been stabilized and lasting up to several years thereafter.
Radiation doses (in rems) cannot be measured but are calculated based on some measurements and many assumptions. The current Safe Drinking Water Act limits are based on 4 millirems per year. The PAGs would allow 500 millirems per year for the general population. A single chest X-ray gives about 2 millirems. Because of the way EPA is changing the definition of dose, for many radionuclides, the allowable concentration would be thousands, tens of thousands and even millions of times higher than set under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Internal EPA
documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the EPA itself concluded that the proposed concentrations “would exceed MCLs [Maximum Contaminant Limits of the Safe Drinking Water Act] by a factor of 100, 1000 and in two instances, 7 million." The EPA internal analysis showed that for one radionuclide, “drinking a very small glass of water of approximately 4 ounces ... would result in an exposure that corresponds to a lifetime of drinking ... water ... at the MCL level."
“All of this is extraordinary, since EPA has recently accepted the National Academy of Sciences' most current risk estimates for radiation, indicating radiation is considerably more dangerous per unit dose than previously believed," D'Arrigo said. “Pushing allowable concentrations of radioactivity in drinking water up orders of magnitude above the longstanding Safe Drinking Water Act levels goes in exactly the opposite direction than the official radiation risk estimates go.
“Under these proposals, people would be forced to get the radiation equivalent of a chest X-ray 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for up to several years, with no medical benefit or informed consent, just from drinking water. This is immoral."
The public has 45 days from when it is published in the Federal Register to comment to the EPA on the PAG-Protective Action Guides.
"These proposed changes are a particularly egregious gift to the energy industry, which would essentially be given a free pass whenever nuclear or fracking waste enters our water supply," Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the new book,
Frackopoly, said. “The EPA under President Obama has also whitewashed the impact of fracking on drinking water. This is more of the same when it comes to his EPA's pro-industry, hands-off regulation of toxic practices that can harm public health."
http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-proposal...891167687.html
