A large banner of the ballot displayed “EPA’s Choice on Homeland
Security” offering two options: “New Chemical Plant Safety Law” or
“More Inaction & Polluter Secrecy.” Another banner named
President Bush the “Toxic Texan.”
In a letter today to EPA Administrator, Christine Todd Whitman,
Greenpeace urged the Administration to “put special interest
politics aside and pursue legislation.” A vote is scheduled
tomorrow in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Charging the EPA with ten months of “inaction” and policy
reversals, the group concluded the letter saying that “rapidly
approaching anniversary of September 11th is a grim reminder that
history will not judge missed opportunities and further inaction
kindly.”
Hind added, “leaked EPA documents show dramatic policy reversals
by the EPA that strongly suggest that the Agency has been overruled
by the White House to satisfy the pollution lobby.” One of these
documents shows that the EPA was actually drafting legislation
until Congress first scheduled action on the bill in June.
A bi-partisan Senate vote in the Environment and Public Works
(EPW) Committee would be a major step toward the enactment of a new
law that would help eliminate similar terrorist threats at chemical
plants across the U.S. “The pollution lobby and their friends at
the White House should not be allowed to kill this urgently needed
legislation,” said Hind.
EPA records show that 123 chemical facilities could threaten a
million or more nearby residents if attacked. The U.S. Army’s
surgeon general estimates that 2.4 million people could be killed
or injured in a terrorist attack at one U.S. toxic chemical plant.
And recently a Pittsburgh reporter anonymously walked into more
than 60 US chemical plants without challenge.
