Update: Dismantling the EPA, Conrad Burns and the Judiciary

The latest from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, (PEER). The elected representatives of the EPA employees has reported further cuts in the EPA library system.  These cuts were ordered by the current Bush Administration and denounced by scientists and everyone concerned about the environment.  

The latest cuts involve closing the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances Chemical Library. Their depository is key to scientific study of the most hazardous of all pollutants that affect human, plant and animal ecology.  The range of subjects includes toxic control studies, databases, risk assessment and biotechnology.   See resources. collection may be viewed at: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/library/pubs/collectn.html

Along with this closure an internal memo from the current head of the EPA anticipates further cuts in the EPA 2008 budget. The administration plan is to cut 10 percent across the board EPA labs and other critical services.  http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=747

Something can be done: A mix of politics, justice and graft has been uncovered. An independent investigation reveals that the incumbent Senator Conrad Burns, who coincidentally chairs the Interior’s Appropriation Committee in the Senate responsible for approving the Administration cuts of the EPA and libraries at issue.  He is linked at the hip with the current administration and their attempt to gut the effectiveness or maybe place in extinction the valuable
work of the EPA.

This is particularly offensive to Montana because of the recent findings of arsenic, mercury and other pollutants relating to methane gases indigenous in the state and man-made pollutant. To say the current administration “speaks with a forked tongue,” on the issue of global warming, greenhouse gases and world wide concerns of pollutants both in the air, sea, fresh water and land would be underestimating the problem.