Same Old Song

This from today's Washington Post:

"They have distorted the science to such an extent that they can justify not regulating" the chemical, said Robert Zoeller, a University of Massachusetts professor who specializes in thyroid hormone and brain development and has a copy of the EPA proposal. "Infants and children will continue to be damaged, and that damage is significant."

Let me get this straight. The EPA is forced to change their proposed attempt at regulating a carcinogen because the Bush Administration has redacted some of the scientific statements in an attempt to make the cancer risk seem lower. Have we ever heard of the administration pushing around the EPA before? Isn't that why a basic conservative, Ms. Whitman, finally quit.

And why--because the military has actually spilled percholate (aka rocket fuel) into many aquifers in the United States and no one wants to pay for the clean up costs. This is a chemical that will migrate in an aquifer. It will spread contamination and does cost money to treat. But in the best Defense Department tradition (see fires at Rocky Flats in Colorado), it is not responsible. Yup, that plutonium, grew legs and walked. and we all know plutonium can just appear in FT. Collins, 60 mile north of Rocky Flats. Nope, no fires, never got airborne.

Percholate never leaked from rocket silos. Never got in the ground water.

What it comes down to is that the Defense Department is and has always been granted freedom to do whatever the hell it wants and dispose of waste however it can and then maybe later after enough public outcry kind of clean up. This includes accidental spills, too. I am not saying that they are just mean and cruel bastards with no regard for public health and intentionally pollute. Accidental things happen, but the Defense Department does not deal well with that either. It will fight cleaning up percholate, because finding rocket fuel in ground water may give you an idea where ICBM silos were hidden. Just follow the trail of percholate as it wanders through basins and aquifers and you may find where our national defense was at one time. Some rocket fuel manufacturers and some storage areas have contaminated groundwater and percholate is expensive to clean up. Some of the clean up levels cannot even begin to touch the proposed EPA level of 1 microgram per liter, or 1 part per billion (one drop per billion drops or one drop per 132,100 gallons--one person uses about 100 gallons per day so one drop per 3.5 years of your water consumption, including laundry and irrigation). Gives you an idea of how expensive this may be and why the military is pushing clean up into never never land. They may be hoping for a new treatment technique discovery.

If the next administration is a public service administration there will be such a backlog of everything and such a large debt, it will be incredibly difficult to deal with such expensive matters as percholate treatment of water. As citizens, it is just another thing we will be stuck with and all we can say is this is the worst administration ever.

rojo