safety regulations

Order to the Executive Branch

Batocchio — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:51:50 -0500

For observers of the Bush administration concerned about all those signing statements and executive orders, there's some good news. The Washington Post reports (emphasis added):

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget.

The Bush administration often issued executive orders or weakened agency standards to try to bypass Congress or simply ignore bedrock legislation, particularly if it concerned clean air or water. Apparently, an Obama administration will be far more committed to both medical and climate science:

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's...

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.

Slate also has good suggestions for the top ten executive orders to toss.

Executive orders are powerful tools that can be abused, of course. Bush's attempts to weaken environmental standards were often challenged in court, and he often lost. We'll see how Obama uses the office, but if this early report is accurate, the trend seems to be one of restoring protections rather than overreach, and giving sound science its proper influence.

And a Power Plant in Every Home

Batocchio — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:17:53 -0400

The Bush administration continues to strip away regulations on their way out the door. This time, the department is the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Clean Air Act is the target. McClatchy reports (emphasis added):

At the Bush administration's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency is working on a new rule that would weaken pollution regulations for power plants, allowing them to increase emissions without adding controls.

EPA officials have been working on a fast track to meet a Saturday deadline, but many of them are arguing against changing the rule, said former EPA attorney John Walke and an EPA career official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to make statements.

They said that the EPA was expected to decide in November on another eleventh-hour rule that would allow more power plants to be built near national parks and wilderness areas.

Power companies have sought the rule about power plant emissions for many years, and it was part of Vice President Dick Cheney's 2001 energy plan. Rules finalized more than 60 days before the administration leaves office are harder for the next administration to undo.

The Clean Air Act requires older plants that have their lives extended with new equipment to install pollution-control technology if their emissions increase. The rule change would allow plants to measure emissions on an hourly basis, rather than their total yearly output. This way, plants could run for more hours and increase overall emissions without exceeding the threshold that would require additional pollution controls.

As usual, informing the public and soliciting their opinion did not factor into this decision:

The EPA official said that concerns in the agency were that the analysis justifying the rule change was weak and the administration didn't plan to make the analysis public for a comment period, as is customary...

The EPA is under no obligation to reveal internal deliberations, so in many cases the public never knows what objections may have been raised.

The White House wouldn't comment on its views about changing the rule, Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, said Monday.

The Washington Post Editorial Board weighs in, concluding:

Instituting this rule would be willful disregard of science, the intent of the Clean Air Act and the public's right to have a voice in such an important decision. And it would cement the Bush administration's say-one-thing-and-do-another reputation on climate change. The planet is warming faster than scientists had predicted. What the EPA might do would make it worse.

Oh, and in a last minute move, the EPA also lowered the restrictions on airborne lead after the White House objected. The next administration will have a large number of messes to clean up.

mustabe somestakyu

mustabe somestakyu — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:56:50 -0500

Born LIved....more later.