Controversy Plagues Positive EPA Report
WASHINGTON — The nation's air and drinking water have become cleaner and its dumpsites less toxic over the last decade or more, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday in a report that critics said was compromised by political interference.
"Where we have data, we tend to see either environmental improvement or that we are holding our own in the face of a growing economy and population," said Paul Gilman, the EPA's chief scientist.
Assessing up to 30 years of government efforts to clean up the environment, the draft report was overshadowed by a controversy over its global warming section.
Outgoing EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has said she deleted the discussion of global warming after White House aides sought to tone it down and she decided the result would be "pablum."
The document merely stated: "This report does not attempt to address the complexities of this issue." It referred readers to the Internet site of the U.S. Global Climate Research Program for more information.
"This report is important, not for what it says, but for what it doesn't say," said Daniel Becker, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club. "The report is tainted by the administration's efforts to subvert the science and substitute the views of the oil industry."
With the exception of a section on lead, there are very few references to environmental hazards that are particularly threatening to children. The report is also silent on the growing evidence of harm to wildlife from pesticides and industrial chemicals and says nothing about scientific concern that human hormone and neurological systems may be vulnerable to the same pollutants.
The global warming controversy isn't likely to disappear when Whitman steps down as EPA chief later this month. The agency now plans to solicit public comments before making the report final, and environmentalists say they will try to force the Bush administration to acknowledge that global warming is an environmental problem.
"By issuing the report as a draft, it really pushes it to the new administrator whether they will stand up to the White House and reinsert the information on global warming," said Jeremy Symons, a climate change specialist with the National Wildlife Federation.
The original report had concluded that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," according to an internal EPA memo.
