Craig Mains | Technical Assistant - National Environmental Services ...

N E W
S & N O T E S
The federal government is seeking an unprecedented role as
environmental police for the Chesapeake Bay, according a September
11, 2009, Washington Post article. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) plans to enforce new rules on farmers
and keep a closer eye on state-level bureaucrats in an effort
to halt the estuary’s long decline. If EPA gets its way, the Chesap
e a ke Bay could become one of the most aggr e s s i vely monitored
bodies of water in the country.
“People don’t believe there are going to be consequences if
they don’t follow the rules,” says Lisa P. Jackson, EPA administrator.
“We want to make this a laboratory to show that it can be
done.”
“[Some customers] are quite demanding of products
that are soft,” says James Malone, a
spokesman for Georgia-Pacific. One three-ply brand
brought in more than $144 million in the past year,
according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing
research firm.
Greenpeace says it has spent four-and-a-half
years working toward making toilet paper recyclable.
“We have campaigned forever,” says Lindsey
Allen, a senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace,
adding that it was enough to get Kimberly-Clark to
change its ways. “We have a policy that. . .will shift
the entire way these tissue companies do business.”
For more information about recyclable toilet
paper, go www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/
forests/tissueguide for information about buying environmentally
friendly brands.
But what looks like a tough stance may just be more talk and
is all too familiar to Washington-area residents who say that
EPA’s promise of a new approach is the same old song they
heard in 1983, 1987, and again in 2000—but with little result.
“Every time they failed,” according to the Post. “Twenty-five
years of government-led cleanup, and only 58 percent of the required
anti-pollution measures are complete. On their watch, the
numbers of bay oysters and blue crabs fell into abyssal declines,
devastating a centuries-old watermen’s culture.”
But residents say that was then and this is now. If the government
does what is it threatening to do, “the edge pieces of the
jigsaw puzzle” may finally be put into place.
“That would be game-changing play in this really complicated
game,” says Tommy Landers of Environment Maryland. “What
we’ve been calling for is a commitment to enforcement and accountability.
And we are seeing signs of that from EPA.”
For more information about this EPA proposal, visit
www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/metro/interactives/failingthechesapeake/?sid=ST2009091002665.
5