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New York Times Editorial-Rule That Work
CORRECTION-MASSEY DEPARTMENT
In the last Action Alert! about our win in Raleigh County Circuit Court, I wrote, "Apparently Massey didn't want to pay for monitoring the groundwater-they say it will cost $18,000 a year. Poor guys only rake in over $2 million a year from that one subsidiary alone." Duh! The correct figure is 2 HUNDRED million. Thanks to the reader who caught the mistake, and pointed out that means the company makes about $548,000 in sales per day. The testing for mercury and other heavy metals, if you believe Massey's estimates, would cost about $49 per day. That leaves $547,951 in sales per day.
OCT. 11-JOIN CRMW FOR SOME FUN!
Our good friends at Coal River Mountain Watch invite coalfield residents and Stop MTR activists to join them for a pig roast and picnic (vegetarians will find nourishment too!) from 1-6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11. The picnic, at the John Slack Park in Racine, honors Coal River Mountain Watch's members and memorializes the 3rd anniversary of the Martin County Coal (Massey Energy) sludge impoundment disaster. For more information, call CRMW at 304-854-2182.
OCT. 18--HELP GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT MTR IN CHARLESTON
Volunteers-we need 2-3 hours of your time on Oct. 18. The Sierra Club WV Chapter will be canvassing neighborhoods in Charleston to collect signed postcards against mountaintop removal. The postcards will be sent in to the EPA as part of the public comment period on the mountaintop removal Environmental Impact Statement. Volunteers will spend 2 to 3 hours walking with friends (old and new) and talking to neighbors about the need to stop mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.
To take part in WV Sierra Club's Fall Outreach Door-to-Door Canvas, meet on Sat., Oct. 18 at 10:00 a.m. at the Celebration Station Playground (1300 block of Quarrier St.) in Charleston (Rain location: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 520 Kanawha Boulevard West, Charleston). For more information or to RSVP, contact: Anna Sale at 304-550-0974 or anna.sale@sierraclub.org.
RULES THAT WORK
New York Times editorial, Oct. 1, 2003
The Bush administration has spent the better part of three years weakening federal regulations and belittling their value. Now, from a most unlikely source - the fervently anti-regulatory Office of Management and Budget - comes persuasive evidence that the health and social benefits of these rules greatly outweigh their costs.
In a report issued last week, the budget office said that an examination of 107 major rules finalized over the last 10 years found quantifiable benefits of between $146 billion and $230 billion, compared with costs of $36 billion to $42 billion. Of particular interest was the finding that just four clean air rules administered by the Environmental Protection Agency - all challenged at one time or another by industry - accounted for a big chunk of the benefits. Designed partly to meet Clinton-era health standards, the rules limit emissions of soot and other pollutants from power plants, cars and trucks. These four rules produced even better ratios - annual benefits of between $101 billion and $119 billion measured in terms of fewer premature deaths, hospitalizations, emergency room visits and lost work days, compared with costs of only $8 billion to $8.8 billion.
Whether these findings will alter the administration's suspicion of federal regulation is unclear. President Bush has rarely allowed science (or, for that matter, logic) to interfere with his policies - witness his attempts to suppress or ignore alarming evidence about global warming to justify his cost-free strategy. Whatever the numbers, fundamental policy shifts are probably not in the cards. Even now there are efforts afoot to weaken rules protecting water quality, transportation safety and the public lands. Nevertheless, the positive results are now there for all to see, and it should become harder for the administration to keep blaming everything from the California energy crisis to the economic slowdown on environmental regulations.
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