GOP Uses Katrina to Gut Environmental Laws

Earlier this week, I outlined how conservatives are shamelessy trying to use the Hurricane Katrina disaster to justify their far-right wing agenda, no matter how unrelated their proposals are to the crisis at hand. Sadly, we have another example today with the New York Times reporting that Senate Republicans are pushing legislation to allow the Bush administration to waive or modify existing environmental protection laws during the cleanup.

To understand how extreme this move is, consider that this push comes even as Businessweek has labeled New Orleans "The Mother of All Toxic Cleanups." The magazine notes that "a toxic brew of oil, chemicals, bacteria, debris, and garbage must be cleared and the ground scrubbed before the city can be rebuilt." According to Bloomberg News, "the EPA has already detected unsafe levels of lead, arsenic and bacteria in the flood waters" and "some rescue workers report headaches, blurry vision and rashes from working in the polluted water." And according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, there is even "a federal Superfund site near the Industrial Canal where a school and housing were built on top of a former landfill" meaning it could be seeping into the water.

Eric Schmeltzer has set up a website to track just how bad the environmental situation is down in New Orleans - and whether the federal government will try to cover up the situation. He was the press secretary for New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) after 9/11 and did a lot of work to uncover how the Bush administration tried to hide environmental damage in Manhattan after 9/11. Check out his site.

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