Author Topic: EPA - are they an independent agency?  (Read 851 times)

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EPA - are they an independent agency?
« on: September 22, 2006, 09:13:15 PM »
Did the EPA, upon orders from the White House, give their assurances to NYers that the air in the city was safe to breathe, following 9/11, so that Wall street and everyday commerce could reopen? 

If so, would you support an investigation into just who told Whitman and the EPA to delete scientists reports and tell people it was okay to return to work and that no professional cleaning was needed?

A FEW INTERESTING PIECES....

Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution
White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says
by Laurie Garrett
 
NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."


BUSH ADMINISTRATION: NYC AIR 'SAFE TO BREATHE'
The Statue of Liberty stands in the foreground as New York is shrouded in smoke and pollution in New York image made from television, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001. (ABC via APTN)
 
On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:

(this means no leaked memoes about the dangers in the air)

The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.

Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases.

(why was this removed?  If their scientists said professional cleaning was required, why would that suddenlty be changed to plain ol' mop and water?  Were the EPA scientists wrong?

Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, called for a Justice Department investigation. "That the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to 'competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination," he said in a news release.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an interview it was "understandable that in the midst of a crisis the White House did not want the EPA to sound alarmist." But, he warned, "If the public loses faith that things are safe when the government says so, we'll have done more damage than a pointed statement the week after 9/11 would have."

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.



http://www.wtceo.org claims that "the alkalinity of the air on (9/11) was equivalent to that of liquid drain cleaner"

AND

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) made the following statement after a recent report that the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay air quality concerns in New York City after the terrorist attacks of September 11:

The New York Times reported that an internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) watchdog found that the White House instructed the EPA to downplay post-9/11 air quality and public health concerns in New York City.

"A leaked section of a report by the EPA's Inspector General's (IG) Office confirms what I have documented and many New Yorkers have known since September 2001: the EPA misled us when it gave assurances about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers. We knew that when then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced to New Yorkers, shortly after the attacks, that the “. . .air is safe to breathe” and that we “. . .need not be concerned about environmental issues as [we] return to [our] homes and workplaces” that she didn't have the information to support those assurances or make recommendations. But the report also documents how the White House itself, through its Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), actually manipulated the statements being released by the EPA so as to soft-peddle health concerns. The report alleges that it did this because of "competing considerations, such as national security and the desire to reopen Wall Street." In doing so, the White House politicized critical environmental and public health information, thereby endangering the health and lives of New York City residents.

"Because of these misleading statements, and because the EPA bucked its legal responsibility and left the problem to the City, there has been inadequate hazardous materials testing and remediation inside most buildings affected by the disaster - putting the public health at continued risk. This is true even though the EPA reversed course in May of 2002 and initiated an extremely limited and flawed voluntary clean-up program for lower Manhattan residences.

"The leaked IG's report now begins to tell us a story of how the Administration actually mislead the public. Though utterly outrageous, the fact that the White House instructed the EPA to doctor press releases and downplay health perils should really come as no surprise to anyone who has watched this CEQ function. This is the same Bush White House that forced the EPA to withdraw the section on climate change from its report on the environment issued in June.

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