Jackson for EPA, a Less than Stellar Pick?

Politico:

Lisa Jackson, who President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Monday evening to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is already being hailed as a historic choice. The former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and transition team member would be the first African-American EPA chief, and supporters have praised her work ethic, approachability, and efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses in New Jersey.

But Jackson’s critics, including a senior scientist who quit her department in frustration, say she has been too close to industry, withheld information from the public—and fallen well short of the pledge she made when taking office in February 2006 to fix the state’s beleaguered toxic waste program...

EPA's Stalin Era

Salon:

This may sound like just another Erin Brockovich-style tear-jerker. Enter stage right: Poor people exposed to toxic chemicals who worry that the government is ignoring their plight.

But the story of the hundreds of sick people who live near the former Kelly Air Force Base illuminates an entirely new manner in which the Bush administration has diluted science and put public health at risk. This year, largely in obeisance to the Pentagon, the nation's biggest polluter, the White House diminished a little-known but critical process at the Environmental Protection Agency for assessing toxic chemicals that impacts thousands of Americans...

White House Pressures EPA (Again)

George W. Bush may be on his way out but it hasn't stopped the Bush White House from working overtime to reduce environmental protections.

The Environmental Protection Agency is working at the Bush administration's direction on a new rule that would weaken regulations for power plants, allowing them to increase emissions without adding pollution controls.

EPA officials have been working on a fast track to meet a Saturday deadline, but many of them are arguing against changing the rule, said former EPA attorney John Walke and an EPA career official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to make statements.

Bushwhacked

George W. Bush may be a lame duck President but the White House isn't done messing with the EPA yet.

After the White House intervened, the Environmental Protection Agency last week weakened a rule on airborne lead standards at the last minute so that fewer polluters would have their emissions monitored.

On a different different subject but still all about the fine folks at the White House, TPM suspects that there is more to Bloch's resignation announcement, and his subsequent firing by the White House.

For more information on Bloch, go here.

WH Pressures EPA, Your Health at Risk

From Washington Post:

The Environmental Protection Agency, under pressure from the White House and the Pentagon, is poised to rule as early as today that it will not set a drinking-water safety standard for perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women, newborns and young children across the nation.

According to a near-final document obtained by The Washington Post, the EPA's "preliminary regulatory determination" -- which was extensively edited by White House officials -- marks the final step in a six-year-old battle between career EPA scientists who advocate regulating the chemical and White House and Pentagon officials who oppose it. The document estimates that up to 16.6 million Americans are exposed to perchlorate at a level many scientists consider unsafe; independent researchers, using federal and state data, put the number at 20 million to 40 million.

...Federal, state and independent scientists have differed over the years as to what represents an acceptable dose of perchlorate in drinking water, though all have set the bar higher than the non-mandatory level in the EPA's new proposal. (emphasis added)