http://www.workingforchange.com/arti...m?itemid=15984


Muckraker: They blinded me with pseudo-science
The Bush administration is jettisoning real scientists in favor of
yes-men

In the final days of October, Craig Manson, assistant Interior
secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, dealt a "Godfather"-style
blow to a team of government biologists that was about to release a
final report with flow recommendations for the Missouri River -- a
blow that could have a sizable ripple effect on the river itself. The
report was to have argued for the need to better mimic the natural
flow of the Missouri (releasing more water from hydroelectric dams in
the spring and less in the summer) to prevent extinction of the
river's endangered sturgeon, tern, and plover populations, and to
reduce the risk of future flooding.

Responding to objections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that
the report's suggestions would economically inconvenience dam owners
and the Missouri River's barge industry, Manson penned a
three-paragraph memo ordering a second opinion on Missouri River
management. This opinion is to be provided by a "special national team
of [U.S. Fish and Wildlife] Service experts ... referred to as 'the
Wise Guys' or the 'SWAT Team,' [which] has served well in other
complex, high-interest consultations,'" he wrote, with nary a trace of
irony to soften the mafia-boss language. The replacement biological
SWAT team will reach its conclusions after a 45-day study; the
original team's findings were based on more than 10 years of research
and were confirmed by independent peer review as well as by the
National Academy of Sciences.

Those original findings were also upheld last year by a federal court:
When the Corps refused to adopt the flow-change recommendations made
by the team in 2000, the environmental group American Rivers took the
agency to court and won. Still, the Corps has only partially complied,
and is now arguing that river conditions have changed since 2000 and
that the science is unreliable: "Our [most recent] engineering studies
have demonstrated that the proposed flow changes will not achieve
desired biological attributes," said Paul Johnston, a spokesperson for
the Corps.

Johnston argued that mating habitat for river life should be created
by bulldozers, not river flows: "We can build sandbars mechanically
for mating habitat that tremendous flows [as well as commercial cost]
would be required to accomplish naturally." Johnston estimated that
the commercial cost of implementing the scientists' recommendations
would be $30 million in lost annual hydroelectric plant revenue; in
addition, the barge industry would face losses resulting from shutting
down operations for up to two months of the year.

But the ecological costs of not adopting the recommendations are
potentially far more calamitous. "Keep in mind that these are
engineers talking about biology," said Allyn Sapa, a recently retired
biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who supervised the
Missouri River project for more than five years. "They don't seem to
understand that right now we are pushing three species toward the
brink of extinction and the current water-flow operations are
violating the Endangered Species Act. It seems that the [engineers and
the Bush administration] don't want to hear that. And it's hard not to
think that because our findings don't match up with what they want to
hear, they are putting a new team on the job who will give them what
they want."

A scientist on the disbanded team who is still employed at Fish and
Wildlife spoke to Muckraker on condition of anonymity: "What concerns
me is not just that the officials seem to be looking for a
predetermined answer [on how to manage river flow], but that the
replacement 'SWAT team' scientists know almost nothing about the
Missouri River -- whereas our team has worked in this river basin for
years."

Equally calamitous could be the long-term political costs of
jettisoning sound science to curry favor with industry, said Eric
Eckl, director of media affairs for American Rivers. "This is just the
latest chapter in a politically complicated book called 'War and Peace
over the Missouri River.'" The central villain in this novel, said
Eckl, is Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), a strong supporter of the barge
industry who seems convinced that any kind of environmental
protections for the river will sabotage his state's economy. His
paranoia has been swallowed whole by the Bush administration: In
August, President Bush attended a fundraiser for Bond and declared
that no federal agency should govern the flow of the longest river in
America.

There are reasons why Bush may find Bond so convincing: While Missouri
is hardly the only state with a claim on the eponymous river, which
runs from Montana to the Mississippi River, it is a swing state with
more electoral votes than any other in the river's path. And Bush
doesn't need to worry about those other states from a campaign
standpoint, as most are solidly Republican.

From a legal and scientific standpoint, however, he might well have to
worry. The fish and wildlife agencies of all seven states along the
river have written in support of the original team's findings.
American Rivers said that if the new team reaches pro-industry
conclusions, it's more than prepared to go back to court. Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has also publicly questioned the
administration's move and is teaming up with other river-basin
senators to call for an investigation into the Bush administration's
decision to sack the scientists. "For over 10 years, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has been saying that the science is on our side, but
now the Bush administration seems to want different scientists to
reach different conclusions," Daschle said in a statement. As we've
seen before, this administration's M.O. is simple: If you don't like
the science, change the scientist.

Slippery When Wetland

That same motto could have been scrawled atop a resignation notice
submitted in late October by Bruce Boler, a former U.S. EPA scientist
in Florida who quit in protest when the agency accepted a study
concluding that wetlands can produce more pollution than they filter.
"It's a blatant reversal of traditional scientific findings that
wetlands naturally purify water," Boler told Muckraker. "Wetlands are
often referred to as nature's kidneys. Most self-respecting scientists
will tell you that, and yet [private] developers and officials [at the
Corps] wanted me to support their position that wetlands are,
literally, a pollution source."

Why? So that Florida developers could fill in the wetlands to make
golf courses (which use enough fertilizer and pesticides to make them
among the highest-polluting forms of development). Boler's scientific
judgment that wetlands were not pollution sources but pollution
filters -- a judgment based on 25 years of research -- would not have
stopped big-budget golf courses and other projects from going forward,
but it would have forced developers to clean up all pollution runoff
generated by their projects. By contrast, a finding that wetlands are
actually pollution sources would decrease the cleanup burden (and the
price tag) for developers.

"Developers were really upset with my findings and protested
vehemently to the state and the [Corps], saying that we did not have
the authority to raise these objections to their proposed high-dollar
developments, some of which spanned nearly 2,000 acres and included
many million-dollar homes," Boler said.

The Corps was upset with Boler's science, too -- so much so that John
Hall, chief of its regulatory division in Jacksonville (which is
responsible for issuing developer permits), "began referring to me as
a 'loose cannon,' and during one meeting slammed down a two-foot-long
cannon replica on the conference table to dramatize [this nickname]
for me," Boler said.

Not surprisingly, a developer put a different scientist on the job to
come up with an alternative finding that traces nitrogen and phosphate
to wetlands themselves -- a conclusion that the EPA eventually
accepted. It's true that isolated wetlands do emit trace amounts of
nitrogen and phosphate due to the natural decomposition of plant
material in their runoff, but according to Boler, it's absurd to think
that these natural toxins compare even remotely in either quantity or
toxicity to the nitrogen and phosphate that come from artificial
developments. But the replacement scientist found a way to prove just
that: "The conclusions [developed by the new scientist] were skewed
because he got his data from water-quality samples that were collected
in wetlands or ponds next to roads and bridges where surrounding
developments discharge pollutants," Boler said.

According to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, the rate of replacing scientists in
government agencies has been unusually high during the Bush
administration. "There is always one major development or another that
can't go forward without scientific evaluation," said Ruch, "and
increasingly the scientific expert on which those developments hinge
is twisting in the wind. If the scientist gives the inconvenient
answer they commit career suicide, and if they give the convenient
answer they get promoted."

Boler clearly didn't get promoted, but he did land another job at the
Interior Department, working at Everglades National Park. In a strange
twist, the man who ultimately oversees the National Park System is one
Craig Manson. When Muckraker spoke with Boler, he hadn't heard about
the fate of the Missouri scientists, but Ruch had: "He may be jumping
from the frying pan into the fire."

Gag Me With a Memo

Last month, Muckraker correctly predicted that the U.S. EPA would
eventually drop the backlog of cases against power plants that had
violated the New Source Review rules of the Clean Air Act (which the
Bush administration gutted earlier this year), thereby allowing the
utility industry to avoid an estimated $10 billion to $20 billion of
investments in new pollution-filtration technologies. What we didn't
predict was that the EPA would try to muzzle its employees shortly
before announcing that it would drop the investigations. The agency
barred employees from talking not just to the media and the public,
but also to congressional staff members and state and local government
officials about the status of enforcement investigations or
information related to enforcement actions.

The gag order was issued in an Oct. 28 memo signed by Assistant EPA
Administrator John Peter Suarez and leaked to the staff of the Clean
Air Trust. The four-page memo pays lip service to the need to
"continue to work openly, fairly, and in accordance with all legal
requirements," but its real message lies in the list of those to whom
EPA employees shouldn't speak, another list of topics they shouldn't
touch, and an exhortation to protect "sensitive and confidential
information."

"This memo starkly demonstrates that those government officials
evoking the courage to make the administration's anti-clean air
policies public are operating in an extraordinarily difficult, if not
hostile, working environment," said Frank O'Donnell, director of the
trust.

Worse, that memo could make it difficult for states to prosecute these
investigations in the EPA's stead, said O'Donnell, as it blatantly
prohibits staff from talking to representatives of state or local
governments that don't enter into a joint prosecution agreement with
the feds. The memo, however, does not seem to be intimidating the
attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, who say
they are more than ready to take matters into their own hands and pick
up the dropped cases against the polluting plants.