EPA is Ordered by White House to Close Libraries
EPA has been damaged by the waste industry leaders acting as Administrators for so long and to such a degree that in
2005, it appears president Bush couldn't find anyone willing to accept the position. He had to appoint 25 year EPA
veteran Stephen L. Johnson. Johnson knows were the bodies (scientific studies) are buried -- in the libraries -- now
they are going to be closed so the public can not find out just how much damage waste industry leaders managing EPA
have done to public health and the environment and EPA can not effectively prosecute those federal and state agencies
who have violate the environmental laws.
As the watchers state, "An intelligent individual, who is corrupt and claims to be highly religious, is very dangerous
indeed, especially whey they turn the spiritual rules upside down to harm the people." The same can be said for those
corrupt religious individuals in government who claim to be highly scientific and yet, use faulty science and exclusions in
the environmental laws, to poison our environment, contaminate our air, water, foodchain and deliberately put our health
as risk. EPA's sewage sludge disposal program as a fertilizer/soil amendment is a perfect example of the environment
rules being turned upside down. EPA has promoted the term biosolids, instead of sludge, with the assurance to the
public that there are no toxic substances in it and there is no hazards associated with its use.
It is somewhat ironic that Mr. Johnson was appointed as administrator to become the scapegoat, because he is an
expert on the toxic substances which are not removed from sludge, nor are they regulated, or even mentioned.
"Other senior level positions held by Mr. Johnson at the EPA include: Director of OPP’s Field Operations Division, Deputy Director of OPP’s
Hazard Evaluation Division and Executive Secretary of the Scientific Advisory Panel for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide
Act. Mr. Johnson also has represented the EPA in various national and international pesticide forums sponsored by the United Nations’
World Health Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He has held staff and management
positions in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and Office of Toxic Substances."
Mr. Johnson is in a unique position, he knows the laws intended to protect the public have been subverted and now put the public and
environment at risk. Yet, as an appointed administrator, he is in a position where he must try to protect the status quo. Therefore, the
libraries must be closed to protect the power structure and preserve the ignorance of the public.
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Today's Topics:
1. EPA is Ordered by White House to Close Libraries
([email protected])
2. BUSH Nixes Public Access to EPA Libraries! (Maureen Reilly)
3. Strange and Wonderful Things to do with Sewage
([email protected])
4. Virginia- County Supervisors seek to ensure sludge ban
([email protected])
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:04:29 +0000
From: <[email protected]>
Subject: Sludge Watch ==> EPA is Ordered by White House to Close
Libraries
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=2187
EPA Is Ordered By The White House To Close Libraries Before Congress Acts on
Plan
End of Public Access to Technical Holdings as Original Collections
Shuttered.
Washington, DC — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead
this summer to shut down libraries, end public access to research materials
and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not
reverse President Bush’s proposed budget reductions, according to agency
documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA’s own scientists are stepping
up protests against closures on the grounds that it will make their work
more difficult by impeding research, enforcement and emergency response
capabilities.
In an August 15, 2006 document entitled “EPA FY 2007 Library Plan,” agency
management indicates that it will begin immediately implementing President
Bush’s proposed budget cuts for the next fiscal year, which begins in
October, without waiting for Congress to act. The memo describes what EPA
terms “deaccessioning procedures” (defined as “the removal of library
materials from the physical collection”) for its network of 26 technical
libraries. Under the plan —
• Regional libraries, located in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, serving 15
Midwestern and Southern states will be closed by September 30. Other
regional library hours and services will be gradually reduced;
• Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as
possible;
• As many as 80,000 original documents which are not electronically
available will be boxed up (“put their collections into stasis,” in the
words of the EPA memo) and shipped for eventual “digitizing.”
EPA scientists represented by the American Federation of Government
Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, had previously sent a
“Demand to Bargain” on the issue, but EPA managers dismissed that demand as
premature. The August 15th EPA memo, however, shows that the union concern
was far from premature. On August 16, the AFGE National Council of EPA
Locals filed a formal grievance demanding that all library closures be put
on hold until affected scientists can negotiate the matter as required in
the collective bargaining agreement, writing:
“After October 1, 2007, three Regions will no longer have a physical library
at all. Library hours or core library services will be reduced in other
Regions that keep their physical libraries open. Management has been
insisting that it can effectively ‘do more with less,’ and continue to
provide the same level of library services to all of EPA’s staff members
despite the reduction in the number of library contractor staff. The Council
is not convinced that this is the case.”
“The central fiction is EPA’s promise to digitize its entire massive
collection, making everything available online someday, without any
dedicated funds amid sharply reduced budgets,” stated PEER Executive
Director Jeff Ruch, noting EPA studies show the cuts will actually lose
money due to additional professional staff time that will have to be spent
tracking down research materials now assembled by the libraries. “The idea
that library closures are a purely budgetary move is increasingly hard to
swallow.”
A key tenet of the new plan is that all research requests will be centrally
controlled. The plan calls for “discouraging establishment of divisional or
branch mini-libraries” so that central staff can “have knowledge of [the]
location” of all research materials. In a mass letter of protest signed this
June by representatives for 10,000 EPA scientists and researchers, more than
half the total agency workforce, employees contend that the library plan is
designed to “suppress information on environmental and public health-related
topics.”
“What is going on inside EPA is positively Orwellian,” concluded Ruch.
author: Newswire Services
news service: Newswire Services
url: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArti...
date: 2006-08-28
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:05:34 -0700
From: "Maureen Reilly" <[email protected]>
Subject: Sludge Watch ==> BUSH Nixes Public Access to EPA Libraries!
To: <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_frank_j__060829_bush_nixes_public_ac.htm
Bush Nixes Public Access to EPA Libraries!
by Frank J. Ranelli
http://www.opednews.com
What has been termed, "positively Orwellian", by PEER Executive Director
Jeff Ruch, is indeed frightening. It seems that the self-appointed
"Decider", George W. Bush, has decided to "end public access to research
materials" at EPA Regional libraries without Congressional consent. In
an all out effort to impede research and public access, Bush has
implemented a loosely covert operation to close down 26 technical
libraries under the guise of a budgetary constraint move. Scientists are
protesting, but at least 15 of the libraries will be closed by Sept. 30,
2006.
"Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as
possible", according to a report found online at PEER, an acronym for
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. All total, nearly
80,000 documents, not in digital format, are being boxed up and placed
in infinite limbo status by the Bush Administration. The scene from the
Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant was wheeled into
a massive sea of identical box crates, inside an enormous warehouse,
comes vividly to mind.
The suppression of information to the public and efforts to control the
flow of information of the sciences has reached critical mass. Shades of
the once science fictional book, Fahrenheit 451, are dangerously close
to reality and the banning and burning of books looms all to surreal,
but are more fact than science fiction now. Who could have ever
envisioned that Ray Bradbury's vicious, futuristic, dystopian society
would ever come to fruition; but it may indeed have done just that!
See, Bush positively does not want the American people to know about the
real effects of global warming, mercury levels, air pollution, and any
other topic, which if known about by the populous, would undeniably be
dire for "Corporate America". Bush is unconcerned with your health, my
health, the health of our children and the future of this planet we all
call home. What he is concerned about is the gleaming health of the
bottom lines of the corporate trough from which his completely corrupt
and dangerous enterprise feeds.
Bush believes he is at the top of the evolutionary food chain (if he
even believes in evolution) and can dictate the very nature of our
environment and of the entire planet around us -- for his own immoral
needs -- and we are being asked to sit idly by; ignorant, servile and
likely very sick and ill! You may turn green from toxic poisoning and
the ground may become red from scorching heat, but as long as companies
such as Exxon/Mobile remain in the black, all is well in Bush's
pernicious plans.
Conservation of our ecosystem is out of the question for Bush and his
global marauders of all the Earth's resources. The only thing
"conservative" about Bush is his own unyielding pursuit to conserve his
master's big profit margins and the subsequent suffocation of America's
right to know about that which affects our health, our country and our
planet. Those big profit margins come at an enormous price tag, one that
Bush has heaped most unkindly on the rest of us to pay for, but
certainly not on those who put this buffoon in office!
At this rate, it may be irrelevant to think ahead to 2008 as a chance
for emancipation and liberation from Bush's dream of a Pax Americana; as
by 2008 there may not be anything left to govern or save from the Bush
regime!
Honestly, what's next to be deemed a matter of national security or an
unfortunate victim of bogus budget slashes to reward the ultra-rich and
privileged few -- the alphabet?
For more information about PEER, visit the PEER group at
http://www.peer.org and help put and end to Bush's "positively
Orwellian" assault on access to public information that just might save
your life and the planet!
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress
people:
Stop Bush From Closing EPA Regional libraries
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps
and local newspapers
http://www.ranellirants.blogspot.com
Frank J. Ranelli is a free-lance political writer, researcher and
author. In addition, he is an activist and advocate for the progression
of peace and the advancement of the Democratic Party. He currently
focuses his journalism on educating people of the dangers of the Bush
administration, election reform issues, how the war in Iraq is immoral
and why the impeachment of President George W. Bush is necessary to
restore our democracy. His writing has been well-received and widely
published in a variety of news outlets and across the Internet. His
"smartly-written and imagery invoking" articles have earned him such
praise as, "Written with directness, strength, passion...It's great when
it smacks, glares, grabs one!" -Ms. Joyce Benedict, Park Guide for FDR
Historic Site
Contact Author
Contact Editor
Another link about the story
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=735
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