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>>> June 27, 2002 Defending toxic sludge
When the Environmental Protection Agency issued a permit to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dump toxic sludge into the Potomac, they must have had good reason. Now a suit against the EPA by the National Wilderness Institute has made that reason public. Filed by the defence, a document explaining that the 200,000 tons of toxins annually discharged into the river actually benefits fish by driving them away from the clutches of fishermen. Rep. George
P. Radanovich, chairman for the subcommittee on national parks, recreation
and public lands, called the thinking “one of the most frightening
examples of bureaucratic ineptitude” he’d ever seen. Radanovich
and the NWI are not the first critics of the permit. Retired environmental
engineer William Colley says when he was working for the EPA, he told
them the discharges were a violation of the Clean Water Act and EPA
regulations. In return for his assessment, he was removed from the permit
process. : |