Connecticut Shortchanging Environment

According to a Hartford Courant article excerpted below, the state of Connecticut is not meeting its environmental goals.

Connecticut is failing to meet its own goals for cleaning up the environment and needs an infusion of money and enthusiasm, and a substantial commitment to control sprawling development, according to a state report.The state should redouble efforts to clean the air, curb water pollution, conserve farms and forest land, and increase recycling and energy efficiency, the state Council on Environmental Quality says in its 2006 annual report, out this week."I think we've all just sort of turned our eyes away from these environmental goals," Thomas Harrison, chairman of the council, said Friday. "We've all maybe gotten a little complacent."
The council's report comes on the heels of two separate accountings that paint a sobering picture of the future of Long Island Sound. One, a federal assessment of estuaries around the nation, says the Sound is in poor condition, with too many contaminants in its fish and its sediments, and too little life on the bottom.The other report, from the Long Island Sound Study, argues that despite progress on many fronts, the state will have to spend billions to clean up the Sound. The report urges the state to adopt more sustainable development to better preserve open space and curb polluted runoff. Despite progress on environmental issues in the past, something shifted over the past two years, said Harrison, of the environmental quality council. "Last year there was a bit of a stall, no gain and no loss. This year's report [is] kind of disturbing to us."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Clean Water Setback

In a blow to the Clean Water Act, the EPA has changed the requirements for protection of a body of water, according to Time:

The Bush administration made it harder Tuesday for non-permanent streams and nearby wetlands to be protected under the federal Clean Water Act.
The new guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers requires that for such waters to be protected there must be a "significant nexus" shown between the intermittent stream or wetland and a traditional waterway.
And the guidance says a determination will be made on a case-by-case basis, analyzing flow and other issues. Environmentalist argued that would negate the broader regional importance of many such waterways in the aggregate on water bodies downstream.
Assistant EPA Administrator Benjamin Grumbles said the new guidance to regional offices and enforcement officials "sends a clear signal we'll use our regulatory tools" to meet President Bush's promise of no net loss of wetlands.
He said it "maintains ... the Bush administration's strong commitment to wetlands conservation."
Environmentalists said the new rules will put in jeopardy many of the intermittent streams and headwaters that now fall under the Clean Water Act, and result in less protection of wetlands.
"This guidance adds unnecessary and unintended hurdles for agencies and citizens trying to protect our wasters," said Jan Goldman-Carter, an attorney for the National Wildlife Federation, and she called it a "retreat from protecting many important headwaters streams and wetlands."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.