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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNITY
Environmental disaster or environmental solutions? Is it the message or the messenger?

Will the Snake River become the first radioactive river in the United States?

In March 2001, Idaho state and federal officials announced that plutonium, a deadly isotope, radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, lurks beneath the Idaho National Environmental Engineering Laboratory (INEEL) and is traveling on its way to the Snake River aquifer. The announcement confirmed long-held fears and 50 years of warnings that Idaho's water is at risk. This radioactivity will reach the Snake River in 150 years. (There is not much time left at the rate things get done by the federal government - it took 50 years for the Sockeye Salmon to get listed on Endangered Species Act). CEEI believes that Idahoans have had enough of government reassurances.

The Snake River aquifer is the sole source of water for twenty percent of the people who live in Idaho <www.snakeriveralliance.org>. Our government currently has no adequate program to clean up the radioactive material.

Failure of Environmental Legislation

Thirty years ago, Congress passed laws to keep human behavior from completely wrecking our planet. The Environmental Protection Agency was assigned the duty of implementing the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The full force of government resources was directed to clean up the environment.
Major Washington DC based environmental organizations charged forward assuming that first there would be a public inspection of the environmental destruction. Next, these organizations would mount a campaign to point out what could be done to improve the planet, and finally, they would raise money to help pay for remediation, relying on government and private resources for both factual data and money <www.heintzctr.org,www.epa.gov>.

The DC-based environmental community began to be plagued by the fact that the magnitude of the degradation through pollution, waste and extinction had been clearly underestimated. They found limited notions of cooperation as well as reactionary behavior in the community at large. These organizations learned quickly that if they were going to get anything done, they would have to resort to the courts.
To attain their goals, the environmental community sought heavy fines against law breakers, including whole segments of industry. Contrary human behavior would be corrected by example, they hoped. Unfortunately, environmental fines became a cost of doing business. Those seeking to enforce the new laws did not appreciate that the laws would conflict with the status quo. The way of life of millions of people, who understood that man was in charge of nature and not vice versa, would be challenged. Opposition to the environmentally protective laws grew. Good intentions and truth and logic diminished.

Ranchers, farmers, lumbermen, mining companies, chemical manufacturers, oil companies and ultimately bankers, merchants, auto dealers and real estate agents, amongst others, gathered together to fight the environmental and legal onslaught. They could see that complete towns were closing down and jobs were vanishing, particularly in the Northwest. The Republican Party expanded its big tent to characterize environmentalists as tree huggers, busybodies and radicals. Environmentalists, they said, practiced bad science.

In the meantime, people, the ones who could afford it, moved out of suburbs to the country to breathe clean air, enjoy scenic vistas, get away from crowded city streets. In the far west the ranchers in Nevada initiated the Sagebrush Rebellion and government property was bombed and destroyed and lives were threatened.

Environmental education in the schools decreased or stopped altogether. Teachers were fired or reprimanded for advocating a commonsense approach to cleaning up or understanding environmental problems (Time Magazine).

In Washington, DC, environmental institutions suffered from million dollar rents and expense accounts that grew out of control. The greater environmental community was stunned when the media exposed these excesses. To a bystander, it looked as if the environmental babies were being thrown out with the Republican bath water. The environmental community began to lose its credibility and it still hasn't fully recovered.
The Washington DC environmental culture resorted to lower profiles by trimming staffs and settling for doable programs and appearances to gather donations to cover overhead. They let media people "handle" their news and educational messages with disappointing results. With few exceptions on TV, the media went along as if nothing would happen and nothing did because the media simply processed environmental stories like all others. A meltdown decades in the future could not compete with murder and mayhem on nightly news and in newspaper headlines.

The public who funded the environmental organizations finally shouted "enough!" They changed their tack by funding specific projects on the local level. They began to follow the maxim: Think globally and act locally.

Then, the internet happened. Great new communication opportunities abounded. For a few dollars and a lot of effort anyone could publish for pennies and reach out to the whole country or the whole world. A sustainable planet might now become possible in the eyes of those who determined to use this new method of communication. Efforts to raise money and emphasis on good works being accomplished could be sent out to the world. The internet could be a new cash cow as well as a major resource and tool for education and information.

Environmental Education and Information

Against this background, the Center for Environmental Education and Information (CEEI) asked itself how it could make a difference in a world with wildlife habitat destruction, dirty air and water, global warming, ocean pollution, and the loss of plant and animal life at a rate of 100 species a day. Political solutions were no longer relevant. Communication of the environmental global catastrophe slowed to a standstill. Would the catastrophe be a 9/11 event or a slow deterioration of thousands of factors? Was it the message, the messenger, or both?

One of the most basic factors missing for solving the equation of the environmental problems facing the country and the world has been: Information. One clear example lies in the Clean Water Act. Although the Environmental Protection Agency has a mandate to survey all of the streams in the United States and report every two years to Congress. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO Reports, RCED 00-54 and 99-45) only 19% of U.S. streams have been surveyed. The EPA fails to note this lack of completeness in its bi-annual report to Congress.

Simple math suggests that the nation's true pollution picture is much larger than the EPA reports. For example, in Idaho, the last state legislature approved a list containing 702 streams. Add to this the 600 more that the Idaho Sporting Congress believes are missing from the list, then factor in the 81% of streams not surveyed - the Idaho list could be missing 5000 streams. This scenario applies to every state, making the EPA numbers totally unreliable.

Beginning in 1994, CEEI began documenting on the internet all 21,000 polluted streams in the country as defined by the states themselves in complying with the Clean Water Act. In 2000, CEEI documented 23,000 polluted streams representing the 1996 and 1998 EPA surveys. Nearly all of the streams were listed as polluted because of multiple causes: nutrients, sediment, chemicals, pesticides, high temperature or turbidity, and Giardia bacteria. The EPA has never reported how many streams were deleted, added, improved, or compounded with more pollution. Most environmental groups focus only on major rivers. CEEI intends to document ALL polluted streams.

The EPA does not criticize itself for failure to complete the survey requirement, nor does it volunteer information to cast a shadow on the completeness or credibility of its data. CEEI has taken on that responsibility. CEEI publishes on the internet the 303(d) polluted stream lists it has compiled over the years. Its efforts are supported by a report in 2002 issued by the John Heinz Center (www.heinzctr.org), a Washington DC environmental, science and economic think tank, commissioned by the Clinton Administration.

The Heinz report said, "The U.S may not have any streams that are free from chemical contamination." The report also noted 103 indicators of environmental health in streams -- some of those indicators are very new -- as it stated the report's mission is to raise the "factual level of the debate of environmental affairs." It is likely that possibly 1/5 of the animal species and 1/6 of the plant species are on the way to extinction. Even more sobering, the report says vital data on our rivers and streams are just not available after 30 years under the Clean Water Act. Stream indicator numbers and size, use, chemical content, clarity, at-risk native and non-native species; stream habitat quality, ground water levels, recreation use are all missing or are incomplete or, as sometimes noted, "data not adequate for national reporting."

CEEI estimates that there may be 200,000 to 400,000 streams that are polluted and are missing from the lists that are now published on its web site. We simply don't know. (CEEI isn't even counting all the unnamed streams that are infected with Giardia.) Nevertheless, CEEI continues to directly augment these lists with additional categories of information to give the viewer as much information as possible and some sense of perspective of the total problem. CEEI has had very limited funds with which to build the APSRS web site and is awaiting funding. (CEEI has at least 5,000 documents to post.)
The magnitude of these polluted stream lists (line after line, page after page) cannot be ignored any longer. Efforts to engage the media in reporting the extent of the pollution of streams have failed. The newspapers won't respond to press releases about polluted streams. For example, during the Monica Lewinski scandal, a report of 934 polluted streams in Idaho didn't generate one telephone call to CEEI. CEEI contacted all major metropolitan presses with detailed lists of names, watershed information, pollution causes and state file number. This information generated a six inch article on the AP, sent out to 165 member presses. The fact that the United States is one of the biggest polluters in the world is not news to newspapers or television. If you ask 99,999 people out of 100,000, few if any could name a polluted stream in their state.

Counterproductive to getting information out to the public are the tactics of the large environmental institutions such as the Sierra Club and the National Resource Defense Council. An avalanche of lawsuits succeeds only in making careers for lawyers and polarizes the electorate. Every survey since 1995 has shown that the public does not believe either the environmental community or the organizations that are fighting environmental improvement. (Megan Susman Report). The press sees the lawsuits as adversarial news stories which translate into an endless war of words. The Democrats and Republicans see the issues as only more levers to push.

The lawsuits and the manner in which media reports environmental stories have managed to alienate a large portion of the population who live in rural or industrial America. The environmental community must capture the imaginations of a majority of people in the country to be successful in its efforts to protect the environment.

The record of the Bush Administration for the past four years has been more of a disaster for the environment. The White House has systematically stacked the EPA, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture with administrators who are representatives of industries known for their violation of environmental laws. These people have quietly gone about setting all the environmental clocks back to zero. For example the 303(d) submissions by states to comply with the Clean Water Act are now on hold. In 2000 only twelve states sent the EPA their new updates on polluted stream status and in 2002 only seven states complied (Miami Herald). The Bush appointees are undermining federal agencies by using industry solutions to "correct" environmental problems and by distorting information and cutting off funds for government environmental programs.

Using the Internet for Environmental Education

New methods of fighting the environmental battles are available: using the internet, working with the film industry, putting an environmental model of mythology into literature, working with the educational community. CEEI has been described as "a new way of reporting the environment": using a link to find facts and publishing one line status reports, backed up by the thousands of federal documents on the CEEI web site. The reader can have access to every government skeleton in the closet and not just the 303(d) polluted stream lists.

Education of the public is also part of the answer. In addition to providing useful data on its web site, CEEI seeks to educate the public, beginning with students in middle schools, high schools, junior colleges, colleges and universities.

CEEI used C-Span as a model to build and expand its scope and become the first internet-based environmental education nonprofit organization. On the internet we hope to prove the magnitude of the environmental problem that is not being addressed by the media, or the environmental institutions or, now, the federal government. Can the public get the information it needs about our streams through the media or the government? Try <www.epa.gov>. CEEI plans to fill the gaps with its own links to environmental status information.

For example, CEEI looks to counter a state education plan instituted by the Idaho legislature through the Idaho Rangeland Commission "to increase public understanding that Idaho's rangelands are a renewable source of important consumer products and environmental values. To provide, coordinate, and disseminate factual information about economic and environmental aspects of grazing management practices." (www.idrange.org) This was characterized by radio, TV and internet advertising programs as an effort to promote public support for Idaho's livestock industry. This educational program was initiated by the Idaho legislature "to help achieve and maintain a healthy livestock industry through responsible rangeland stewardship and to advocate balanced use of rangeland resources."

Another state funded environmental program is the Idaho Forest Products Commission (IFPC), created in 1992. The purpose of the Commission is to "promote the economic and environmental welfare of the state by providing a means for the collection and dissemination of information regarding the management of the state's public and private forest lands and the forest products industry." IFPC provides a variety of statewide communications activities, educational programs and informational materials to educate decision makers, educators and students as well as the general public about the need for proper forest management. (www.idahoforests.org)

These programs are powerful and have to be countered if the environmental community is to make any progress. The logging industry now promotes itself as a benevolent steward of the forest and wildlife. Deep down they are after all the logs remaining in Idaho's forests and elsewhere.

These feel good programs are on the internet and are a benefit to the lumber and livestock industries. They reach Idaho schools. These commissions boost the aims of interest groups who in the past have violated numerous environmental laws. The livestock industry has been responsible for at least a third of the streams in Idaho being on the 303(d) CWA polluted stream reports. The forest industry builds roads that wash silt down to the streams and rivers below. The trout and salmon can't reproduce, because the eggs are at risk.

After 30 years of the Clean Water Act you would think that Congress would be interested in knowing what each states performance is in terms of the total effort being made by each state. Nowhere on the EPA web site is this information available, therefore the public has no way to evaluate any progress, let alone Congress. State assessment papers are being done for CEEI by law schools or environmental university undergraduates.

The EPA has a monopoly on much of the environmental data that is the basis for countless environmental decisions that are made daily. Thousands of other governmental agencies, environmental and restoration groups and the public at large depend on this information. There is no source for Clean Water Act water data available to the public other than CEEI's web site. CEEI believes that without a competing source of information, there is no opportunity for any educational, environmental or restoration group to double check its information. Thanks to the EPA, how does the viewer know that only 19% of U.S. streams have been surveyed? Even finding data on the EPA web site is difficult.

The CEEI Vision

CCEEI's vision is to provide factual environmental information via the internet to be used as an environmental resource to convince the most skeptical classroom that being environmentally aware is an investment as valuable as one that that is designed to save a stream, or elect a pro-environmental candidate. CEEI has taken up the challenge and is asking volunteer college undergraduates to help by doing state level research.
CEEI has learned that when a classroom of students, even students from states that are traditionally at war with the environment, sees page after page and line after line of environmental pollution data, they begin to believe that pollution is widespread and the numbers supporting that concept are overwhelming. This was born out when one of the first 303(d) lists was presented to a class that dealt with environmental education. The class studied the list for four days.

The alternative to internet and classroom education is to let the media play a game of adversarial environmental reporting, perpetuating politically driven environmental misinformation.

Several years ago the University of Montana issued a study finding that those states with good environmental laws in place and enforcement of the laws, did far better economically than those states who didn't. Two articles in the primary state newspapers reported the study, but few others did. Information like this report can be circulated on the internet to educate the community at large.

Here in Idaho, CEEI has recorded only one river -- the Salmon -- where warnings were issued against rafting in order to protect salmon eggs. The law says that the criteria for listing under the Clean Water Act are these: fish can't reproduce in the water and swimmers can contract diseases from the water. The latter criterion raises the question of why Center for Disease Control isn't trying to prevent public exposure to Giardia bacteria. The CDC could easily install a link to identify those streams that are documented to have caused Giardia. Even the CDC doesn't pay attention to the Clean Water Act. They have only documented those "states" which reported and make no mention of which state stream was the cause.

Too often environmental money is spread around based on facts that are in dispute. Or money is spent on projects that are not necessary but garner votes. Millions of dollars are involved, and in CEEI's opinion, a few battles may be won, but the war against pollution in all its forms is being lost. We now have people in charge of EPA who reject clean water, clean air and every thing that has to do with the word "environment". (Miami Herald)

CEEI's approach as a resource to environmental education has been ignored by dozens of groups who fail to see that their decisions restricting this level of information only delay the awareness of the public and the general integration of environmental information into the political community at large. They rationalize that the public doesn't need to know the facts in such detail. These groups don't want their decisions questioned.

It is time to address the question of sustainability of the Earth with the facts. The public's perceptions are what the environmental world has to deal with. The public is entitled to and, indeed, must know the facts in order to get support for environmental needs. The public should be treated like adults and not children.

CEEI Web Sites

In addition so the polluted stream lists on its current web site, CEEI has embarked on a brand new web site that we believe will change the way that everyone looks at the environment. CEEI will soon have a truly educational web site with its own mission. With regard to the environment, information is education.

The Endangered Species Early Warning web site <www.esew.org> will include seven major species classes: amphibians, birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals, plants and reptiles. Information and data categories include profiles, habitat problems, species numbers, historical numbers, chemical exposure and chemical disrupting evidence, if any. It will list dates for "threatened" and "endangered" action completed and "date discovered" information. The ESEW web site will have links into the existing APSRS (America's Polluted Streams and Restoration Strategies) web site <www.wcei.org> and 61 new eco-system maps (provided by Johns Hopkins University) that are part of the new USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) surveys. In addition, it will have links to all the state polluted stream listings. This web site will promote input from the public on species that may be in trouble long before they are listed pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. This will be the most comprehensive web site about the environmental status published so far on the net and is the only web site that is aimed at relating habitat status to species in trouble.

The Idaho Sockeye Salmon is a good example of what can go wrong. This species was known to be threatened but it took 50 years for it to make the list. I helped count the final 119 fish that were left in Valley Creek in the high central Idaho Rockies located in the Stanley Basin. On the web site, CEEI invites all other interested people and agencies to comment and make their observations known. CEEI will act as a clearinghouse for, and will publish, this important information on the ESEW web site.

CEEI believes that cooperation is better than confrontation and communication is better than rebellion. The environmental community must start working together again and stop the various turf battles. Above all, the environmental community must stop supporting armies of lawyers who are driving people apart as the only solution to environmental problems. CEEI believes people get stuck in trying to preserve their status quo. Our main thrust should be to inform, instruct, and even educate the educators. We want all of our resources in place to make a difference in the way environmental education views the world and its environmental problems for the purpose of insuring our future. The CEEI web sites are only a beginning, but a good beginning.

It won't be sufficient to simply describe the environmental destruction. We must show that it is good economics to restore what has been lost. It all comes down to the individual choices that have to be made every day. Being a good neighbor with a plan doesn't automatically insure that other people will necessarily buy into a sustainable new world. Through both patience and intelligent use of the internet and the media, we can make progress on all fronts. CEEI runs the risk of being criticized by the environmental legal sector for not being realistic and recognizing that the courts are the only answer. CEEI simply disagrees with that assessment. The internet reaches out to 200,000,000 people who now have access. It is time that the environmental community gets real about environmental education. Use the facts instead of issues that divide and postpone achievement of a sustainable planet.

CEEI invites everyone to participate in its web site forum at ceei@cox-internet.com to express an opinion. A selection of these letters will be published on CEEI's web site.

In February 2004, sixty scientists publicly protested President Bush's official policies that are responsible for further endangering the planet. His administrative record so far includes 50 major policy changes at the EPA (Miami Herald).

CEEI has been nominated as the most important environmental web site in the United States three times! The first nomination was for the Sunset Magazine Award 2001, and the second was for the United Nations Environmental Programme Global 500 award in 2002. The third nomination was for the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award 2003.

© CEEI 2004
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