Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Sierra Club Appeals Prohibitive BLM FOIA Search Fee Sierra Club activists near San Diego, CA, are appealing the assessment of a $25,280 search fee for a FOIA request -- a fee they say amounts to "stone-walling." The environmental group wants the information to watchdog and participate in BLM efforts to limit damage to desert ecosystems by restricting offroad vehicles.   BLM says it would actually cost that much to find and  process thousands of pages in what it says amounts to a "blanket" excessive request. Sierra activists say the records are all in a few filing cabinets in a single office, and they need them to comment on the Environmental Assessment for the "Proposed Plan Amendment for Western Colorado Desert Routes of Travel Designations." The $25,280 BLM wants amounts to over 1/10 of the Sierra Club San Diego chapter's annual budget. Full Story.   1:13:48 PM

Should White House Muzzle Scientists on Health and Safety? A firestorm of debate over politicization of science has dogged a White House proposal that could limit the access of reporters and the public to scientific information about environmental health risks.   An August 2003 proposal by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would centralize under OMB the "peer review" of science by almost all government agencies -- limiting disclosure of scientific results if OMB raises objections.   The OMB "Bulletin" -- which has the force of law for agencies like EPA, FDA, and the Interior Department -- extends authority claimed by the White House under the obscure "Data Quality Act."  OMB, along with conservative and business groups, have claimed the Data Quality Act gives them authority to prevent "dissemination" of inaccurate information, although the law, still untested in the courts, does not define this term.   Debate over OMB's peer review bulletin has erupted both in a National Academy of Sciences workshop on Nov. 18, 2003, and in the comments in the formal docket on the regulatory proposal itself. On one side are the industry groups -- who want to discredit the science underlying federal regulations that eat into their profits. On the other side are a number of scientists, scientific groups, environmental groups, and right-to-know groups, who fear the White House will use the new power to shape scientific findings to industry's liking. Full Story. 12:55:17 PM

US News Probe Raises Concerns About FERC Secrecy   When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2002 dropped a veil of secrecy over rulemaking on dams, pipelines, and electrical transmission in the name of national security few dared question it. But an investigation published last month by the U.S. News & World Report and Now, with Bill Moyers offered another example of how such secrecy may hurt the public interest.   Few people's patriotism would be less subject to challenge than that of former Army Ranger Joseph McCormick, living in a rural Virginia community in the Blue Ridge Mountains. When McCormick heard that a 30-inch natural gas pipeline was going through Floyd County, he hoped to organize opposition by getting the names of property-owners whose land it would run through. FERC denied him the information on grounds of anti-terrorism -- secrecy which would also prevent news reporters from interviewing affected landowners and hamstring any public discussion of the pipeline's siting, much less any political opposition to it. Full Story. 12:46:20 PM