[CPEO-MEF] Wrong Environment

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

THE WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Wrong Environment
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A28

THE ENVIRONMENT and national defense are getting badly confused with
each other in a couple of pieces of legislation now before Congress. One
is the Defense Department's "Readiness and Range Preservation
Initiative," which is being considered by the House and Senate
committees that deal with the armed forces. The other is a proposal to
begin drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, now before the
House and Senate budget committees. Congress has done those on both
sides of the issues a disservice by debating these bills in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Both are environmental provisions and should be
handled by committees concerned with the environment. Neither is
directly related to the national security concerns of this week,
although Congress has chosen to treat them in a way and at a time that
make it seem as if they are.

In particular, the unfortunate timing hurts the Defense Department's
initiative, making it look like a last-minute, pre-Iraq, under-the-table
attempt to alter environmental regulations in the name of "readiness."
In fact, the proposals, which would affect six pieces of environmental
legislation, have been around since the Clinton administration and have
been worked out after many years of discussion among the Defense
Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and others. They have
come about in part because lawsuits have made it difficult for the
military to obtain exemptions to environmental rules that have in some
cases rendered practice ranges unusable. Their merits vary greatly, from
reasonable requests to alter rules about endangered species' habitat to
more dubious ones to alter elements of the Clean Air Act. Either way,
these are issues of vital importance to many communities as well as to
the military, whose record on the environment has improved in recent
years. They deserve a full hearing -- in the context of the
environmental debate and not of war and peace.


This editorial can be viewed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42988-2003Mar17.html

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