By John Heilprin
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The Associated Press
Washington - Environmental rollbacks from the Bush administration "in
the dead of the night" are history, the incoming head
of the Senate environment committee declared Tuesday.
"That's over. We are going to bring these things into
the light," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a wide-ranging
interview laying out her agenda with The Associated Press.
She cited concerns about a host of new Bush administration
rules on air, land and water quality.
Boxer expressed optimism that Congress could reach agreement
with President Bush on a global warming bill, but acknowledged
she might not get all she hopes for. Bush has opposed mandatory
regulation of industrial carbon dioxide.
"I have no line in the sand. ... Even a little step will
look like a big step," she said. "I very much want
the environment to go back to being a nonpartisan issue."
Boxer's rise marks not only a sharp turn in the nation's environmental
leadership, but in Democrats' ability to question and demand
documents on the administration's decisions.
"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy
or changes in the dead of night - it's over," Boxer said. "We're
going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment
committee, not an anti-environment committee.... This is a
sea change that is coming to this committee."
Boxer, who takes over the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee in January, anticipates fireworks as early as Wednesday
when the outgoing chairman, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., holds
a last hearing portraying the news media as fanning global
warming alarmism.
Her first hearing next month will focus on ways to address
global warming, including her goal of imposing the nation's
first mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
greenhouse gases.
"This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we've never
seen," Boxer said.
Boxer said she would model federal legislation after a new
California law that imposed the first statewide limit on greenhouse
gases and seeks to cut California's emissions by 25 percent,
dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020.
"Real goals, real percentages," Boxer said of what
she's seeking nationally, though she added that along with
being an idealist, she's also a realist - and hopes above all
to get some form of new regulations started.
Several world leaders have called Boxer expressing their hope
for a new day in US environmental policy, she said, adding
that "we want to send a signal to the world."
To help pay to clean up Superfund sites that are the nation's
worst contaminated, Boxer said she will push to reinstate a
special tax on oil and chemical industries and other businesses.
She also plans to hold field hearings in Louisiana on the environmental
effects of Hurricane Katrina.
On another matter, Boxer said the government should provide
health care for sick 9/11 workers, vigorously endorsing presidential
hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton's plan for a long-term ground
zero care program.
"We are taking care of the families who lost loved ones
and nobody complains about that," Boxer said. "Why
wouldn't we take care of the people who are surviving and coughing
and sick - and dying, I might add - as a result of their work?
To me it's clear, I don't have any hesitation about what our
obligation is."
Doctors found thousands of workers suffered a variety of ailments,
principally lung and gastrointestinal disorders. The demands
for treatment grew more urgent after the January death of 34-year-old
former NYPD detective James Zadroga was blamed on his exposure
at ground zero.
Clinton has estimated that sick workers would need an average
of about $5,800 a year in health care.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the government spent $90 million on
health monitoring programs and this year spent an additional
$75 million - the first federal dollars specifically for treatment.
Health experts estimate that funding will run out in about
a year.
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Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this story.
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