14 DAY TRIAL // With only one more month in office, the Bush administration seems bent on destroying the US environment and ecosystems thoroughly, as proven by the recent pressures the former president has made on the Supreme Court, to allow the country's power plants to continue sucking billions of gallons of cooling waters, without setting in place appropriate filtering methods, to prevent fish and microorganisms living in rivers from getting caught in the systems.
Some 554 power plants need to be retrofitted with new filtering systems, according to a decision made by a lower court earlier this year, which states that the Clean Water Act does not allow the government to interfere with any decisions on the matter. But Bush seems to have forgotten the concept of "separation of powers" within democratic states and urged the Supreme Court to reconsider anyway.
And this kind of action makes perfect sense, if you take into account other fire sales that the current administration offered to the fossil fuel industry, including allowing the mining industry, which blows the top off mountains, to dump debris into lower stream, and moving for the public auctioning of oil fields near national parks. Before it finally leaves office, Bush seems to plan to take as much anti-environment measures as possible, with the faithful aid of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"EPA has no authority in any circumstance to decide that fish aren't worth a certain amount of cost," argues Richard Lazarus, one of the attorneys representing environmental groups, in front of the court. Several ecologist groups want the highest court in the country to uphold the previous decision, saying that the president has no business in interfering with established rules, just to please his friends in the fossil fuel industry.
The EPA still supports the rules that allow power plants and other polluters to weigh the cost and benefits of dumping waste into water streams that fuel water tanks for the human population. Instead of protecting the interest of the citizens, they move for the highest gain, with a complete and thorough disregard for what is right and for the implications of their actions.