http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09252002/ap_48520.asp
No streams
are unpolluted, many animal and plant species face extinction
Wednesday, September
25, 2002
By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The United
States may have no streams left that are
free from chemical contamination, and about one-fifth of animal
species and one-sixth of plant types are at risk of extinction,
says a private report on the nation's ecosystems.
The findings are in
an ambitious study commissioned five years
ago by former President Bill Clinton and released Tuesday by the
H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the
Environment.
The report tries to
document in one place the sort of statistics
about natural resources that until now were dispersed among several
federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency
and
Interior Department.
But perhaps more important
than any particular findings,
administration officials and lawmakers said, is that the
report for the first time proposes an objective set of
ecological "indicators" about the nation's environmental
health. The study offers 103 indicators but says completed
and adequate data is available for only 56 percent of them.
For example, the only national data on nonnative or invasive
species are for birds and freshwater fish.
"This report is,
at one level, a road map of what we need to do
to gather adequate data," said Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert,
chairman of the House Science Committee.
The Heinz Center plans
to update its study every five years.
William Clark, a Harvard University government professor
who oversaw the mammoth project, said the purpose was to
"help raise the factual basis of the debate" over difficult
environmental issues.
"This report is
going to mean a great deal for our environment,"
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said at a ceremony.
"Environmental indicators are clearly the tools that
we need to do our job well."
Each year the federal
government spends more than
$600 million collecting environmental data, but
the center's experts say that information still
isn't comprehensive. At the same time, those experts
say, the government spends billions of dollars on
pollution controls and cleanups: $120 billion in 1994,
the last year for which such figures are available.
Members of the center's
team of 150 experts and others
compared the need for indicators to the role that factors
such as interest rates, unemployment, and inflation play
in helping gauge the economy. Environmental, industry,
government, and academic groups all participated in the
report's making.
Copyright 2002, Associated
Press
All Rights Reserved
