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Bush Administration Blocks Access to River and Bay Website |
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Local Citizens
Forced to Provide Information on Private Website
For immediate release
(Green Bay, WI) - Due to actions by the Bush Administration, the public can no longer access key information on the $176 to $333 million Fox River and Green Bay restoration and compensation plan completed last year by the Clinton Administration. The Clean Water Action Council, a local non-profit citizen group, has responded by putting extensive reports by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on their own website: http://www.FoxRiverWatch.com/nrda “For two months, these reports (several thousand pages worth) have been inaccessible during the critical public comment period on the Fox River cleanup plan. This is inexcusable,” stated Rebecca Katers, Executive Director of the Council. “It’s a major loss of detailed information needed to evaluate our PCB pollution problem.” In early December, Gale Norton, President Bush's Secretary of the U.S. Dept of Interior, chose to respond more broadly than necessary to a judge's order in a federal lawsuit regarding online security issues and Interior’s management of Native American trust funds online. Norton ordered the entire Department to go offline, shutting down virtually ALL the Department's websites (except for the U.S. Geological Survey sites) and preventing employees from using e-mail or the Internet indefinitely. Now, nearly two months later, they are STILL offline with no resolution in sight. This has made agency work more inefficient, costly (for printing, postage, phone and faxes) and disconnected from valuable information sources online. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is one of Interior's many sub-units; therefore, their Fox River and Green Bay website has been inaccessible to the public for two months. (Other Interior agencies affected include the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Reclamation, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.) “Our Fox River restoration plan has nothing to do with Native American trust funds. It makes no sense to shut down the Service’s Fox River site, unless the true motivation is to prevent public access to the information or cripple the effectiveness of the Service,” added Katers. “Gale Norton is preventing access, using an unrelated lawsuit as an excuse.” The Fox River documents are also important to "sister rivers" such as the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the Hudson River in New York, and the Housatonic River in Massachusetts. These are all PCB contaminated rivers where NRDA compensation plans are being written. Citizens, local governments, other agencies, and even industries along these rivers should have access to the Service’s Fox River reports and website, to compare notes and learn what they should expect in their areas. Other PCB poisoned areas, such as Anniston, Alabama, would find the reports useful. “We’re getting many calls for information, when individuals should be able to get this information from the government agencies set up for this purpose. Taxpayers paid millions of dollars for the preparation of these Service reports, but they’ve been prevented from releasing the results online. We’re not getting the information we all paid for,” stated Katers. Secy. Norton has restored the online campsite reservation system for the National Parks Service, but apparently doesn't place an equal value on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's websites. “Norton wants happy campers, but doesn’t care about restoring our poisoned river and bay,” concluded Katers. “This website obstruction doesn't bode well for the implementation of the Fox River and Green Bay NRDA compensation plan, which should begin this year (2002). Other environmental actions of the Bush Administration add to our concerns. Norton recently prevented professionals within the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service from commenting on wetland rules proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers resulting in severely weakened wetland protections, and EPA law enforcement actions have dropped drastically since Bush’s election. “Wetland protection and law enforcement are central to a successful NRDA restoration and compensation plan,” explained Katers. “It appears these are not priorities of the Bush Administration and our plan could be in jeopardy.” The following reports are now available on http://www.FoxRiverWatch.com/nrda
For more information, call Rebecca Katers, 920-437-7304 (work), 920-468-4243 (home) |
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CONTENT BY: Rebecca Leighton Katers WEB DESIGN BY: DataScouts WEB HOSTING BY: Doteasy
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