Welcome to the Environment Show, exploring issues and events of the planet.
I'm Thomas Lalley.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by Hemmage Motor News, the
monthly Bible of the old car hobby from Bennington Vermont, 1-800-CAR-H-E-R-E.
Your host is former Environmental Conservation Commissioner for the State of New York, and
former President of the National Audubon Society, Peter Burley.
Thanks Thomas.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, we'll see how campaign contributions to the
104th Congress had an impact on the environment.
Then we'll talk with Representative Jim Leach, a Republican from Iowa about why he refuses
to accept some campaign contributions.
We'll get an update on what the budget impasse has done to our efforts to manage fisheries.
In the Pacific Northwest, millions of hatchery salmon were prematurely released because
there was no money to feed them.
And an earth calendar will explore the microscopic world of diatoms, beginning to bloom in the
Chesapeake Bay.
These stories and more coming up this week on the Environment Show.
As Republicans took over Congress last year, they promised to end business as usual.
But while some things changed, much did not.
Money is still the grease that runs the congressional machine and much was spent to affect environmental
policy.
In 1995, the freshman class of Republicans raised over twice the amount raised by Democratic
freshmen in 1993.
Thomas Lally reports on how money and lobbyists still hold center stage in Washington.
Last year, Representative Michael Oxley, a Republican freshman from Ohio, legally received
$45,000 for his campaign fund from a coalition of industry groups seeking major changes
in the Superfund law, which dictates how toxic sites are cleaned up.
Oxley also sponsored a Superfund reform bill, which many say was written by two of those
industry groups, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Environmental Development
Association.
Edward Rothschild is the Public Affairs Specialist for Citizen Action.
He says the influence of corporate special interest in Congress has increased.
Clearly, there's more money.
There are the Republicans have raised it to new heights in our judgment in terms of the
way they go about identifying who to raise money from.
I think it's almost like a protection racket.
You got to pay to get what you want.
You got to give us more money than you gave the Democrats.
I think I'd start giving the Democrats any money.
I mean, they're making it a much, much tougher situation.
But many say this is nothing new.
Money and interest have always had an influence in Washington since the proven method for
victory is to raise more money than your opponent.
Mickey Edwards is a former Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma, now teaching at
the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
He says the reason we're seeing action on environmental issues is because of the change
in leadership and not because of increased lobbying.
I think most people remain fairly consistent in their principles.
What happened is this time the political, the contributors, the PACs and voters for
that matter, conservative voters were able to win a lot more elections.
And that's why the results are different.
I would not agree that anybody went up there who was previously pro-environment
in the anti-industry and they took PAC contributions and turned around.
I think that's an over simplistic criticism of the system.
But if members of Congress aren't swayed by money, how do bills seemingly custom made
for some industries get passed?
One answer lies in how Congress is run.
Edwards says every day members are swamped by demands from constituents and businesses,
and congressional staffs are just not big enough to handle the load.
The situation has been exacerbated by a portion of the contract with America, which cut
congressional staffs by 25%.
Pressure groups know this, and when visiting a member of Congress, they often bring with
them pre-written legislation.
But Edwards says this is how Washington has been run for years, and singling out the 104th
Congress is unfair.
A lot of the focus in your end criticism has been about the fact that people in industry
are actually writing the bills.
That's a false criticism because in previous Congress, it was people in the environmental
community who wrote the bills and brought them to the Hill.
That's really nothing new.
What's different, of course, is there is now a Congress which is more concerned, for example,
when you have a cost-benefit study of various environmental regulations.
They're much more focused on the cost than they are on the benefit, and it used to be
the other way around.
So, you know, there are those changes.
Plus, I think the environmental community probably doesn't get as good a hearing from
the Republican Congress as it did previously.
Edwards says that the Congress is operating under the same system that previously produced
legislation favorable to environmentalists.
He and others say reform is needed.
And Rothschild from Citizen Action says this Congress underscores the problems.
Clearly, the current system is not working and we have too much big money in politics.
The average citizen who has a vote is coming much less a player in our democracy when big
money enables the system to operate to the detriment of the average citizen.
I mean, one of the things we have found is that members of Congress and our far more
responsive to their contributors than they are to the constituents.
And I think the lesson in the last session of Congress is very clear.
All programs, policies that have the constituent at heart are being cut back while tax breaks
are given and other environmental rollbacks are given to big business and corporations.
Still others call for a total elimination of campaign contributions.
Nancy Waltzmann is a project director for the Center for Responsive Politics.
It's the confluence of money and politics as an old story.
It seems like the only way to get rid of that problem in the internal conflicts and interests
to cause is to figure out a way to get rid of this private money.
You would hope that if members weren't so dependent on the special interests for their
election, that you would be able to see their real positions come through when it came
time to vote rather than some position they're taking because they feel like they must
be act out their gratitude for a large campaign funder.
While money donated to individual members of Congress is impressive, lobbyists have many
other options than just campaign funds.
Both parties accept so-called soft money, which is used in a variety of ways to support
the party and its members.
All pressure groups, whether they be a powerful environmental or industry organization, plays
the same game.
It's just that now, many feel environmentalists are getting routed.
For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
Every discussion about money in American politics soon becomes a discussion about political
action committees or PACs.
These organizations collect and distribute money to candidates and are the vehicles by
which special interest groups gain access to many people in Congress.
PACs come in all different forms.
Big industries like oil and gas producers have PACs.
They're also environmental PACs like those of the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation
Voters.
39 Congressmen in the last election refuse to take any money from PACs at all.
We talk to one of them, Representative Jim Leach, representative from the first district
in Iowa who is chairman of the banking committee and in his 10th term.
What we're seeing is business is usual but accentuated in its trends.
This country is in the process of seeing historical democratic values in a way turned upside
down with candidates increasingly indebted to small, segregated special interests to the
people that influence the elections rather than the people that vote in the elections.
The interesting aspect, I think, from the environmental perspective is that there is a strong
environmental perspective and an increasingly strong organizational environmental movement.
But the strength of the environmental movement is organization and ideas, not money.
The strength of the groups that might be having opposing views to environmental movement
is dollars and cents.
And so, in theory, the more there's an accentuation and dollars and cents and politics, that benefits
the kinds of organizational efforts that may be at odds with a group like the environmental
movement that is more issue or idea or organization oriented instead of money.
I believe you're one of 39 Congressmen who were reelected or elected without PAC contribution.
Was that a difficult situation for you?
Well, I've never taken PAC money and I've often felt that the large groups have played
a disproportionate role in the process and that the best way to be indebted to your constituents
who vote for you is to rely on your constituents who vote for you also as well as those that vote
against you.
But to represent people, you want to stay away from the large group giving.
But I will tell you, it certainly limits options personally, probably of all the incumbents
that could raise substantial sums of money based upon positions in the Congress.
I've probably given up the most of anyone in the Congress.
Do you think that your colleagues are able to sort out the problem of either perception
of conflict or real conflict when they receive PAC money and suddenly are called upon to
do the very thing that the PAC is desperately wanting to achieve?
Well, virtually anyone you talk to will say it's not a problem and that a thousand here
and a thousand there doesn't influence them that much.
But if you believe human nature, it's not quite that simple.
In fact, my own sense is that the PACs almost imply implicit contracts with members and
many of them, by the way, have actually do very lengthy questionnaires.
And then they become implicit contracts for the future because if you do well by your
past commitments, there's hardly a PAC that won't at least match what they did prior to
that.
And so it's not only—and you have a system in place that you're influenced by the
past, you're also influenced by looking to the future.
And that's why PACs in one election can't be looked at in the abstract.
You have to look at them in a continuum of elections.
And then the kind of the totality of the problem becomes more and more self-evident.
And given this day and age of religion and politics, I'm very careful of going into
that commentary.
But one of the great theologians of the century, Ronald Nieber once commented that the
temper and the integrity with which the political fight is waged is often more important to
the health of society than the outcome of particular issues.
And I think that is a great deal of what's at stake with the PAC issue.
Representative Jim Leach, representative from the first district in Iowa who is chairman
of the banking committee and in his 10th term.
I'm Peter Burley.
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We get an update on the status of fisheries management in the wake of the federal budget
cuts.
While lawmakers on Capitol Hill argue fish in the economy are being hurt.
And our Earth calendar will explore the microscopic world of diatoms now starting to bloom throughout
the Chesapeake Bay.
This story is still a hit on the Environment Show.
Shutting down the government seemed fun for some members of Congress who showed they could
steer down the president and some federal employees who got time off.
But the budget impasse and continued uncertainty has been no fun at all for those trying to
manage our fisheries.
The National Marine Fisheries Service collects information year round on the condition of
fish at sea and the number caught.
That data is used to help seasons and catch limits.
Since most of our fisheries are overfished, good scientific data is critical for the survival
of our fish stocks.
Douglas Hall, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans in the Applesphere, sums
up the situation.
When you do invest more in understanding what is occurring in the fish stocks, we have
42 percent of the fish stocks in the United States are overfished.
But we have another 30 percent that we don't know what the status of those stocks are.
The data which is collected to set catch limits comes from a number of sources.
Mike Cicinwine, Senior Scientist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, describes the
process.
We do have research vessels that are at sea for a total of about 2,000 days of time
a year.
That is obviously multiple vessels, about 10 different vessels conducting 2,000 days of research
at sea with hundreds of different scientists aboard doing scientifically designed surveys
of the abundance of fish.
In addition to that, there is a tremendous amount of data collected in the fishing ports
that monitors how much is caught and various other fishing activity that is used as part
of the scientific assessments.
The problem is that without data, managing fisheries is impossible.
Douglas Hall says another budget interruption would require a shutdown of a fisheries all
together or cause devastating damage.
If we had another shutdown after March 15th, it would be very difficult to continue some
of the fisheries around the country and we would have to look at closing them because of
concerns about conservation.
If you don't know how many fish are being caught and you're not managing them effectively,
then there's no way to protect the resource and manage it effectively.
So that's in the shutdown part of it.
We're also operating on a continuing resolution which only provides us funding on a day-to-day
basis.
We're unable to plan effectively for the rest of the year.
This is one area where Congress and the administration have come to a very clear agreement that there
is a crisis in the fisheries.
That the fisheries service needs more money.
The budget, unlike most agencies, was increased in the conference report passed by both the
House and the Senate.
But we can't implement that program and we can't get on to about the business of rebuilding
the ground fish stocks in New England and the other fisheries where we have very serious
problems because of the uncertainty of funding.
Douglas Hall is the Assistant Secretary of Commerce who oversees the National Marine Fisheries
Service.
While budget uncertainty at the fisheries service has made things chaotic, it is even worse
in Argonne, where salmon and state hatcheries funded by the federal government were prematurely
released because there simply wasn't any money left to feed them.
Rudy Rosen, Director of the Argonne Department of Fish and Wildlife, tells us what happened.
Funds available to continue production at those hatcheries were simply cut off.
And as fish are reared, they require considerable amount of food and that is expensive and maintenance
and operation facilities.
And as the fish grow, they need more and more room.
And as we move fish out into other facilities, if those facilities are not going to be available
because of lack of funding, we don't have anywhere to put those fish.
Randy Henry of the Argonne Department says that the early releases and shutdowns will
eliminate an $11 million salmon catch which would have been produced with a $1 million expenditure.
The fish being reared, they didn't have any place to go for the remainder of their
for the remainder of their rearing time.
So they were released directly into the Columbia River nearly three months ahead of schedule,
meaning that their survival will be greatly reduced.
So we are looking at another release here on the 15th of February of another 13 million
fall sonnuck for the same situation that we have no place to continue their production.
It's also going to reduce production quite a bit in the future years by the same amount.
That in turn means that if there is fewer fish returning, there will be fewer fish being
caught.
And it's probably an $11 million loss of revenue for this region.
Fish, like other natural resources, can't be turned on and off depending on congressional
budget negotiations.
Whether they be hatchery reared and in need of space and food or natural stocks in the
sea facing decimation from overfishing, the budget impasse and card on uncertainty has
put them all at risk.
I'm Peter Burley.
And now it's time for the Earth Calendar.
In a week or so, the water and Chesapeake Bay on the Mid-Atlantic coast will start
turning color.
That's because diatoms, which are just below the surface of the water, begin to bloom.
During the shortest days of winter, nutrients build up in the bay.
Longer days for the diatom bloom which begins in early March.
Tom Malone, director of the Horn Point Environmental Laboratory for the University of Maryland,
tells us how they work.
They are basically one-celled plants that are found throughout the oceans and lakes.
I think it's important to realize that in contrast to the land environment where large
plants that are composed of many cells, multiscibered plants, pretty much dominate the plant
production on land.
Most of the plant production in the oceans and in lakes is accomplished by single-celled
organisms called phytoplankton.
Diatoms are one kind of phytoplankton.
This bloom occurs because the plants begin to grow sooner and faster than the animals
that eat them.
And it also is made possible by nutrients that accumulate during the winter time because
they're not being taken up by the plants.
So when you have abundant nutrients and the light begins to increase and the water begins
to warm near the surface, the phytoplankton begin to grow very rapidly and produce large
quantities of plants that can sometimes actually turn the water green or brown depending on
the color of the pigments in the plant.
Malone says diatoms are the first link of a food chain that supports marine life in
the bay and around the world.
The diatoms are extremely important as food for small animals that we call zooplankton.
The diatom bloom which is about to begin will reach its peak in April and May.
But once their spring bloom is over, Malone says there are one of three things that will
happen.
Either they'll become part of the food chain to support finfish like striped bass in
the upper water.
They sink to the bottom and are eaten by filler feeders like oysters or they die and are
decomposed by bacteria.
According to Malone, the decomposition has created an enormous problem for the Chesapeake
Bay.
With the nutrients that have been added from fertilizers, from animal waste and from
Suez treatment plants, we have caused that spring bloom to get bigger and bigger and bigger
to the point where there are not enough animals to eat at all.
So a large portion of that spring bloom sinks into the bottom water and dies in this decomposed
by bacteria which removes the oxygen.
So in Chesapeake Bay, one of the biggest problems we have is an overproduction of diatoms that
causes the bottom waters to lose all of their oxygen during the course of the spring and
into the summer.
So much of the bottom of Chesapeake Bay is without oxygen during one or two months in the
summertime.
Over the past ten years, there has been a major effort to reduce the nutrients coming
into the bay.
Malone says phosphorus has already begun to decline and the next effort will be to control
the amount of nitrogen coming in.
Who knows?
Perhaps some mad scientists will figure out how to remove excess diatoms and market them
as an additive to inspire the color of pea soup.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
We're going to set a copy of the program called 1-800-747-7444 and ask for program number
320.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its content.
Thomas Lally is the producer.
Dr. Alan Shartog is the executive producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by Hemman's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old
Car Hobby, 1-800-C-A-R-H-E-R-E.
Malone and join us next week for the Environment Show.
