Outgoing Bush “Midnight” Environmental Legislation

aepcentral — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:50:12 +0000

By Carol Metzner, President, The Metzner Group, LLC and Managing Partner, A/E/P Central, LLC home of CivilEngineeringCentral.com

Tim Dickinson has written an excellent synopsis for Rolling Stone magazine on President Bush’s final legacy and good-bye gift to us for our future. The title is somewhat rough for some of you, so I won’t put it here, but I offer to you the link:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24991066/bushs_final_fu

As it is expected that every outgoing president has implemented 11th hour regulations, “Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan.”

Here are just a FEW of his final goodbye gifts to all of us (with a few of my thoughts included!)…

Considering that my livelihood depends a great deal on infrastructure development, I read his last minute regulations with interest. “Under a rule submitted in November, federal agencies would no longer be required to have government scientists assess the impact on imperiled species before giving the go-ahead to logging, mining, drilling, highway building or other development.” I can’t say that I have ever described myself as a live or die environmentalists, but at 47, I find this unsettling at the least! You only need to read my earlier BLOG discussing my obsession with the movie “Soylent Green” to know that this is beyond worrisome!

Typical of the Bush presidency, he has made sure that the coal industry has no problems depositing their waste from mountaintop mining into streams and valleys. Additionally, he has lowered air pollution regulations near our national parks, permitted for nearly 2 million acres of lands for the mining of oil shale — “an energy-intensive process that also drains precious water resources” and he has deregulated farming pollution. He has circumvented the Clean Water Act and dismissed EPA leaders dissents. This is just more of his legacy he has solidified for his future grandchildren and yours.

The Rolling Stone article details so many other last minute, little front news regulations, that I am too troubled to even list them all!

All of us will be affected by his decisions. Involved in our industry, what do you think? Please comment!

Civil Engineering Saving The Earth

aepcentral — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:46:30 +0000

by Carol Metzner, President, The Metzner Group, LLC and Managing Partner, CivilEngineeringCentral.com

In 1973 a sci-fi movie called “Soylent Green” was released. It was a story about Earth and humanity (or lack of humanity) in the year 2022. I was about 12 years old and can remember almost every detail of that film. Quoting from the plot summary (IMDb), in the movie “natural food like fruits, vegetables, and meat among others are now extinct. Earth is overpopulated and New York City has 40 million starving, poverty stricken people. In the year 2022, earth’s face has completely changed. The greenhouse effect has risen the temperature into nearly unbearable regions, and the people are kept in the cities by law.”

So why on a civil engineering blog do I talk about one of the most realistic science fiction movies I have ever seen? Because in 1973 the idea of global warming was something only that Democratic, young generation even worried about. In 2008, the news, conferences and marches on DC are all discussing the Earth’s peril. In 1973 the concept of overcrowding, loss of precious farm land and national parks, water shortages, natural food shortages were all concepts for the “Soylent Green” Charlton Heston movie ~ not reality! That movie was 35 years ago. The plot becoming a reality is just around the corner. As civil engineers, and those of us non engineers interested in the civil engineering world, we can act to help the environmental disaster from occurring. Great civil engineering minds are creatively devising new water treatment plants to deal with pollution and high speed rails to reduce individual automobile traffic.

Can you offer other ways that our community is working to save our planet?

» Global Warming

Outgoing Bush “Midnight” Environmental Legislation

Civil Engineering Saving The Earth