Sierra Club Challenges New EPA Nominee

Governor Leavitt's record mirrors the worst aspects of the Bush
Administration's approach to environmental protection in several respects.
He has revealed fundamental disrespect for environmental protections, given
low priority to enforcing these laws, and shown a penchant for secret
deal-making. The record he compiled as governor shows that he is a poor
choice to lead an agency charged with protecting the air we breathe and the
water we drink.

The Sierra Club calls on Governor Leavitt to pledge that, if confirmed, he
will not bow to the Bush Administration's political pressure and pattern of
secrecy--most recently demonstrated by the manipulation of EPA information
about the safety of lower Manhattan following the attacks of September 11,
2001. The Sierra Club also calls on Governor Leavitt to pledge to fully
investigate the whether residents and workers in New York were
unnecessarily put at risk.

The EPA Administrator is a critically important position, requiring
dedication and commitment to protecting public health and our environment.
Americans deserve an EPA Administrator who shares the public's fundamental
expectation that our government will safeguard its citizens' air and water.

Failure to Enforce Environmental Laws:

America has made great progress cleaning soot and smog from our air,
pollution from our water and toxic chemicals from our communities. But the
Bush Administration has put that progress in peril and our communities at
risk. Based on his record of enforcing environmental laws, Governor
Leavitt is not poised to turn that tide. Governor Leavitt's administration
has failed dismally to enforce the Clean Water Act, a landmark law that he
would oversee nationally at EPA. According to an internal analysis by the
EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Utah's program tied
with Ohio and Tennessee for last among all the states in six key measures
of Clean Water Act compliance and enforcement. The Leavitt
administration's inability or unwillingness to enforce the Clean Water Act
in Utah, which has a relatively small number of major pollution
dischargers, suggests that he is not the right choice to fulfill the most
basic function of an EPA Administrator: enforcing our laws.

Backroom Deals to Weaken Environmental Protections:

Through secret, closed-door meetings, the Bush Administration has rewritten
and weakened the laws that protect our health and safety and the land we
love, thereby allowing polluting corporations to benefit at our expense.
Fresh off a backroom deal to open up spectacular Utah wilderness to road
building and development, the Bush Administration's coziness with
corporations is right up Leavitt's alley. This spring Leavitt reached a
secret agreement with the Bush administration that could allow the state to
bulldoze highways over tens of thousands of miles of trails through
national monuments and proposed wilderness areas. A second closed-door
deal between Leavitt and the Bush administration, also this spring, opened
six million acres of public lands eligible for designation as wilderness
areas to oil and gas drilling, mining and damaging off-road vehicle use.

Failure to Evaluate Alternatives to Destroying World-renowned Wetlands:

The EPA has important responsibility for protecting wetlands and water
quality, but Governor Leavitt's personal promotion of the Legacy Highway
project in Utah demonstrates that he has little regard for protecting these
resources. The footprint of the highway itself, planned for the eastern
edge of the Great Salt Lake, together with the secondary impacts of
development caused by the interchanges, would destroy hundreds of acres of
wetlands upon which millions of migratory birds rely.