Word: whitman
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...1940s, when it began dumping PCBs--a practice it continued until 1977, when the chemical was banned. Since then, the river has rebounded, with PCB levels in fish falling 90%. Still, any PCBs can be dangerous, and many people--including EPA chief and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and New York Governor George Pataki--have argued for dredging a 40-mile stretch of the river north of Albany and sending GE the bill...
...states--including Texas--are a wink and a nod by the feds to encourage the cleanup of sites with lesser contamination. "If we can provide Superfund liability relief to people who clean up and redevelop brownfields, we will encourage more cleanup throughout the private sector," EPA boss Christine Todd Whitman told TIME. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed brownfield legislation with liability relief last April, and a House bill, further protecting developers from pollution lawsuits, may be introduced this week...
...Gore, has a new champion in George W. Bush, who budgeted $98 million for the effort this year--$5 million more than Bill Clinton. "The Superfund program of today has evolved and is focusing not only on protecting public health and the environment but also on reuse and development," Whitman says...
...spent millions on a public-relations and lobbying campaign to nix the plan, and CEO Jack Welch even went to Whitman personally. The company insisted Tuesday that the dredging operation - the largest in U.S. history - would "do more harm than good," stirring up PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, now safely buried under layers of sediment on the river bottom, and besides that would visit "decades of disruption" on area residents. And yet Whitman remained unmoved...
...Well, almost. The EPA did announce one substantive change to the original Clinton plan: the dredging will now be carried out in phases, with government scientists (and, likely, GOP pollsters) evaluating at each step whether the cleanup is an effort worth its while. In other words, Bush and Whitman will have plenty of opportunities to back off from this fight in the years ahead. But for now, the Bush team took one look at the alternative - headlines like "Bush Lets Big Corporation Off Hook On River Cleanup" - and laced up its gloves...