Waste News Digital Edition

APRIL 28, 2008
wastenews.com
Feds hike CAFE standards 25%
AT DEADLINE
By Bruce Geiselman
Calif. city begins
recycle-sort program

San Jose, Calif., will begin sorting and recycling all garbage from city facilities and trash cans along sidewalks and at parks, libraries and other public areas next month.

Recovering recyclable and
compostable material from the

The federal government is hiking fuel efficiency standards for passenger cars and light trucks, drawing applause from the auto industry and at least some members of the environmental community.

The U.S. Department of Transportation will increase fuel efficiency standards by 4. 5 percent annually over a five-year peri-

See Fuel, Page 56

od ending in 2015 — representing a 25 percent total improvement. The standard unveiled on April 22 exceeds the 3. 3 percent annual improvement proposed by Congress last year, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said. She called the plan “ambitious, yet achievable.”

Automakers’ passenger vehicles, which

Federal Transportation Secretary Mary Peters: New standards ambitious, achievable.

Where is the green?
Weird
See At Deadline, Page 56
IN THIS ISSUE
science
SOLID WASTE

Bruce Parker, CEO of the Environmental Industry Associations, talks about how Waste Expo has changed over the last 40 years. Page 3

Campaigns’
enviro efforts
leave room for
improvement

By Elizabeth McGowan

HAZARDOUS WASTE

House members ask the Government Accountability Office to probe working conditions at a Washington nuclear waste site. Page 44

AIR

California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and 19 other governors commit their states to fighting global climate change. Page 4

WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain’s presidential chase came within a razor’s edge of becoming the ultimate exercise in environmental sustainability — when the wheels almost came off the Straight Talk Express’ finances last summer.

The Arizona Republican’s environmental adviser James Woolsey, the nation’s former

Survey: 56%
of scientists
report political
interference

By Elizabeth McGowan

President Bush calls for
advances in technology that
would enable America to
stop the growth of green-
house gas emissions by
2025. Page 33

A firm launches a Web site to rate the veracity of green ads. Page 18

WATER

Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA’s assistant administrator of water, says the agency is concerned but not alarmed about reports of pharmaceuticals in drinking water. Page 36

top spy, mentions that painful reality as a joke in an interview. But when pressed about how the revamped campaign is “greening up,” there’s little else the ex-CIA director can offer except that he drives a plug-in hybrid.

“Look, in a campaign you’re doing two things,” Woolsey says. “You’re renting building space and you’re at the mercy of whoever the landlord is with respect to whether they’ve got a green building or not. And you’ve got to travel

MARIO TAMA / GE T T Y IMAGES

GET ON THE BUS: Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign bus, The Straight Talk Express, heads toward Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan in February. According to a McCain aide, the bus runs on oil, not biofuels.

WASHINGTON — Political heavy-handedness from federal-level appointees has spawned a crisis among Environmental Protection Agency scientists, a nonprofit advocacy organization reports.

A Union of Concerned Scientists survey released Wednesday reveals that 889 of 1,600 staff scientists interviewed — 56 percent — experienced on-the-job political interference during the last five years. And Rep. Henry Waxman wants to get to the bottom of it.

“These survey results suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science in EPA’s decision-mak-ing,” the California Democrat told Administrator Stephen Johnson in a letter. The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wants Johnson prepared to answer questions about the report at an early May hearing where he will be probing the agency’s recent ground-level ozone ruling.

On the Senate side, the Environment and Public Works Committee will continue to examine suspected politicization of science by the Bush administration, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

See Where, Page 19

See Science, Page 56
China and Olympic offi-
cials scramble to clean
Beijing’s air as athletes
prepare to compete in
this summer’s quadren-
nial games. Page 14
A group of skeptics
remain cool to the
idea that global
warming is mainly a
man-made phenome-
non. Page 16