Top Story: Pentagon Proposes Loosening Its Environmental Policy, page 1

The pentagon has begun discussing the prospect of loosening their policies of enviornmental friendlyness...and it looks like the policies will indeed be eliminated. The proposal replaces strike military guidlines concnering pollution with vague policies basicly stating "do what you can". This policy does not create anything, it would only eliminate key environmental requirments to be held by our forces.

www.commondreams.org
The Defense Department, which has won congressional exemptions from environmental laws in the last two years, now wants to change an internal policy that commits the department to sound environmental practices.

"The Pentagon is transforming itself in to an entity concerned only about its own logistics and facility management � and the public be damned," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which obtained a copy of the proposal.

The Defense Department has a checkered environmental record. It has more facilities on the Superfund National Priorities List than any other entity in the U.S. It is blamed for contaminating billions of gallons of drinking water. A 2003 report by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce concluded that the department was responsible for "28,500 potentially contaminated sites across the country."

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i can't say i'm very much surprised. by this action, but i dont know why it is comming up now. The military never struck me as having very strict environmental policies to begin with...i will be interested in seeing exactly what they do once they have no policies at all. Could this be a way to lower costs of the war in iraq, or merely another one of bush's anti-environmental policies?

[edit on 17-12-2004 by maegman]