Commentary––

Who Needs An Environment, Anyway?

By William A. Collins

Forget water

Forget air;

I won’t change,

My life a hair.

The tide may now have turned against Connecticut’s environment. An ominous portent occurred recently in Ridgefield. That town’s landmark 1915 fountain at Routes 33 and 35 had been run into occasionally over the years, but was always easily repaired. This time a drunk demolished it with his Hummer. Successful repair is uncertain.

What a metaphor! We’re equally uncertain whether the Hummer and its SUV cousins will allow successful repair of the whole environment! Surely not if the pro-Exxon demonstrators at that corporation’s annual meeting have anything to say about it. Their marching song? “Give Oil A Chance!”

Hesitancy about the environment also emerged last month while reviewing progress in the cleanup of our own hallowed Norwalk River. Everyone wanted a cleaner stream, but some were concerned that nothing should force them to alter their lifestyle a whit. The first selectman of New Canaan, for example, supported efforts to control fecal waste from Canada geese and wild turkeys, but resisted suggestions that folks drive less. Also steadily resisted are urgings to use less fertilizer and pesticide on our lawns.

There’s bigger stuff out there, too. Connecticut can feel pride in finally closing down its Sooty Six power plants, thus taking a healthy swat at our sweeping epidemic of childhood asthma. But this good local work has been undermined by the president’s perverse “Clear Skies” initiative. It allows ancient coal-burning power plants in the Midwest to keep shipping us clouds of sulfur dioxide on the prevailing westerlies, thus replacing the SO2 emissions that we no longer allow from plants here. Several states, including ours, are suing to overturn the president’s scheme.

And, worse luck, the environment has largely become a partisan issue. The White House makes no bones about its eagerness to repeal rules it considers “anti-business,” and is having quite some success. At the state level, Governor Rowland is pursuing a similar “pro-business” course. His budget proposal this year gutted broad program areas of the Department of Environmental Protection. Democratic lawmakers, in turn, routinely resist these cuts, and are attacked by Republican lawmakers for protecting “pet projects.” For those who enjoy clean air, water, and food, it is all very depressing.

Likewise depressing is the battle over auto emissions. Obviously the oil industry, auto industry, White House, Congress, and Hummer drivers in Ridgefield resist any change. And states are limited in how much they can meddle. Innovative California requires a certain percentage of cars to run on electricity or hydrogen, and the rest to pollute only minimally. Massachusetts and New York have followed suit, and Connecticut is giving it some thought. It all sounds very smart.

Well, partially. Electric and hydrogen cars have turned out not to be so practical, and anyhow President Bush wants to produce all that hydrogen from coal in a very polluting process. Thus that scheme is retrenching.

Meanwhile the one auto technology that really does work –– hybrid gasoline and electric propulsion –– gets little help. States aren’t allowed to require such cars for their great mileage, but can demand them for their reduced emissions. Connecticut should get at it now as a means of countering Washington’s drooping environmental interest.

Blessed older projects, like cleaning up diesel school buses and beefing up sewage treatment plants, are still chugging along improving our state, but in many ways, Connecticut’s environment needs another big shot in the arm immediately.

(William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)