Rachel Ariola
Professor Weiskoff
11-1-00
 
Florida's Dirty Dozen

Though the topics based on our last class meeting available online were
interesting, I found a different topic that caught my interest.  As I was
breezing though the web site about the Everglades and some of the according
laws governing it, there was another site I wandered to. The page was called
the League of Conservation Voters, and on the page it mentioned 12-13
politicians who repeatedly voted against most environmental causes.

Among these people were Bud Cramer, Tom Bordonaro, Bob Dornana, Helen 
Chenoweth, John Hostettler, John Ensign, Bill Redmons, Lauch Faircloth, Bob 
Inglis, Charles Stenhol, Linda Smith and others. I am choosing to focus on
a few to give a general idea of what is going on among these Senators. Bud 
Cramer and Lauch Faircloth are both Senators I found, after reading about 
all the "Dirty Dozen", guilty of that they are charged with: blatantly voting
against the environment and endangering public health with their choices.

Bud Cramer, whose environmental voting record has plunged more than 20% in 
the past few years, voted for the "Dirty Water Act" in 1995. This bill's 
trajectory was to gut the Clean Water Act's public health provision and in
turn allow more release of toxic pollution and sewage into the state's 
natural fresh waters. The Tennessee River, located in his jurisdiction 
of Alabama, has been found to have over 11 million pounds of toxins it, 
earning it the title of 4th most polluted river in the United States. 
Cramer also supported the cote against public knowledge concerning toxic 
chemical releases. This would prevent the public from knowing about
chemical releases in their community land, air and water, and considering
Alabama ranked 8th in our country for toxic release, that can not be good
thing. He has even taken measures against other environmental plans,
including taking over $300,000 from groups that lobby for Alabama's
environmental resources. So, not only does he not support our environment,
but he also works against it.

Another guilty party, Senator Lauch Faircloth from North Carolina, seems 
to have something in common with our local "Big Sugar": self interest. 
Faircloth actually voted against the renewal of the Safe Drinking Water 
Act, which makes allowance for smaller communities to know about toxins 
in their water. This is pretty terrible, taking into account that North 
Carolina had almost 800,000 people before that vote whose water was deemed
unacceptable for drinking purposes. Another interesting fact, Faircloth 
has hog farms, which are endangering North Carolina's waters. A Senator 
who was fined for spilling 81,500 gallons of potato sludge and responsible
for killing at least 6100 fish? This does not shine too favorable on 
Senator Lauch. The spill that Faircloth caused covered 25 miles of clean
and healthy creek and river water. He, on top of all this, even established
a legislative bill that would wipe out 88% of North Carolina's
WetLands. This would have actually only helped Lauch anyway, seeing as how
it property holding's values would undoubtedly soar.

I think, by far, that the greatest responsibility we have to our world is
to keep its' nature in tact. Preserving what is not ruined should be a 
priority to the community and to our Senators. I think it is deplorable that 
there are even elected Senators that consistently vote against our environment
and try to undermine the public's knowledge while doing so. It is politicians
like these who give all of them a bad name, however, I am not too worried 
because I know that the "Dirty Dozen" will never be able to have an impact 
on any serious level to others Senator's environmental and public safety plans.