The computer system used by the Environmental Protection Agency to track and control water pollution is obsolete, full of faulty data and does not take into account thousands of significant pollution sources, according to a new government report.
Efforts to modernize the program have been mismanaged for several years, said the report, issued last week by the E.P.A.’s inspector general. While the cost to fix the problem has been soaring, the amount of money dedicated to the project has been shrinking. The new system was supposed to come online this month, but because of its many problems it will be at least three years before the agency and the states can properly manage the enormous system of permits that is the basic tool for enforcing the Clean Water Act.
How long before this is Bush’s fault? At any rate, faulty equipment means we have been under-estimating or over-estimating threats for years now- essentially, this report makes it appear as if we have been flying blind. Not good.
Laurence Simon
The great thing about environmental disasters is that they are a self-correcting phenomenon. If one metric gets a tenth of a percent out of whack beyond the buffer capacity of the environment, the “problem species” (homo sapiens) dies off to the point where it stops causing the problem, the environment self-corrects, and then we can all go back to 70 MPH on the freeways. So what if a few monitoring computers are out of date… all the quicker that the self-correction will come.