Letter to the Editor

LETTERS: BOND'S PETITION DRIVE IS MISLEADING

This article comes from our electronic archive and has not been reviewed. It may contain glitches.

To the editor:

For years, U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond has been a leader in the Washington Republican war on human health and the environment. Following his recent re-election, the senator seems to have decided that Missourians agree with his judgment that folks supporting the movement for clean air are merely members of some special-interest group to be thwarted. His recently announced petition drive aimed at promoting the foul air of St. Louis is the current evidence of his dedication to the anti-environmental pro-polluter cause.

At significant cost to the health of St. Louis residents, particularly those suffering respiratory ailments, that city has never met the clean air standards of the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately, our elected Republican officials at the federal and state levels have done nothing to remedy this appalling situation, and the air quality continues to place human health in jeopardy. It has been left to environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club to defend the right of St. Louis residents to breathe clean air by filing suit to force the EPA to reclassify the city as suffering air quality that is "serious" rather than "moderate" as a way of encouraging Missouri to address the problem. In response, Bond has decided to cruise the state in an effort to drum up signatures for a petition to ask the Sierra Club to withdraw its lawsuit. It would be appropriate if the senator used his good offices to try to clean up the air of Missouri rather than trying to keep it dirty. In order to sell his petition drive, the senator has concocted an argument about highway safety that he must know is false. The senator incorrectly claims that a successful Sierra Club lawsuit would cause withdrawal of federal funds from projects in Missouri designed to correct unsafe highway conditions. Though the lawsuit would certainly place a moratorium on Missouri's receipt of federal funds for highway construction projects, it does so precisely because vehicular transportation is a significant contributor to unhealthy city air. However, as the senator must well know, projects designed to address unsafe highway conditions are specifically exempted from this moratorium.

Shamefully, though not surprisingly, the senator is targeting his efforts at non-St. Louis communities such as Cape Girardeau, where air quality is less of an issue. Presumably he is counting on residents of such cities not to care about the health of their brothers and sisters in the big city. Not surprisingly, he is skipping St. Louis on this junket.

Folks who Bond canvasses for signatures to his petition drive should know that his argument is without merit and that he is only attempting to protect those who would stand in the way of clean air for St. Louis.

ALAN JOURNET

Cape Girardeau