Action needed to protect our last roadless forests

Unless the Obama administration takes immediate action, Alaska’s Tongass National Forest—the largest old-growth temperate rainforest in the world—could be opened to commercial logging before the end of the summer.

Timber sales have been planned for other roadless areas across the country, including sections of White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. In the past few years, the policies of the Bush administration—together with some uncertainty in the courts—have placed some of America’s most pristine landscapes at an increased risk of development.

Environment Iowa has joined with coalition partners across the country to urge President Obama to act quickly to ensure that America’s last wild forests remain protected from road building, logging, mining and drilling.

Obama’s budget could restore toxic cleanup program

Environment Iowa is backing President Obama’s proposal to restart the cleanup of our country’s most contaminated sites. For over a decade, the Superfund program, established to clean up these toxic sites, has been without any resources to accomplish that goal.

The 2010 budget proposes to reinstate excise taxes that expired in 1995. Those taxes will collect more than $1 billion to clean up toxic sites within the Superfund program. The reinstated taxes will not begin until 2011.

In Iowa, we have a number of super-toxic sites that could be cleaned up under President Obama’s budget proposal. These sites include the Waterloo Coal Gasifi cation plant and the Red Oak City Landfi ll in Montgomery County, which leaches lead.