DOE Shuttering Ecological Research Station

[SteveGrenard]

Bush’s DOE closes the Svannah River Ecology Laboratory because of all the good work it is doing. With an annual budget of less than what a half hour of the war in Iraq is costing, the DOE suddenly can’t find the funding to carry on this critical work but that's not the reason the lab is closing. It is a hatchet job similar to the firing of the U.S. attorneys. Thousands of animals on the Savannah River preservation may have to be destroyed and about one hundred people will be fired on May 31st with neither severance pay or accrued vacation time pay. This is yet another salvo in the Bush/Cheney war against the environment . Any further need for monitoring radiological effects from the old nuclear power site on the animals and plants will, according to the DOE, be performed by private contractors. Dare we say contractors linked to the administration at probably many times what it now costs? This is yet another blatant example of the administration making money for its friends anyway it can and they are getting away with it.

Unbelievably my mother had a question about a Part D form she received so she called the 800 number and learned she was connected to someone to help her located in Manila! Needless to say her problems could not be resolved so she just gave up. Medicare is now outsourcing its telephone queries to the Phillippines. I wonder what Bushie friend owns that company.

The University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has a “Guinness Book of World Records" award, has been recognized by the Encyclopedia Britannica as one of the top ecology laboratories in the world and is home to the only American alligator whose photograph has appeared in “USA Today" and on Fox News.

This year it received a different, and decidedly unwelcome, kind of attention. Someone in Washington has decided that federal funding for SREL will be terminated, effectively shutting down the research facility. [n]One official stated that SREL had become “too visible."[/b] Indeed, SREL has garnered an international reputation for research in radiation ecology, wetlands and wildlife conservation, and environmental chemistry. And it provides uncensored reporting of environmental findings in scientific journals. Is that what is meant by “too visible?"

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070506/NEWS/705060357/1013



For more info on the effort to save Savannah River, see:

http://www.savesrel.org/

And additional press coverage at:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/05/11/0512meshlab.html

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/05/critical-environmental-research-on.asp

http://www.aikenstandard.com/news/305090049808456.php