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Okefenokee Victory
In August, the DuPont Chemical Corporation announced that it was retiring
its mineral rights within Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife
Refuge and donating nearly 16,000 acres of land to The Conservation Fund.
This
is one of the most significant corporate land donations in the history
of the
State of Georgia, and the largest ever for the DuPont Land Legacy Program,
which since 1992 has placed nearly 18,000 acres of company land into permanent
protected status. The Conservation Fund will in turn donate 5,000 acres
to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
WMDs Burning in Alabama
Thousands of false alarms have sounded within the Army’s chemical weapons
incinerator in Anniston, Alabama, since it began operating on August 9. (See "Army
Burns, Club Fumes," September 2003.) The Sierra Club favors a safer
and more effective method of disposal called neutralization, and a second
Club-organized
rally (in which the canine pictured at right participated) opposing
the incinerator was held in Anniston on Aug. 16. In early September,
after
insisting for nearly
two weeks that an alarm on August 21 had falsely indicated a leak of
the deadly nerve agent sarin, the Army acknowledged that there have
been 10
such leaks.
For more information, go to www.cwwg.org.
Estrada Withdraws
On September 4, controversial judicial nominee Miguel Estrada asked
President Bush to withdraw his name from consideration for the federal
appeals court
in Washington, D.C. Bush had been pushing for Estrada’s approval, but
Senate Democrats filibustered seven times to block the move, insisting they
would not allow a final vote until the appellate lawyer answered more of their
questions in a public hearing or until the White House released Estrada’s
working papers from his time at the Justice Department.
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