April 22 is Earth Day. As such, it seems like a good time to tour our state's various environmental controversies. There are actually too many to delve into at once here, which is a statement in itself. In a state with a remarkable variety of natural beauty--beauty that drew many of us to live here in the first place--it's striking how few of these issues will even be discussed on Earth Day, or are being actively championed by principled grassroots advocates. We all love what Washington State used to be, and what we all sort of vaguely hope and dream might still be out there.

What's going on out there instead? Take the Earth Day tour:

Buckhorn Mountain, in the Okanogan, may not exist much longer. A proposal for an enormous open pit cyanide leachate gold mine that would literally remove two-thirds of the mountain--all public land--has until recently been relentlessly rammed through federal and county agencies. Currently, the Dept. of Ecology is reviewing the water permit and, unless the public pushes them to deny it, the project will go full steam ahead and Buckhorn Mountain will disappear. (For details, see ETS! #33, Apr. 22, 1997.)

Hanford is a frequent ETS! topic, but we haven't begun to do justice to just how bad a mess it is out there, environmentally and politically. It is literally the most contaminated nuclear site in the Western Hemisphere, with hundreds of tanks so toxic regulators haven't even gotten close enough to them to find out what's in them--and many are, like the radioactive contaminants in the groundwater, only yards from the Columbia River and the region's aquifer. Cleanup has been a taxpayer-supported fraud, and there's a plan for privatized tritium production to add to the catastrophe.

In river systems from the Columbia to the Northwest's smallest streams, salmon restoration will be a hot topic as sports fishermen, big commercial interests, and tribes (but not, alas, the fish themselves) will clash over who gets to "harvest" the few remaining wild salmon. Expect much avoidance of the real causes of salmon loss: dams (which block their progress and help predators), clearcutting (which silts rivers and eliminates canopy, raising stream temperatures to lethal levels and destroying spawning grounds), and commercial greed.

Removing those dams is in the news, as Slade Gorton links the long-standing proposal to take out a useless dam on the Olympic Peninsula's Elwha River with a demand to maintain all of them on the entire Columbia/Snake system, an entirely different (and much larger) watershed. These enormously destructive dams have been a pork fave for years, underwriting cheap power for aluminum industries (and Boeing). Somewhere, Gorton probably will find a Big Green group willing to make the deal, because they feel his pain. Meanwhile, the Skykomish tribe is also battling to get a long-standing dam near Shelton, operated by Tacoma's utility, removed.

Cheap power may soon be history--at least for non-corporate users like you and I--with utility deregulation. Aside from corporate welfare and screwed consumers, deregulation has huge implications for marketing and use of energy (and conservation), pollution, and loads of other Earth issues.

Endangered species like the salmon--or the infamous Northern Spotted Owl--are in for rough times as the Endangered Species Act (ESA), already seldom enforced, comes in for renewed legislative attack.

The ESA, for example, has done little (despite the shouting) to stop clearcutting; logging companies that need to cash in their assets, and willing lawmakers (who number among those assets) keep finding ways. Again, Big Green helps, as with the recent agreement to log four-fifths of Loomis State Forest. Another battle looms over Plum Creek's threats to log the rest of the I-90 Snoqualmie corridor, unless it gets a huge gift--er, "land swap"--from the state.

Here at home, the city of Seattle wants to get in on the clearcut business, too, by "harvesting" most of the Cedar River Watershed. The current battle is to get city council backing for the "100% Reserve" alternative. (For details, see ETS! Vol. 2, #27, Mar. 17, 1998.)

Important green decisions are often made through assumptions at the bureaucratic level. We have many examples in our planning for local infrastructure, much of which assumes as desirable an aggressive drive for industrial and business growth well beyond the usual new resident influx. Such assumptions fuel plans for revising the Growth Management Act, overhauling the county's water and sewage systems, upgrading the Port of Seattle, and many others. Such thinking also underlies many of the provisions of next fall's transportation levy.

While the state proposes to spend money to underwrite growth, it's not spending money to clean up the old messes. Toxic waste sites across the state are festering without cleanup efforts by the state or the feds. Waterways, too; the sort of concerted effort that cleaned up Lake Washington a generation ago couldn't happen in today's regulatory climate. Tacoma's Commencement Bay, Birch Bay, and Bellingham Bay are particularly fouled.

In fact, in almost every environmental arena stripped enforcement is the rule, not the exception. With startling regularity, corporate pressure has bought off citizen mandates that put a high price on the value of a natural, non-toxic environment.

This frightfully incomplete list, and many other issues, invariably can be traced to the triumph of greed in public policymaking. Despite widespread, bipartisan commitment to "environmentalism," it keeps happening.

In this environment, Earth Day photos of kids recycling cans, volunteers planting trees, New Agers selling videocassettes on simple living, and greenwashed corporate commitments to our future generations blah blah blah ring terribly hollow. The bits we can do, individually and piecemeal, do add up and are important. But the really big, systemic problems, like the ones listed above, aren't even be discussed by most people on Earth Day.

With a handful of exceptions, the lack of principled environmental advocates on these issues is also striking. We're in this predicament, despite widespread public approval for environmental protection, in large part because the big, established enviro groups have sold out. Our environmental Vice-President and his boss are a sick fraud, as we've reported frequently; underlings and Congressional and state counterparts like Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Gary Locke are no better. Yet Big Green groups are only too willing to sell the farm--or forest, or watershed--for photo ops and mythic "access" that will never equal what our planet's corporate rapists can buy. Meanwhile, the grassroots wither.

There are a few exceptions. In Seattle and Olympia, Earth First! chugs along on a variety of issues; Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project does some good work, as does Northwest Ecosystems Alliance in Bellingham. The Okanogan Highlands Alliance has fought a lonely battle against the Buckhorn Mountain mine, and Heart of America Northwest has worked hard to curb Hanford's atrocities. Of late, the Protect Our Watershed Alliance has single-handedly (and against Sierra Club opposition) made zero-cut a viable option for the city's Cedar River Watershed; and the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice has worked against environmental racism.

The common point of all these groups is that (with the exception of EF!, which is more a movement than a group, anyway) you've probably never heard of them. Name brand enviro groups, like Earth Day itself, are a feel-good fraud. Most have a handful of legal or lobbying victories that they point to, masking a record of constant failure and accommodation. The only one that ever dabbled in community organizing or direct action in recent years, Greenpeace, has abandoned Seattle except for fundraising purposes (and administering one national campaign).

The lessons: if Earth Day reminds and motivates you to do something to save our planet--something beyond recycling or tree-planting--then don't write a check to any group with a slick annual report. Look around your immediate area, and find an issue (you won't need to search long) where greed is overwhelming common sense and the public good. Join or start your own group. And go kick some Earth-killing ass.