Dallas County Democrats
Clinton/Gore Accomplishments:
Environment

Preserving Our National Treasures. The Clinton-Gore Administration has protected tens of millions of acres, from the red rock canyons of Utah to the Florida Everglades. The Administration reached agreements to protect Yellowstone from mining and save the ancient redwoods of California�s Headwaters Forest. In the FY 2000 budget, the President and Vice President won $651 million (a 42 percent increase) for Lands Legacy, a historic initiative to strengthen federal efforts to preserve national treasures and provides communities with new resources to protect local green spaces. This year, the President's budget includes a record $1.4 billion for Lands Legacy -- a 93 percent increase and the largest one-year investment ever requested for conserving America�s lands. [Protecting Our National Treasures, Department of Interior; National Economic Council, 11/18/99; White House Fact Sheet, 2/7/00]

Created Nine New National Monuments. The Clinton-Gore Administration has created nine new national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante, protecting spectacular red rock canyonlands in Utah; Grand Canyon-Parashant, protecting deep canyons, mountains and buttes on the north rim of the Grand Canyon; Agua Fria, protecting extensive prehistoric ruins in Arizona; the California Coastal monument, protecting thousands of islands, rocks and reefs along the California coast; Giant Sequoia National Monument in California's Sierra Nevada, protecting 34 groves of ancient sequoias, the largest trees on earth; Canyons of the Ancients National Monument protecting America�s highest density of archeological sites in southwest Colorado; Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument protecting unmatched biological diversity in the Cascade Range in southern Oregon; Hanford Reach National Monument protecting critical habitat for salmon spawning along one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River in south central Washington; Ironwood Forest National Monument protecting rich stands of ironwood trees � known to live more than 800 years -- in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The Administration also expanded Pinnacles National Monument in California to better protect the area's unusual rock formations, and designated Anderson Cottage, which served as Abraham Lincoln�s summer home while he was president, a national monument. [Presidential Proclamations, 9/18/96, 1/11/00, 6/9/00, 7/7/00]

Preserving Our National Forests. The President directed the National Forest Service to develop and propose regulations to provide long-term protection for 40 million acres of roadless areas within national forests and ensure that future generations will be able to enjoy the pristine wilderness. The proposed regulations would ban road building in these areas and could also prohibit logging or other activities that harm their unique ecological value. [Executive Memorandum, 10/13/99]

Accelerating Toxic Cleanups and Brownfields Redevelopment. The Clinton-Gore Administration has completed clean up at more than 530 Superfund sites, more than three times as many as completed in the previous twelve years. Clean up of more than 91 percent of all sites is either completed or in progress. The Administration's brownfields redevelopment initiative has leveraged over $2.3 billion in private sector investment and generated 6,400 jobs. [Environmental Protection Agency, Superfund NPL Construction Completions Since 1/20/93 to 6/22/99; EPA Headlines, www.epa.gov, 8/24/00]

Keeping Our Drinking Water Safe. The President proposed and signed legislation to strengthen the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure that our families have healthy, clean tap water. The Clinton-Gore Administration has required America�s 55,000 water utilities to provide regular reports to their customers on the quality of their drinking water. The Administration significantly tightened the arsenic standard, providing additional protection to at least 22.5 million Americans from cancer and other health problems. The Administration has adopted or proposed new standards to provide the first-ever protection against waterborne illness like Cryptosporidium, potentially preventing more than half a million illnesses each year. The Administration also proposed new rule to reduce dirty runoff and strengthen protections for 20,000 rivers, lakes and other waterways too polluted for swimming and fishing. Ninety-one percent of America�s tap water from community drinking water systems now meets all federal standards. [PL 104-182, 8/6/96; White House, Council on Environmental Quality, 4/22/99; Environmental Protection Agency, Summary of the 2000 Budget, p. 30; Environmental Protection Agency, Press Release, 5/24/00]

Clearing the Air of Unhealthy Pollution. The President and Vice President have adopted the toughest standards ever on soot and smog. They proposed significant reductions in tailpipe emissions from cars, light trucks and SUVs, and launched long-term effort to restore pristine skies over our national parks and wilderness areas. Since 1993, the number of Americans living in communities that meet federal air quality standards has grown by 43 million. [White House, Council on Environmental Quality, 5/1/99]

Reducing the Threat of Global Warming. The Clinton-Gore Administration negotiated an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an environmentally strong and economically sound way. The President and Vice President secured $1.1 billion in FY 2000 for research and development of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, and set a goal of tripling U.S. use of bio-energy and bio-products by 2010. The President issued several Executive Orders. The first order directs agencies to dramatically improve energy efficiency in federal buildings, saving taxpayers over $750 million a year when fully implemented. The second order improves fuel efficiency by requiring the Federal government to reduce fuel use in its vehicle fleets by 20 percent in five years. The third order offers federal workers incentives to use public transportation, cutting fuel use and the pollution that contributes to climate change.[EPA; National Economic Council, 11/18/99; Executive Memorandum, 8/12/99; Executive Order, 6/3/99; Executive Order, 4/22/00]

Protecting Oceans and Coasts. The Clinton-Gore Administration has extended the moratorium on new oil leasing off most of the U.S. coast through 2012, and permanently barred new leasing in national marine sanctuaries. They directed the development of key recommendations for strengthening federal oceans policy for the 21st century and appointed a high-level task force to oversee the implementation of those recommendations and launched a new era of ocean exploration where federal researchers will collaborate with marine research institutions and universities for ocean exploration. The President and Vice President secured a funding increase of over 100 percent to better support national marine sanctuaries, and have led the world in calling for a global ban on ocean dumping of low-level radioactive waste. [White House Executive Order 5/26/00, Office of the Press Secretary, 6/12/98; Executive Order 6/11/98; Office of the Press Secretary 11/3/93]

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