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. WASHINGTON - Halfway into his four-year term, President Bush has significantly altered the nation's environmental policies, often without attracting much notice. A handful of his most controversial policies have made headlines, notably his abandonment of an international treaty on global warming, approval of a federal dump for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and his proposal to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But Bush's administration has
slipped a number of major policy changes under the public's and the
media's radar by quietly issuing executive orders that don't require
congressional approval, making announcements late on Fridays, rewriting
highly technical environmental regulations and muzzling dissent within the Knight Ridder asked three dozen experts in the environmental-protection and business communities to assess the administration's environmental record at midterm. They cited more than 50 major changes in policy, including: * Dramatically stepping up drilling for oil and natural gas on public land. * Loosening environmental restrictions on logging and mining on federal property. * Easing rules that require environmental impact assessments before thinning national forests, starting certain military activities such as bombing practice and building major transportation projects such as airports or highways. * The Bush administration is cleaning up 31 percent fewer Superfund sites per month than the Clinton administration did, and polluters are paying 64 percent less in fines per month than they did during the late 1990s, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of settlements published in the Federal Register. * Rejecting a worldwide treaty to curb global warming and pushing a comprehensive energy plan that stresses reliance on fossil fuels, which cause global warming and air pollution. * Proposing to weaken the
cornerstone air and water pollution laws enacted in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Environmental-protection groups and many ecologists call the Bush's record deplorable. "The administration has been like carbon monoxide, hard to detect and deadly with respect to the environment," said David Wilcove, a Princeton University ecology professor. Business interests, conservative think-tank experts and administration officials argue that the president's approach brings refreshing innovation while cutting back excessive regulation. "Environmentalists have expected the worst from the outset," said James Huffman, the dean of the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. "The administration does deserve credit for challenging some of the unfounded and ill-supported environmental orthodoxy rooted in extreme caution, uncertain science and a rigid reliance on command and control regulation." Many experts who are considered moderates - including some former Republican environmental officials who served the president's father, former President George Bush - are more restrained but voice disappointment. The administration "has been negative toward the environment," said Russell Train, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality for Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford. He co-chaired Conservationists for Bush in 1988. "That's what you hear all the time, relaxing this regulation, that regulation." The administration has embraced "a new way of thinking that is results-oriented," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "It's based on working in a cooperative way...Environmental protection and economic growth can go hand in hand." Many industry representatives are well placed to influence environmental policy. More than two dozen political appointees have backgrounds in the energy, chemical, timber, agribusiness and mining industries. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the oil and gas industry gave nearly $17 million to Republicans in 2002 and $1.9 million to the Bush campaign. The forestry industry gave $3.2 million to Republicans in 2002 and nearly $300,000 to Bush's campaign. The administration's environmental policies can be grouped into five categories: changing fundamental laws; rolling back Clinton administration policies; making new proposals; altering the rules governing the use of federal lands; and coping with global warming. A review of its record in each category follows. CORNERSTONE ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS In late November, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency permitted more than 17,000 old coal-fired utilities, oil refineries and other factories to expand or renovate without installing pollution-control equipment, as the agency previously had required. Another major change - an attempt to thin fire-prone forests and to speed construction of highway and airport projects - would weaken the 1969 law that requires the government to file environmental-impact statements before such projects can proceed. That proposal requires congressional approval. Earlier this month, the administration issued rules that would remove up to 20 million acres of isolated wetlands from federal protection under the Clean Water Act. The EPA also rewrote the definition of what legally can be dumped in waterways as "fill" material to include waste from mines and other sources. A federal judge called that decision "an obvious perversity" of the 1972 Clean Water Act. REPEALING CLINTON RULES Toward the end of its eight years in power, the Clinton administration issued a flurry of environmental regulations that some considered booby traps for Bush. The new president postponed, repealed or reduced many of these regulations. Clinton's last-minute maneuvers helped produce the Bush administration's first environmental stumble. After EPA Administrator Christie Whitman halted a Clinton rule reducing the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water, a public uproar forced her to reinstate it. Another Clinton rule called for phasing out snowmobile use in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, starting this winter. The Bush administration canceled that rule, proposing instead to allow up to 1,100 snowmobiles a day in both parks combined. On an average day, about 840 snowmobiles total thunder through the parks, and the number reaches 1,650 on busy weekends. The Bush administration also canceled a Clinton rule preventing companies that cause "significant irreparable harm" from mining any more public land. The Bush Department of Energy replaced a Clinton rule requiring new air conditioners to be 30 percent more efficient with one that requires only 20 percent improvement. TAKING THE INITIATIVE The administration has proposed several initiatives that promise to clean the environment in nontraditional ways. Most dramatic is the Clear Skies proposal to cut emissions from all power plants by 70 percent by 2018. Mimicking a pollution credit trading system that cut acid rain in the 1990s, the president's plan would cap overall emissions and allow more efficient utilities to trade rights to pollute with less efficient ones, so long as the cap is met. The administration also greatly increased funding to clean up industrial "brownfields," or waste sites in urban areas, and proposed a modest improvement in gas mileage standards for sport utility vehicles, a move environmentalists criticized as too little but which was the first hike in fuel economy standards since 1975. In addition, Bush's EPA has taken modest steps to reduce soot emissions from diesel engines, which experts say is probably the nation's biggest air-pollution problem. FEDERAL LAND USE The president's energy policy emphasizes drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands. Congress has not approved the most-noted proposal, for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling and prospecting for minerals increased dramatically in 2001 on federal land in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Montana. Oil rigs towered over the outskirts of national parks such as Canyonlands and Arches in Utah. In addition, while the administration bought out an oil company's leases to prevent it from drilling off Florida's coast, it still favors drilling for oil off California's shores. Other initiatives have made it easier for the mining industry to get minerals from federal lands and for the timber industry to take trees from federal forests. GLOBAL WARMING The administration's most controversial decision - abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, which would require the United States to reduce the "greenhouse gas" emissions that contribute to global warming - was more symbolic than substantive. The Senate had rejected the treaty 97-0 in a nonbinding resolution in 1997, so it was already dead. In a related step with greater consequences, Bush reneged on a campaign pledge to reduce power plant emissions of carbon dioxide and three other pollutants. Carbon dioxide is the leading cause of global warming. The administration has opposed Senate proposals to regulate carbon dioxide, including a new bipartisan one sponsored by his political rivals Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Instead, the Bush administration has promoted voluntary efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and has supplied money for research and technology. Most environmental groups and scientists call this a do-nothing approach; Bush's supporters say it avoids penalizing the U.S. economy. RESULTS It will take years to determine whether the president's policies result in cleaner air, land and water. Early indicators showed an increase in polluted waterways from 2000 to 2001, though it could be due to better monitoring. Smog violations rose slightly from 2000 to 2001, then increased by more than 30 percent in 2002. The increases in smog are partly due to abnormally warm weather. In 2001, the United States reduced its emissions of gases that lead to global warming for the first time in a decade. The Energy Department officials attributed the reduction to the sluggish economy.
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