12/17/04 WASHINGTON — Bush Administration to Allow Continued Use of Ozone-Depleting Pesticide The Bush administration announced new rules to allow U.S. farmers who grow tomatoes, strawberries and other crops to continue using methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting pesticide that had been scheduled to be phased out worldwide next year. (source: Associated Press)

12/13/04 Bush Allows harvest of larger, older trees in Northern California They’re just over the lip of a rutted dirt road and down a precipitous slope: scores of conifers scattered along a creek, all slashed with blue paint. They differ from the trees comprising the surrounding forest in that they’re bigger – much bigger, some exceeding 3 feet in diameter. In fact, they’re the last truly large trees in this part of the Salmon River basin. And the blue paint means they’ll be cut soon.

This is the Meteor timber sale, one of a series of controversial timber sales authorized by the Bush Administration for the Klamath, Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity and Mendocino national forests, all in northwest California. Biologists consider the northwest forests one of the richest terrestrial ecosystems in the hemisphere. (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

November 2004

11/9/04 Nuclear Power Industry Sees Signs of a U.S. Revival Buoyed by the re-election of President Bush, whose administration has pushed to expand nuclear power as part of its national energy plan, the nuclear power industry is laying the groundwork to build new plants in the U.S. for the first time in more than two decades. While opposition to new plants is likely to be fierce, the companies and Energy Department hope to win approval for construction from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as early as 2009. (source: Wall Street Journal)

11/3/04 Bush vows to try to win ok for oil drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Gwich’in Indian Nation appeals for help to stop the drilling and to protect the huge caribou herd and this beautiful wilderness from destruction.

October 2004

10/28/04 FBI Investigating Halliburton No-Bid Contract The FBI has begun investigating whether the Defense Department improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices. The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company. (source: AP)

10/27/04 Bush’s EPA accepts $2 million from chemical industry The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to accept $2 million from the American Chemistry Council to help fund a study exploring the impact of pesticides and household chemicals on young children, prompting an outcry from environmentalists. (source: Washington Post)

10/1/04 Inspector General Says EPA Rule Aids Polluters In a rebuke of the Bush administration, the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that legal actions against major polluters had stalled because of the agency’s decision to revise rules governing emissions at older coal-fired power plants. The inspector general, Nikki L. Tinsley, took direct aim at the administration’s revision of the New Source Review rule, one of the administration’s most prominent – and vilified – environmental initiatives, saying that it makes it easier for power plant operators to postpone or avoid adding technologies that reduce polluting emissions. (source: New York Times)

August 2004

8/5/04 More words of (no) wisdom from Bush: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.

July 2004

7/22/04 Halliburton bill to U.S. questioned: Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton Co. charged the government $2.68 per gallon to import gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq, while a U.S. government agency did the same job for $1.57 a gallon. Halliburton's oil deliveries cost taxpayers an extra $166.5 million. Halliburton received the noncompetitive oil delivery work contract in May 2003. (source: Associated Press)

7/13/04 Bush Seeks Shift in Logging Rules The Bush Administration proposed scuttling a Clinto-era rule that put nearly 60 million acres of national forest largely off limits to logging, mining or other development in favor of a new system that would leave it to governors to seek greater - or fewer - strictures on road construction in forests.

Environmental groups reacted with disappointment and outrage to the announcement.

7/9/04 Bush's Military Records Destroyed! Military payroll records that could have more fully documented President Bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air National Guard in the Vietnam war era were inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.

In a letter responding to a freedom of information request by The Associated Press, the Defense Department said that microfilm containing the pertinent National Guard payroll records was damaged and could not be salvaged. The damaged material included payroll records for the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972.

"President Bush's payroll records for those two quarters were among the records destroyed," wrote C.Y. Talbott, of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information and Security Review section. "Searches for back-up paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful." (source: AP)

June 2004

6/24/04 WASHINGTON ­ Toxic chemical releases rise five percent - Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002, marking only the second such increase reported by the Environmental Protection Agency in nearly two decades, and the first since 1997. (source: Associated Press)

6/16/04 WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate backs Bush on new nuclear weapons The U.S. Senate Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race.

Voting 55-42, the Senate defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to slash $36.6 million to study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be used to destroy underground facilities as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Democrats said just considering the new weapons takes nuclear warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable and encourages adversaries of the United States to develop such weapons.

"The specter of nuclear war looms even larger with the ominous statements of senior officials in the Bush administration that they in fact consider these new weapons more 'usable,"' said Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the smaller weapons still would kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people and leave vast areas uninhabitable for years to come.

Senator Feinstein and other Democrats also said pursuing such weapons would undermine U.S. efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons among other countries. "This country ought to be leading in exactly the other direction," said Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. (source: Reuters)

May 2004

5/27/04 WASHINGTON - Eco Rules May Ease In Oil Pinch With pump prices soaring, the Bush administration is considering easing environmental regulations and the permit process for new and expanding refineries to lift gasoline production, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said.

Evans told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that the Bush administration is prepared to "take all the steps we can" to increase supplies. Options under consideration, he said, include easing environmental requirements to use different gasoline blends for to reduce air pollution and easing the permit process for building new refineries or expanding old ones.

Environmentalists have resisted those moves, and may see Evans' proposal as using the rise in gas prices to achieve policy changes the administration sought long before the current oil squeeze.

In another development in federal environmental policy, the Army has told base commanders to forego some environmental programs in order to save money for the war on terrorism. (source: story by CBS/AP)

April 2004

4/5/04 WASHINGTON - White House Minimized the Risks of Mercury in Proposed Rules, Scientists Say While working with Environmental Protection Agency officials to write regulations for coal-fired power plants over several recent months, White House staff members played down the toxic effects of mercury, hundreds of pages of documents and e-mail messages show. (source: New York Times)

March 2004

3/31/04 237 Specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice in 125 separate public appearances: See the database posted by Congressman Waxman at www.reform.house.gov/min

February 2004

2/24/04 U.S. Opens Fraud Probe of Halliburton Washington - Pentagon officials said that they have opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton, the giant Texas oil-services concern, in an inquiry that will examine the "potential overpricing" of fuel taken into Iraq by one of the company's subcontractors. Halliburton is the company tied to Vice-President Dick Cheney. (source: New York Times)

2/19/04 Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad. The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a 38-page report accusing the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases. "Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systemically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies." The letter was signed by luminaries from an array of disciplines. Among the Nobel winners are David Baltimore and Harold Varmus, both biomedical researchers, and Leon M. Lederman, Norman F. Ramsey and Steven Weinberg, who are physicists. According to the report, the Bush administration has misrepresented scientific consensus on global warming, censored at least one report on climate change, manipulated scientific findings on the emissions of mercury from power plants and suppressed information on condom use. The report asserts that the administration also allowed industries with conflicts of interest to influence technical advisory committees, disbanded for political reasons one panel on arms control and subjected other prospective members of scientific panels to political litmus tests. Dr. Sidney Drell, an emeritus professor of physics at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who was not a signatory to the statement, said, "I am concerned that the scientific advice coming into this administration seems to me very narrow." Dr. Drell has advised the government on issues of national security for some 40 years and has served in Democratic and Republican administrations, including those of Presidents Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson. "The input from individuals whose views are not in the main line of their policy don't seem to be sought or welcomed," he said. (source: New York Times)

2/6/04 Bush nominates former mining and cattle lobbyist for Ninth Circuit appeals court Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee took up Bush's nomination of William G. Myers III, longtime lobbyist for ranching and mining interests, to a seat on the federal appeals court that covers nine Western states. Myers' speeches often used the strong language of large ranchers and other Western landowners who maintain that they suffer oppression at the hands of federal environmental regulators. Myers once said that environmental regulations were akin to King George's tyranny of the American colonies. As the Interior Department's chief lawyer, his current post, Myers once drafted a ruling that upheld a regulatory change allowing a foreign-owned gold mine on American Indian land in California. A federal judge later ruled that Myers' opinion misconstrued the "clear mandate" of federal law. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has had numerous cases involving the environment and property rights and has long been a target of conservative critics. (source: New York Times)

2/5/04 Justice Department: Did Cheney's Halliburton bribe for Nigerian natural gas project? The Justice Department is looking into allegations that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. was involved in the payment of $180 million in bribes to win a contract for a natural gas project in Nigeria. The $4 billion Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Plant was built in the 1990's by a consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root during a time when Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton. The Justice Department and the SEC are reviewing the allegations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Halliburton is already under fire for its handling of contracts related to the war in Iraq. (source: Associated Press)

January 2004

1/23/04 Bush Administration to open North Slope area of Alaska to drilling. Interior Slope to oil and gas development. Some of the drilling could occur in areas important for migratory birds, whales and wildlife. The area is to the west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where President Bush wants to open a 1.5 million-acre coastal plain to drilling as one of his top energy priorities. The Senate has rejected drilling there.

Environmentalists say the management plan threatens the health of Arctic tundra, ponds, and lakes that are home to wildlife and migratory birds and provide a vital subsistence hunting and fishing ground for native Alaskans.Secretary Gale Norton agreed to a plan for opening most of an 8.8 million-acre swath of Alaska's North. (source: AP)

2003

December 2003

12/24/03 Bush opens part of Alaskan forest to loggers WASHINGTON -- Reversing a Clinton-era policy, the Bush administration on Tuesday opened 300,000 more acres of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest, to possible logging or other development.

Shown is a 1990 photo of the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. The patches of bare land show where clear-cutting has occurred. (source: Associated Press)

12/3/03 Bush Administration Proposes Easing Rules on Mercury Emissions The Bush Administration is proposing that mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants should not be regulated in the same way as some of the most toxic air pollutants, reversing a stance on air pollution control taken by the Clinton Administration in 2000.

The change in planned regulations for mercury emissions from power plants is the first big policy decision by Michael O. Leavitt,who took over as the EPA's administrator last month.

The agency is suggesting that mercury emissions be removed from the most stringent regulations of the Clean Air Act that have been used to limit the most toxic air pollutants. Mercury, a known neurotoxin, accumulates in the environment and builds up in the tissue of fish and the species, including humans,that eat them. It is considered particularly hazardous for pregnant women because of the developmental effects on fetuses.

In November, the EPA's chief of enforcement told his staff that the agency would stop pursuing Clean Air Act enforcement cases against coal-burning plants. (source: New York Times story by Jennifer Lee)

November 2003

11/6/03 Bush's EPA drops probes of polluting plants; move prompted by revision of Clean Air Act The Bush administration has dropped enforcement actions against dozens of coal-fired power plants that were under investigation for violating the Clean Air Act and allegedly spewing thousands of tons of illegal pollution into the air, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday.

The Bush administration had said it would vigorously pursue the enforcement actions, which were launched by the Clinton administration.

However, the Bush administration recently eased a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires companies to install modern pollution controls when they build new plants or expand or modernize old ones. Under the new policy, the alleged release of pollution that sparked the enforcement would be legal.

In another change of environmental safeguards, Bush administration officials have drafted a rule that would significantly narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, stripping many wetlands and streams of federal pollution controls and making them available to be filled for commercial development.

The rule, spelled out in an internal document says that Clean Water Act protection would no longer be provided to "ephemeral washes or streams" that do not have groundwater as a source. Streams that flow for less than six months a year would also lose protection. The impact would be greater in California and other parts of the arid West, where many streams flow only seasonally or after rain or snow melts.

11/6/03 Congress caves in to Bush on new nuclear weapon - - House and Senate negotiators agreed Wednesday to give President Bush most of the money he had sought to study new types of nuclear weapons, as critics warned the move could spark a new nuclear arms race.

The funds were approved as part of a $27.3 billion bill funding energy and water programs next year, which also includes spending for a controversial nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert that opponents have vowed to block. (source: Reuters)

October 2003

10/31/03 Bush Administration Opens Up Oil and Gas Drilling In Utah Wilderness Areas - U.S. government to auction off oil and gas leases in scenic parts of Utah - The Bush administration will allow oil and gas drilling on land in the state of Utah once reviewed for possible wilderness protection, and environmentalists said Thursday that other areas may follow. In a lease sale next month, the Bureau of Land Management will auction rights to drill for oil and gas on more than 6,800 hectares (17,000 acres), mostly in the Book Cliffs region of eastern Utah, an area that a 1999 review under the Clinton administration had determined could warrant wilderness designation. (source: Associated Press)

10/17/03 EPA won't restrict sludge fertilizer, despite possible cancer-causing dioxins Farmers and others who use sewage sludge as fertilizer will not face government restrictions over the possible cancer-causing dioxins it may contain.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it would not regulate dioxins in land-applied sludge because it believes there to be minimal danger from dioxins, a class of organic chemicals that the agency's studies have shown pose a possible cancer risk in humans.

"The risk of new cancer cases from this source is small, is substantially smaller than other chemicals we regulate," said Geoffrey Grubbs, who heads the EPA Office of Water's science and technology programs. "We just do not see a basis or justification for further regulation of this particular set of contaminants in sludge." (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

10/11/03 Bush Administration is proposing far reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture or import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

10/11/03 Bush's Interior Department has overturned a Clinton administration opinion that reduced the amount of land for waste from mining operations, rolling back another pro-environment decision made under Bush's predecessor. (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

September 2003

9/15/03 IT IS NOW APPARENT that the Bush administration misled the public about the health dangers posed by the plume rising from New York's World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Within days of the explosions that killed nearly 3,000 people, the White House jeopardized thousands more by pressuring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conceal the truth about the dangerous air quality. Professor emeritus Thomas Cahill led a UC Davis study of the site in the weeks after the attacks at the request of the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Samples found the air there polluted with concrete dust, fine metals, glass particles, asbestos and other fibers that can be sucked into the lungs and bloodstream. Nearly a year after the attack, 78 percent of the 3,500 on-site workers examined had lung, ear, nose and throat problems. Now medical experts worry that others among the 40,000 who aided in the recovery and cleanup may face severe, long-term health consequences. "I think the EPA should have known . . . (it) had its own reports saying it could be dangerous," said Cahill. But, even without empirical data, the air smelled and tasted bad. Yet the EPA assured the public the air posed no health risk, though it lacked information to make such a determination. Even the agency's inspector general now calls those assurances misleading. Rightly, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is blocking the appointment of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt as the new EPA administrator until the White House takes responsibility for ordering the EPA to abandon its mission of protecting the public. Sadly, the White House is eroding credibility, increasing suspicion that it's willing to manufacture and manipulate information -- even if it means risking the health of its own citizens. (source: SF Chronicle, 15 September 2003)

9/10/03 WASHINGTON - Bush plan to simplify logging approval on track. Managers of the nation's 155 national forests are getting more leeway to approve logging and other commercial projects with less formal environmental review under a Bush administration plan. Environmentalists accused the administration of bowing to the timber and paper industries and weakening the standards for protecting endangered or threatened species. The plan would overhaul application of the landmark 1976 National Forest Management Act. The final rules would leave intact some of the most controversial proposals from an earlier version released in November. Like that version, the final plan would give regional managers of the Forest Service more discretion to approve logging, drilling and mining operations without having to conduct formal scientific investigations known as environmental impact statements. Officials argued that the plan maintains and even strengthens environmental protections, while increasing flexibility for forest managers. But environmentalists denounced the proposal as a giveaway to business interests, which want to increase commercial activity in national forests. "President Bush has repeatedly shown that he doesn't think science should play much of a role in the environmental policies of his administration. The revised forest-planning regulations cut out scientific assessment to meet the needs of timber, oil and gas industries," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, an advocacy group. Industry groups have applauded the regulations, saying the administration is returning common sense to forest planning. (source: Oakland Tribune, 10 September 2003)

9/3/03 Washington -- The Bush administration has quietly allowed the sale of properties contaminated with PCBs, reversing a 25-year-old policy aimed at protecting people from exposure to the highly toxic chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency said the change would speed the redevelopment, and possibly even the cleanup, of former military installations and other hazardous sites. Environmental activists and congressional Democrats warned that it removed an important incentive to clean contaminated properties and could even result in some properties' being redeveloped while still tainted. Under the old rules, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the federal government in effect oversaw the transfer of PCB-contaminated properties because the properties could not be sold until the seller proved that the PCBs were gone. Now, she warned, that protection seemed to be lost. "I can't believe they would ease the rules around one of the most persistent and dangerous chemicals known to mankind," Boxer said. "This administration is really waging war against our health." PCBs were used for decades in electronic equipment, paint, dyes and many other industrial and commercial products. Congress considered them so dangerous to humans that they were the only chemical substances specifically banned as part of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, or Superfund act. (source: SF Chronicle, 9 September 2003)

August 2003

8/27/03 WASHINGTON - In one of its most far-reaching environmental actions, the Bush administration today adopted a final rule that will allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install costly new anti-pollution devices. The measure covers 17,000 power plants, refineries, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants and other industrial facilities. The new rule, for which industries have lobbied the Bush administration for two years, could save them billions of dollars in costs.

Explaining their rationale for the rule, administration officials said it would clarify an otherwise subjective standard and allow plants to modernize more easily, thus leading to greater efficiencies. But critics said that it rolled back an important section of the landmark Clean Air Act and would lead to significantly more pollution. Several environmental organizations and states attorney generals vowed to take the Environmental Protection Agency to court to try to stop it from taking effect. The rule allows industrial facilities to avoid installing pollution-control devices when they replace equipment - even if the upgrade increases pollution - as long as the cost of the replacement is less than 20 percent of the cost of essential production equipment. That is, if a plant wanted to replace a boiler, as long as that boiler cost less than 20 percent of the cost of the entire production unit - the boiler, turbine, generator and other parts that convert coal into electricity - it would not have to install pollution controls. (source: New York Times)

8/8/03 Bush Orders Speed-up of energy extraction in the west The Bush Administration directed government land managers to REMOVE environmental and procedural obstacles that are slowing development of oil and gas resources in several areas of the West with a high potential for energy production.

Oil industry representatives applauded the policy changes, which they say will streamline the bureaucracy involved in energy production on federal lands.

But environmental groups accused the Bush administration of sacrificing environmental quality in its effort to boost energy production in government-managed areas. The new policies, which take effect immediately and do not require congressional approval, are the latest in a series of administrative initiatives aimed at increasing oil and gas production on federal lands.

The policies are directed at areas managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management in Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, Wyoming's Powder River and Green River basins, Utah's Uinta Basin, Colorado's Piceance Basin and New Mexico's San Juan Basin.

The new policies direct land managers to allow companies to make up for environmental damage in the areas with the highest energy potential by improving the environment elsewhere.

The new policies also give land managers the option to review existing leases for oil and gas drilling and REDUCE existing requirements to protect the environment. (excerpt from Los Angeles Times)

July 2003

7/3/03 WASHINGTON - Judge Voids Federal Cleanup Plan for Wastes at Bomb Plants The Energy Department's plan for cutting billions of dollars and several years off the bomb-waste cleanup at three government nuclear reservations is illegal, a federal judge has ruled, because it would leave some of the wastes in shallow burial despite Congress's prescription that they can be safely disposed of only in a deep "geologic" repository. The radioactive wastes are in tanks, many already rusting, at a reservation in Hanford, Wash., another near Aiken, S.C., and a third in Idaho.

7/1/03 Washington -- EPA holding back data on clean air bill; Senate plan challenges Bush's proposals The Environmental Protection Agency for months has withheld key findings of its analysis showing that a Senate plan to combat air pollution would be more effective in reducing harmful pollutants -- and only marginally more expensive -- than would President Bush's Clear Skies initiative for power plant emissions.

The Clear Skies proposal is designed to reduce power plant emissions over the next 20 years. A centerpiece of Bush's environmental policy, its passage could burnish his 2004 re-election credentials. But the president's plan does not address carbon dioxide emissions, which many scientists consider an important greenhouse gas that may contribute to the Earth's warming.

Bush's stand has drawn sharp criticism on several fronts, and a bipartisan group of senators has proposed an alternative bill that would limit carbon dioxide emissions. Unreleased information from an EPA internal analysis concludes that the competing bill would provide health benefits substantially superior to those envisioned under Clear Skies.

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, has a carbon dioxide-reduction plan that can be carried out at "negligible" cost to industry. The presentation also said Carper's bill by 2020 would result in 17, 800 fewer premature deaths from power plant air pollution than would Clear Skies. That would save $140 billion per year in health benefits -- about $50 billion more than Clear Skies. (Excerpted from story by Guy Gugliotta, Eric Pianin, Washington Post)

June 2003

6/19/03 Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.

The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.

The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.

Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion. (source: New York Times)

May 2003

5/21/03 WASHINGTON - Outgoing EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman has left a legacy of polluted water, dirty air and unhealthy communities. As US EPA administrator Christie Whitman announced her resignation, the truth is that her agency for promoted the weakening of critical health and environmental protections.

Whitman's credibility had been damaged beyond repair by the administration's decision to block tougher standards for arsenic in drinking water and to abandon the Kyoto global warming agreement.

Environmental groups have subsequently criticized Whitman's agency for dismantling an array of longstanding environmental laws. During the past two years, EPA has signed off on a rule allowing polluters to dump industrial waste into waterways and proposed a Clean Air Act change that would allow the nation's dirtiest power plants to expand. The agency has also cut the number of toxic cleanups in half and dramatically reduced its enforcement of pollution control laws, and is currently considering a Clean Water Act change that would remove 60 percent of streams from protection under the law. (source: www.commondreams.org, May 21, 2003)

5/21/03 EPA Chief Quits, Polluters Influence to Grow Even More Governor Christine Todd Whitman stepped down as head of the Environmental Protection Agency today, praising President Bush for his commitment to "innovative, effective" environmental policies in her farewell note. But rumor has it that Mrs. Whitman may have finally had enough of the stranglehold that the White House and its allies in the energy lobby have placed on the EPA. The White House has scheduled a meeting for later this month to decide how much further it will go to weaken Clean Air laws that apply to power plants and refineries. The EPA has proposed rules that would allow these industries to upgrade old units and increase emissions without installing modern pollution controls. (source: Eric V. Schaeffer/www.tompaine.com, see complete article)

5/20/03 EPA Administrator Christie Whitman resigns - will Bush appoint someone even worse? Whitman was considered a "moderate" by many, although she stated she had no disputes with President Bush on his (anti) environmental policies. It is now feared that Bush will appoint a boldly pro-industry, pro-polluter advocate to the nation's top environmental position.

5/4/03 NY Times Editorial - The End Of Wilderness From the beginning, President Bush has been far more interested in exploiting the public lands for commercial purposes than in protecting their environmental values. On matters ranging from snowmobiles in Yellowstone to roadless areas in the national forests, his administration has tried steadily to chip away at safeguards put in place by the Clinton administration - largely in an effort to help the oil, gas, timber and mining industries, and often in cavalier disregard for environmental reviews mandated by law. Now comes another devastating blow: The revelation that his Department of the Interior is no longer interested in recommending any of the millions of acres under its jurisdiction for permanent wilderness protection. Complete editorial

April 2003

4/24/03 US back in nuclear bomb-making business The United States says it has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has resumed production of plutonium parts for bombs. The Energy Department's announcement on Tuesday marks a symbolic and operational milestone in rebuilding America's nuclear weapons complex, which began a long retrenchment in the late 1980s as the Cold War ended and the toll of environmental damage from bomb production became known. Under a Bush Administration plan, the Energy Department will begin limited production of plutonium parts for the country's stockpile of nuclear weapons and begin laying plans for a new factory that could produce parts for hundreds of weapons a year. The Energy Department's previous Rocky Flats site in Colorado was shut down after serious violations of environmental laws and the FBI raided the plant. (source: Los Angeles Times)

4/12/03 WASHINGTON - The Interior Department wants to limit Bureau of Land Management lands eligible for wilderness protection to 23 million acres nationwide, a figure environmental groups say leaves millions of acres vulnerable to development. The department told Congress on Friday that it intended to halt all reviews of its Western land holdings for new wilderness protection and to withdraw that protected status from about three million acres in Utah. Suspending wilderness reviews would limit the amount of land held by the bureau eligible for wilderness protection at 22.8 million acres. Congress could order additional areas protected. (source: New York Times)

4/3/03 Houston, Texas - Cheney's "ex" firm Halliburton Rocked By Asbestos Claims, Close To Settling Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) today said it is close to an agreement in principle with plaintiffs' attorneys representing more than 300,000 claimants that will resolve all of the asbestos-related personal injury claims against the company. Company officials stated that the transaction is not complete yet and if it is achieved it would still be subject to financing, board approval, and court approval, none of which can be assured. However, the company outlined tentative terms including saying it would involve as much as $2.8 billion in cash payments and up to 60 million shares of Halliburton common stock. (source: Halliburton website)

4/3/03 SF Chronicle Editorial: At war with the environment? For decades, the military has heeded federal pollution and wildlife laws on 25 million acres of bases, ports and airfields. The admirals and generals grudgingly agreed to steps such as cleaning up firing ranges or avoiding tank maneuvers in bird-nesting areas.

But the Defense Department now wants to use the Iraq war to exempt itself from these environmental rules. At stake are endangered species protections, cleanups of toxic rocket fuel, ocean tests that may jeopardize marine mammals, clean air laws and other hazardous waste regulations. It's a new form of shock and awe, aimed at the outdoors. Complete text...

March 2003

3/7/03 Houston - Halliburton Wins Contract For Iraq Oil Firefighting A Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) has won the contract to oversee any firefighting operations at Iraqi oilfields after any U.S.-led invasion, a Defense Department source said on Thursday.

KBR was widely viewed by many in the oilfield services industry as the likely candidate to oversee firefighting in Iraq's oilfields. Halliburton does extensive logistic support work for the U.S. military.

Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000. A possible beneficiary of Thursday's deal is oilwell firefighting company Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc., with which Halliburton has had an alliance since 1995.

A Halliburton spokeswoman declined comment and referred all questions to the Defense Department. (source: Reuters)

3/5/03 Washington - Military Seeks Exemptions on Harming Environment The Defense Department is asking for broad exemptions from environmental regulations in an expanded version of a bill that was defeated last year in the Senate.

The proposed legislation, introduced today by the White House, would give the military more discretion in activities that affect marine mammals and endangered species. In particular, the military is asking for exemptions from sections from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which officials said would give needed flexibility to sonar and underwater bombing exercises.

In contrast, the last version of the bill gave limited exemptions for small numbers of marine mammals in specified regions. Environment groups have criticized military sonar exercises over the last several years for beaching whales, in a few cases because of burst eardrums.

The Pentagon also wants to override current regulations that govern the disposal of hazardous waste and the cleanup of contaminated sites. Specifically, the bill excludes explosives and munitions from the solid waste that is governed by environmental regulations if it is hazardous. (source: New York Times story by Jennifer Lee)

February 2003

2/14/03 GOP plan would revive use of nuclear arms A group of House Republicans proposed a fundamental shift in America's nuclear weapons strategy on Thursday, saying the GOP would push for the design and manufacture of a new generation of warheads, a more aggressive policy on their use and steps that would make it easier to resume nuclear testing.

The group of 23 lawmakers, as members of the policy committee that helps set the House legislative agenda, specifically called for the repeal of a decade-old law that prohibits the development of smaller, low-yield weapons of less than 5 kilotons.

The panel, known as the House Policy Committee, also urged that the U.S. government be allowed to initiate pre-emptive nuclear attacks against hostile nations with caches of biological or chemical weapons. It called upon the government to rebuild industrial sites for manufacturing key nuclear components and to speed up preparations for a resumption of underground testing after a 10-year moratorium.

Word that Republicans were considering such a fundamental change in nuclear policy -- as reported by The Chronicle on Wednesday -- has prompted angry opposition from some Democratic lawmakers and nuclear experts who warn that introducing so-called "low-yield" weapons would have dangerous international repercussions.

This proposal, which has been mentioned by Bush administration officials previously, has been harshly criticized by some lawmakers.

The 'Unthinkable' In a letter to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote "a first use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. should be unthinkable . . . and responding to a nonnuclear attack with nuclear weapons would violate the principle of proportionate response that has been a central tenet of just war and U.S. military tradition since the birth of our nation."

Feinstein added that such a "provocative posture . . . may well provoke the very nuclear proliferation activities we seek to prevent." (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

2/4/03 Bush Administration Acts to OK More Logging in Sierra Nevada Forests The Bush Administration is acting to overturn a Clinton-era management plan for the 11 national forests of the Sierra Nevada, replacing the conservation-based approach with one that would significantly accelerate logging. The possible torpedoing of the Sierra Nevada Framework Plan was revealed in a document leaked to environmental organizations by a "concerned inside source." (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

January 2003

1/31/03 Decrease in Polluters' Penalties Civil and criminal penalties for breaking federal environmental laws have dropped significantly since President Bush took office, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. Civil penalties fell by nearly half to $55 million, according to the EPA data, and criminal penalties dropped by more than one-third to $62 million. Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who released the data without EPA's consent, said "The numnbers show an extremely disturbing trend towards weaker enforcement over the last two years." (source: San Francisco Chronicle)

1/30/03 Bush Administration Seeks Waivers on International Pesticide Ban According to a report in the New York Times, the Bush administration is moving to help industries keep using methyl bromide, a pesticide that is set to be banned under an international agreement to restore the Earth's protective ozone layer, several government officials say. Methyl bromide is a toxic gas that breaks down in the atmosphere, and the bromine it contains attacks ozone molecules, which shield the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays.

1/18/03 U.S. May Open Oil Reserve in Alaska to Development The Bush administration today proposed opening up part of the nation's largest remaining block of unprotected public land to oil and gas development. The proposal affects nearly nine million acres of the Alaska North Slope in the government's National Petroleum Reserve. Home to distinctive wildlife and tundra, the land is near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which the administration still hopes to win the necessary Congressional approval to open up to oil drilling. (sour