Did You Know?

Rules Are for Fools
The Bush Administration’s Attack on Environmental Laws

• In September 2001, John Graham, who heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, invited a dozen industry lobbyists to tell him which regulations they’d like scuttled. "This was hush-hush, behind-closed-doors stuff," one of the lobbyists recalled afterwards.

• In the first year of the Bush administration, the EPA referred 80 percent fewer violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution than it had a year earlier. In that period, the EPA also pursued half as many violations of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

• In March, EPA administrator Christie Whitman announced that her agency was halving the number of Superfund sites scheduled for cleanup. At the same time, her boss’s 2003 budget would shift the funding for cleaning up the nation’s most polluted industrial sites from industry to taxpayers.

• The Defense Department is promoting legislation to exempt the military from complying with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Noise Control Act, the Superfund program, and many other environmental laws. The military is already exempted from most of these regulations during times of war and national emergencies.

• A recent study of Justice Department actions commissioned by New York senator Charles Schumer (D) concluded that under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the department has failed to vigorously defend environmental laws when they are challenged by industry, often settling cases instead of going to court. Laws neglected by Justice include the "roadless rule" forest protections, a Yellowstone snowmobile ban, mining limitations, endangered-species protections, and water rights.

• Ten days after September 11, John Studt, chief of the Army Corps of Engineers regulatory branch, e-mailed his staff urging them to do their patriotic duty by granting permits to pave over wetlands.