Great Lakes Article:

Washington, D.C. - Nine experts from a range of leading environmental organizations today expressed alarm at the course charted so far by the Bush Administration, and voiced serious doubts that it will improve during the next two years. Speaking at a press breakfast arranged by Environmental Media Services, the experts expressed a litany of concerns in four key areas that they see under serious threat: water, air, forests and energy resources.

Presenting an overview of the situation, NRDC's director of advocacy, Greg Wetstone, declared that the Bush administration has mounted "an unprecedented challenge to our landmark environmental laws-a challenge more far-reaching and destructive than anything preceding administrations have done." Trends that were already evident, he said, have recently become much more pronounced, despite their being "all broadly out of step with the overwhelming consensus of the American public in favor of environmental protections."

Especially disturbing, Wetstone noted, is the stealth with which most of the Bush administration's attacks are being delivered: "New rules and policies are quietly issued late on Friday afternoons, in the name of 'streamlining' and 'efficiency,' which are code words for destruction." The real aim, said Wetstone, is to "help special interests at the cost of our communities, public health and the environment."

In reviewing the four key areas of concern, speakers made the following principal points:

CLEAN WATER
An Administration proposal expected soon, said Julie Sibbing, wetlands legislation representative of the National Wildlife Federation, "will amount to a water polluter's payback. It will eliminate entire categories of waters-as many as 60 percent of them, including potentially more than 30 percent of our wetlands -- from protection under the Clean Water Act."

Sibbing called the Bush effort "an outrageous proposal that will result in huge degradation." Most threatened: "Streams that do not flow year-round, as more than half don't."

"No previous President has proposed changes of this magnitude," added Joan Mulhern, senior legislative council at Earthjustice. "This will eliminate federal protections entirely from the vast majority of the nation's waters. For example, it will allow developers to fill in bodies of water and change their course, and also let polluters put all sorts of discharges into them."

CLEAN AIR
"The assault on clean air has been literally breathtaking." That was the black-humored summary given by John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air Program. "More than 175 million Americans live in areas where the air is so smoggy it violates national health standards. The Bush administration's assaults on the Clean Air Act will only make those air pollution problems worse."

"With final rule changes on November 22," Walke continued, "the Bush administration weakened basic clean air protections, thereby allowing over 17,000 industrial polluters nationwide to increase air pollution without cleaning up." State attorneys general, as well as environmental groups, have announced their intention to take legal action against the rollback.

Expanding the theme of Bush stealth maneuvers, Walke added that "on the same day, EPA proposed 10 air toxics rulemakings that represent the most radical retreat ever from air toxics protections and requirements of the Clean Air Act. These proposals rest on shocking and unfounded policies holding that cancer-causing toxics pose trivial or no concern for regulation in the view of the Bush administration."

FORESTS
Bush attacks on the nation's 191 million acres of forests "started the day his administration took office and have continued ever since," said Robert Dewey, vice president of Defenders of Wildlife. Among them: "The appointment of former timber industry executive and lobbyist, Mark Rey, to oversee forest protection," and a November 26 proposal that would give local supervisors more leeway in various commercial activities without regard to environmental impact statements. It would also weaken both public participation requirements and the role of impartial science.

Dewey added that two recent administration proposals for controlling fires in the national forests will in fact weaken the protections accorded them.

ENERGY
In the succinct appraisal of Debbie Sease, legislative director of the Sierra Club, "This administration has utterly failed to develop a policy that will provide an energy future less dependent on oil and that protects the environment." The prospects for improvement in the near term, she indicated, are at best uncertain: "The only question is whether we can stop really bad energy policies from being put into place."

In reply to questions from journalists at the breakfast, speakers made these additional points:

• (Wetstone) The best prospect for reversing the Bush administration course lies in the fact that "the next election will be Presidential, where we will have more opportunities to get these issues addressed," and that the pro-environmental majority of Americans will make evident their displeasure with what the Administration is doing.

• The change in Senate leadership has left key committees in anti-environmental hands: James Inhofe of Oklahoma, "who has managed to vote with us zero percent of the time" (Wetstone), will chair the Environment and Public Works Committee; Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee; Larry Craig of Idaho, the subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests; and Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the Budget Committee.

• Damage to American industries, as well as America's image, is "potentially huge" (Wetstone) if other nations move far ahead of the U.S. in environmental protections. The first industries affected, added Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, will be America's clean energy industries themselves. Meyer cited "a lot of frustration within industry in general, including major multi-nationals, bubbling up" over the need to address such issues as global warming. "The question," he said, "is whether it will become an important factor before the 2004 elections."