A Round-Up of Bush’s Midnight Regulations on the Environment

In a January 6th, 2009 press conference on conservation and the environment, Bush declared, “The new steps I’ve announced today are the capstone of an eight-year commitment to strong environmental protection and conservation.” He was referring to last-minute action to establish three new national monuments in the Pacific Ocean – what was hailed even by critics as the largest marine conservation effort in history.

But despite Bush’s selective memory, those who have been paying attention know that Bush’s dismal environmental record was made even worse by a series of anti-environment midnight regulations in the last months of his presidency.

So, exactly how much damage did Bush manage to do to the environment during the last months of his presidency?

The National Resources Defense Council has an interactive timeline of Bush’s environmental follies, starting with the appointment of Gale Norton as Secretary of Interior in January of 2001 and ending with the EPA’s December 2008 memorandum declaring that the agency would not regulate CO2 pollution from power plants or other industrial facilities.

The Washington Post outlined Bush’s midnight regulations on December 19th, dividing them into three categories according to whether they were done deals, still unresolved or already dead. Here are the done deals:

1.) Concealed firearms now allowed in national parks. A new Interior Department rule allows an individual to carry a loaded weapon in a park or wildlife refuge — but only if the person has a permit for a concealed weapon, and if the state where the park or refuge is located also allows loaded firearms in parks.
2.) New rules for mountaintop-mining waste. A new rule from the Office of Surface Mining could ease the restrictions on what mining companies can do with the tons of dirt and rock they blast off Appalachian mountaintops to reach coal seams beneath. In many cases, this waste is dumped into nearby ravines, creating “valley fills” that be dozens of feet high. Previously, rules had barred most dumping within 100 yards of a stream, if the material would damage the stream’s water quality.  The new rule would allow waste to be dumped in streams — if a company has no alternative, and if it tries to preserve the stream’s health “to the extent practicable.”
3.) Looser rules for air pollution from factory farms. A new regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency exempts factory farms from a requirement to report hazardous air pollution — including ammonia given off by animal waste — to the federal government.
4.) Permission to burn toxic wastes as fuel. A new rule from the EPA allows companies that create hazardous chemical wastes in industrial processes to burn them as fuel in their own incinerators, instead of paying highly regulated incineration firms to destroy them.
5.) Loosened protections for endangered and threatened species.  A new rule from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would allow other government agencies to decide in some cases whether a project would harm an imperiled species, without having to submit to an independent scientific review.
6.) Easing restrictions on oil-shale drilling. The federal Bureau of Land Management has proposed allowing companies to drill for “oil shale,” which is oil contained in rock deposits, across the West. The bureau argued that the work would increase domestic oil production.

The entire list of midnight regulations, including those outside of environment and energy, can be found at ProPublica. It includes regulations that are open to comment, closed to comment, withdrawn, finalized, and in effect. The environment and energy regulations include increased uranium mining permits near the Grand Canyon in Colorado (in effect), EPA’s decision not to regulate rocket fuel contamination in drinking water (closed to comment), and narrowing the definition of ‘navigable waters’ in regards to the Clean Water Act which could allow oil companies to discharge oil into streams and marshes (in effect).

Finally, on December 31st, the Bureau of Land Management announced their decision to double the rate of logging on 2.6 million acres of federally owned land in Oregon. The BLM stated that increased logging would bring jobs and windfall profits to economically depressed counties, but the surge of timber harvesting will likely have a negative impact on water quality, fish and wildlife in the area.

While some of the last regulations issued by the Bush administration can be easily reversed once Obama is in office, many will require a far lengthier process due to the need to open them up to a period of public consulting. Undoing these final acts could take Obama months or even years, especially with the gargantuan task of keeping the U.S. afloat during an economic crisis taking up most of his time and attention.

One laudable conservation effort in the final hour of his presidency is nowhere near enough to erase the past eight years of appalling antipathy to the environment and clean energy. While Bush may have hoped to remove a bit of the tarnish on his reputation, his legacy has already been set in stone.

As Bush’s presidency ends and Obama’s begins, we can finally turn our backs on an embarrassing part of American history – an era wherein our country not only fell behind in scientific advancements, ignored global warming and initiated deeply flawed wars over oil but consistently put industry before human health and the environment.

What’s left but to watch gratefully as Bush disappears onto the horizon, and breathe a sigh of relief as Obama takes charge? We’re waking up from a national nightmare and even in the midst of frightening economic conditions, we’ve got – yes – hope.

Link [Washington Post] + [NRDC] + [ProPublica]
Photo credit: Makri at Freaking News

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