The following are 8 recent tales about the federal government's anti-environmental policies:

1. "White House Pressured EPA on N.Y. Air" (AP) - The Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General reported that National Security Council officials demanded that the EPA pronounce air quality at the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center was safe from contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin before the air at Ground Zero could be monitored and analyzed. Nonetheless, respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers and residents in the area who were cleaning dusty offices and apartments, and the air was not deemed to be at pre-9/11 levels until June 2002. Andy Darrell, the New York regional director of Environmental Defense, decried White House interference in EPA affairs: "For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts."
   
   
2. "EPA to Relax Rules on Pollution Controls" (AP) - The law that requires industrial plants to install pollution emission controls, known as "New Source Review," is being rolled back, allowing companies to emit more pollution while expanding their facilities. "This is the single most destructive anti-clean air rule in the history of the Clean Air Act," said Environmental Defense attorney Vickie Patton. In response, at least 13 states plus the District of Columbia are suing the federal government to block the change from taking place.
   
   
3. "Bush Misuses Science Data, Report Says" (The New York Times) - A Congressional report charges the Bush Administration with persistently manipulating scientific data in order to serve its ideological agenda and protect the interests of its political supporters. It also charged the administration with compromising the integrity of government agencies by stacking advisory committees, blocking publication of critical findings, and putting out misleading information to justify controversial decisions. The Times has also reported that EPA employees have been told either not to analyze or not to release information about mercury, carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, or to do analysis on proposals that conflict with the president's air pollution agenda.
   
   
4. "Report by EPA Leaves Out Data on Climate Change" (The New York Times) - The White House censored information about global warming from a comprehensive EPA review of the state of the nation's environment. In a June 20 editorial the Times chastised the administration's determination "to bury its head in the sand and hope the problem will go away."
   
   
5. "Leavitt Takes Heat Over Recent Deals" (CNN) - Utah Governor Mike Leavitt is facing criticism over deals he signed this year with the Interior Department which effectively revoke federal wilderness protection from millions of acres of public land. Leavitt's nomination to head the EPA (replacing Christie Todd Whitman) is further indication of the administration's emphasis on cutting back environmental rules to allow increased mining and timber felling on public lands.
   
   
6. "Bush Ready to Wreck Ozone Layer Treaty" (The Independent) - Just weeks before it was reported that the ozone hole in the Southern hemisphere is growing and is now as large as Antarctica, the Bush administration threatened to scuttle international agreements to end all use in the West of a pesticide, methyl bromide, that is the industrialized world's greatest attacker of ozone. The U.S. wants exemptions to this ban, which critics say will actually increase its use threefold.
   
   
7. "Bush Urges Passage of Bill to Speed Forest Thinning" (AP) - The president's "Healthy Forests Initiative" is ostensibly to protect public lands from raging wildfires by allowing thinning of trees in dense public forests, but critics say the law as written would eliminate rules meant to protect old growth forests and habitats, opening the doors for the timber industry to aggressively harvest trees on more than 20 million acres of public land. It would also limit the appeals which citizens may now file to halt logging projects.
   
   
8. "Clinton-Era Rule Hits Roadblock" (AP) - Two days after a federal judge blocked a law prohibiting road building on remote forest areas, the Bush adminstration announced it would seek to exempt Alaska's Tongass and Chugach National Forests and allow development and logging on half a million acres. Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service, told the Associated Press that the Bush administration will abide by the roadless rule (the judge's decision is being appealed) but seeks to "amend it."