Truthout: Rulings Go Against Administration

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Rulings Go Against Administration
By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press

Tuesday 17 April 2007

Grants Pass, Oregon - A string of federal court rulings in recent weeks has gone against Bush administration environmental policies, and critics say they are proof that the White House regularly circumvents laws designed to protect the nation's air, water, forests and endangered species.

"They (courts) are finding in case after case after case that the Bush administration is violating the law," said Trip Van Noppen, vice president of litigation for Earthjustice, a public interest law firm that represents environmental groups suing the government.

Not so, say administration officials, who are claiming their own share of court victories and say they prefer negotiation to litigation.

Topping the list of administration setbacks was the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on April 2 telling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency it could not opt out of enforcing carbon dioxide emissions - a major component of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming - under the Clean Air Act.

Here are other court rulings against Bush administration environmental policies in recent weeks:

* The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration's 2004 plan for balancing endangered salmon runs against federally owned hydroelectric dams in the Columbia Basin. The ruling characterized NOAA Fisheries' plan as a "sleight of hand" that counted dead fish as if they were alive. The court added that the plan ignored a provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires the agency to consider whether salmon can be expected to thrive, not just survive, under dam operations.

* A federal judge in San Francisco tossed out new Bush administration rules that gave states a chance to seek logging and other commercial projects in roadless areas of national forests previously off-limits to most development.

* On the same day, a U.S. judge in Seattle ruled that the Bush administration illegally suppressed and misrepresented the views of dissenting scientists when it eased logging restrictions designed to protect salmon under the Northwest Forest Plan.

* Other rulings have struck down mountaintop coal mining in West Virginia, efforts to avoid listing new threatened and endangered species, and EPA emissions standards for brick and ceramics kilns.

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