Editorial: Environmental assault continues

Monday, Feb. 13, 2006 | 12:32 p.m.

President Bush's proposed budget slashes water and land conservation grants to state and local governments by 40 percent, chops funding from the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists and cuts more money from an already struggling National Park Service.

While slicing the government's environmental programs to ribbons, Bush is proposing to increase by $10 million - to $322 million - the fund for "cooperative conservation" programs, which encourage private landowners to protect endangered species, conserve wildlife habitats and do the other conservation projects that historically are done by the government.

Sen. James Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, said the proposed cuts show that the environment isn't a Bush administration priority.

That's like saying Osama bin Laden isn't a Yankees fan. The Bush administration has been relentless in its quest to drill for questionable amounts of oil in the Arctic National Wildife Refuge, has eased air pollution restrictions on industry and stubbornly refuses to accept responsibility for the United States' role in creating a quarter of the globe's greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Now, Bush wants to spend just $85 million in 2007 on federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grants that are used to create and preserve nonfederal parks, forest land and wildlife refuges. That's 40 percent less than the $148 million the fund received last year and a fraction of the $900 million Bush promised the fund early in his presidency, the Associated Press reports.

Bush's plan also proposes lopping $89 million from the National Park Service's $2.6 billion budget, continuing a four-year string of cuts to park budgets that has forced the service to sell corporate ad space on its facilities.

And the EPA stands to lose all but $500,000 of the $2.5 million it spends annually to maintain a national network of libraries where researchers can review the agency's enormous store of documents and environmental studies.

This continuing assault on the nation's environment is a tragedy. The Bush administration won't be satisfied until private interests have picked America clean, from sea to shining sea.