America has a proud tradition of protecting the environment both to protect public health and to act as responsible stewards of the natural world. The Bush administration, however, has systematically dismantled the framework of environmental laws, standards and enforcement bipartisan tradition of environmental stewardship that dates to the Nixon administration. Working with their allies in Congress they have consistently sacrificed air quality, water quality, protection of endangered species and wilderness to benefit narrow business interests. It has systematically overruled recommendations made by government experts and unbiased scientific reviews.

In contrast, John Kerry has pledged to return science to the White House and in regulatory decision making, acknowledge and work to reduce the threat that global climate change poses, and invest in the kinds of technological innovations that will green our economy.

• Restore America's Waters: Today, approximately 45 percent of our nation's waterways do not meet the "drinkable, swimable and fishable" standard set out by the Clean Water Act 30 years ago. As president, John Kerry has pledged to implement a "Restore America's Waters" campaign, an integrated approach to protecting our precious, limited water resources. He will work with states on the toughest water quality challenges, restore damaged watersheds, protect wetlands, invest in our waterfronts and coastal communities, and protect our oceans.
• Protect Our Health By Reducing Dangerous Air Emissions: As president, John Kerry has pledged to reverse the Bush-Cheney rollbacks to our Clean Air Act, plug loopholes in the law, take aggressive action to stop acid rain, and use innovative, job-creating programs to reduce mercury emissions and other emissions that contribute to global warming.
• Create Cleaner, Greener Communities: In the White House, John Kerry and John Edwards have promised to revitalize contaminated industrial sites, get toxins out of communities, guarantee our children access to clean, safe parks and baseball fields, and take on traffic congestion and sprawl.
• Enact A Conservation Covenant With America: John Kerry and John Edwards believe that Americans are united in our respect for the land. They will enact a Conservation Covenant with America to ensure balanced protection for our public lands and adequate resources to enhance our national parks.

For a more extended presentation of Kerry & Edwards environmental plans, visit their web site and read the Kerry-Edwards "Vision for a Cleaner Environment"

Air Pollution

Rather than working to redress substandard air quality, the Bush Administration has pursued a rollback of the historic Clean Air Act, replacing it with the so-called "Clean Skies" initiative that legalizes a dramatic increase of emission in the deadly air contaminants of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury. According to EPA estimates, 16% of U.S. women who are of childbearing age already have blood mercury levels that could result in fetal neurological damage. Commercial fish now contain so many heavy metals that pregnant women are advised by the EPA to limit their consumption. Clean Skies initiative also repeals special protections for our national parks. As a result, the natural visibility of 113 miles in Great Smoky Mountains only occurs 1% of the time.

Weakening 'New Source Review'

Weakening the EPA's "new source review" initiative is perhaps the Bush Administration's most egregious rollback of environmental protections. Rather the requiring the owners of power plants to install new emissions controls when upgrading or enlarging the plant's physical infrastructure, the Bush administration is permitting decades old dirty technology to continue fouling our air. The Administration has accomplished this in part by directing EPA staff to stop over 50 ongoing investigations of violations at power plants across the country, in effect condoning illegal behavior in the energy industry. Under the Bush Administration, new civil air pollution enforcement cases are down by more than 25% and inspections are down by 13%. President Bush has proposed cutting $25 million and 270 EPA enforcement positions-to date, 210 of those cuts have been achieved.

Water Pollution

The Bush administration tried to delay and weaken new protections for arsenic in drinking water, reversed efforts to clean-up "non-point" sources of pollution, announced its intent to eliminate Clean Water Act protections for all isolated waters, effectively ceased to monitor pollution from factory farms, which are now permitted to withhold their pollution control plans from both the public and EPA, and redefined mining "fill" to permit the dumping of commercial waste in clean streambeds. Even more alarming, the Administration has failed to take enforcement action against nearly all of the one-quarter of industrial plants and water treatment facilities found to be in violation of the Clean Water Act.

Other aspects of the Bush Plan

• Instead of positioning America as a leader in the international fight to curb global warming, the Bush Administration has mostly denied that climate change is a potential program, suppressed the scientific communities consensus on this point, and distorted the economic analysis of greenhouse gas regulation.
• At the Administration's outset, President Bush broke his campaign pledge to place binding limits on carbon emissions from power plans and withdrew U.S. participation from the Kyoto protocol.
• The Bush White House then opposed four separate bills in Congress, including a bipartisan effort by Senators McCain and Lieberman, to cap and reduce power plant emissions, made deep cuts in the Department of Energy's renewable energy program, and rejected new efficiency standards for air conditioners and fuel efficiency in cars.
• In June 2003, the White House ordered the EPA to delete data showing global temperature rise from its State of the Environment report, deleted the global warming section from the EPA's 2002 report on air pollution trends, and dismissed the findings of a 2002 State Department report on global warming.
• The Administration altered the membership of a Centers for Disease Control panel on blood lead levels in children to increase the representation of the lead industry while simultaneously dismissing some of the committee's strongest public health experts.
• The Bush Administration has allowed the Superfund cleanup fund to go bankrupt. By not reinstating the Superfund tax, it has also reversed the precedent of "polluter pays."
• The Administration has also at times placed gag-orders on EPA scientists that forbid them to discuss the dangers of chemicals-such as percholorate-or vigorously conduct certain kinds of risk assessments thought necessary by agency scientists-as in the case of organophosphate pesticides or the herbicide atrazine.