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Comments on developments related to environmental protection in the U.S. Decision of U.S. President George W. Bush to open U.S. forest lands to development; Emphasis of the Bush administration on commercialization of natural resources; Call on environmentalist groups to encourage more people to have contact with the outdoors.

Reports that a White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports to play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. Role of Philip A. Cooney in removing or adjusting descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors had already approved; Examples of the dozens of revisions, which tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust; Background on Cooney, who is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Method by which the documents were obtained by "The New York Times"; Response of White House officials to the changes made by Cooney; Views of climate experts and representatives of environmental groups; Influence of Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries. INSET: An Editor in the White House.

Reports on a ruling by a federal appeals court that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney did not have to divulge details about how the White House's energy policies were shaped. Analysis of the decision, which touched on the constitutional separation of powers; Review of the White House's argument that it was not obligated to disclose whom it consulted on energy matters early in President George W. Bush's first term; Influence of the decision on pending energy legislation, which will allegedly combine environmental protection with energy efficiency.

Examines in the effect of New York City's environmental protection legislation on the debate surrounding the potential construction of a new football stadium in the West Side of Manhattan. Author's view that environmental impact statements are often used by community groups and green advocates to delay development by holding construction companies and government officials accountable for environmental damages; Report that construction companies often use environmental impact statements against each other; Influence of the environmental issue and environmental impact statements on development projects in New York City.

Federal mandates under the 1970 Clean Air Act have produced cleaner cars, fuels and factories, significantly improving the air Americans breathe. Yet the underlying standards setting limits on ground-level ozone, the main component of harmful smog, have remained unchanged since 1997 -- even as science has made it abundantly clear that the standard is still not strong enough to protect public health. The Environmental Protection Agency has drawn up new and tighter rules, but the final decision rests with President Obama. The White House is under relentless pressure from industry and some legislators to keep the current rules. Mr. Obama should support the agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A dump at the center of a birth defects controversy in Central California has been fined more than $300,000 for allowing cancer-causing chemicals to leach into the soil, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. Chemical Waste Management was assessed a $302,100 fine over its landfill near Kettleman City after failing to clean up soil tainted with spilled PCBs, placing workers at a higher risk of exposure, the agency said. Nearby residents fear that the landfill was linked to a high rate of birth abnormalities, but state officials said last week that they could not pinpoint a cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency is 10 years behind schedule in setting guidelines for a host of toxic air pollutants, according to a report from the agency's inspector general. The report, which was released last week, found that the agency had failed to develop emissions standards, due in 2000, for some sources of hazardous air pollutants. These included smaller sites often located in urban areas, like dry cleaners and gas stations, but also some chemical manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Christos Tsiamis, 59, grew up in the Greek port city of Patras and spent his summers swimming in the Ionian Sea. These days, Mr. Tsiamis's attention is consumed by a less alluring body of water: the Gowanus Canal, which this month was designated a Superfund site. Mr. Tsiamis, a 22-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the project manager charged with determining just how contaminated the Gowanus is, and how best to clean it up. A chemical engineer with a master's degree from Columbia University, Mr. Tsiamis, who splits his time between Manhattan and Eastchester, N.Y., is also a poet who has published four books of poetry in his native tongue. Becoming an engineer: As a teen I used to vacation with an uncle of mine. He owned a dye production factory. In the mornings, I would go down to the factory and look at how they produced the dyes. I was greatly intrigued. It was the transformation of materials: You see materials that look one way, and then they are transformed. It is a miracle. By the time I was a senior in high school, I knew I wanted to do chemical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it would probably increase the amount of ethanol that gasoline retailers could blend into ordinary fuel, to 15 percent, if tests established that the blend would not damage cars. The maximum ethanol blend is now 10 percent, except for cars specially equipped to handle higher blends. The agency said it was likely to approve the increase to 15 percent next summer, perhaps for use only in cars of the 2001 model year and later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Competing tours offer two very distinct ways to see the industrial city of Richmond in the East Bay. A ''Toxic Tour,'' led by an environmental justice group, circles Chevron's Richmond Refinery and passes through what the group's local members call the city's ''petrochemical corridor.'' On Chevron's newly offered refinery tours, visitors don hard hats and safety glasses and hear of strict emission standards, exemplary safety records and jobs, jobs, jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration. In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail messages that seemed to show that his contrarian views on global warming had been suppressed by his superiors because they were inconvenient to the Obama administration's climate change policy. Conservative commentators and Congressional Republicans said he had been muzzled because he did not toe the liberal line. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After 25 years in the high-technology industry, Bob Gressens sensed a growing excitement over environmental issues -- and a new business opportunity. He followed his instinct, quit his job and went back to school. ''I want to give the next 15 years or whatever to sustainability,'' he said. ''To give back.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chosen for: Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Would bring to the job: Twenty years of experience as an environmental regulator and a reputation as a consensus builder. Ms. Jackson, a chemical engineer, brought a more policy-driven approach as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, winning praise even from those who opposed her decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jeffrey Mikulina, a longtime environmental activist in Hawaii, jokes that his home state, which is almost completely dependent on imported oil, is one supertanker away from being Amish. It also is one superheated ocean away from being underwater. There, in a nutshell, is the motivation behind a new campaign to wean Hawaii from fossil fuels in 10 years. The project is Hawaii's own moon mission, led by the Blue Planet Foundation and not by the state's political establishment, which tends to prefer the slow and tortured way to change (a long battle over a new commuter rail system was bogged down by a ferocious debate over whether it should have steel or rubber wheels). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it intended to ban the use of the pesticide carbofuran, citing its harmful effects on children and the environment. The agency said the risks associated with exposure to carbofuran in food and water exceed levels established by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. In 1991, Congress banned the granular form of the pesticide, which was blamed for the deaths of more than a million birds. In humans, the pesticide can cause long-term damage to the body's neurological and reproductive systems. The chemical is used to combat pests that feed on rice, cotton, corn, soybean and sugar cane crops, particularly in China; the agency says it is not widely used in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child that got favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To the Editor: ''A Major Setback for Clean Air'' (editorial, July 16) implied that Duke Energy sought to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Interstate Rule. But, as we spelled out in legal filings, Duke Energy ''supports many aspects of CAIR.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents an excerpt from an essay on "The Dismal Quackery of Eco-Economics," by Daniel Ben-Ami arguing that environmentalism has corrupted the study of economics published in the conservative online magazine Spike.

Profiles Donna House, a Navajo ethnobotanist, who helped create the landscaping outside the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Development of a landscape of cornfields, meadows, and wetlands with 3,500 specially introduced ladybugs outside the Smithsonian Institution's museum which will open west of the Capitol; Efforts of the Navajos to portray the relationship between humans and other living organisms like ants and grasshoppers; Role of House as a consultant with the Nature Conservancy, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the Navajo Nation; Her leadership in protecting rare and endangered plants which have cultural and ecological significance.

Discusses how the Environmental Protection Agency filed a complaint against DuPont, charging the company with withholding evidence of its own health and environmental concerns about chemicals used to manufacture Teflon. How Teflon constituents found in rivers, soil, wild animals, and humans have violated federal environmental law; Claims from DuPont that it met its legal reporting obligations; Possibility that DuPont will be charged up to $25,000 a day from the time the company learned of potential problems until January 1997; Investigation of whether the substance called perfluorooctanoic acid is harmful to human health.

Reports on the federal lawsuit filed by New York and six other states that seeks to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do more to prevent foreign species of fish and plants from invading the Great Lakes. Demand of the states that they wanted the agency to take an active role in enforcing regulations that control the discharge of ballast water from ocean-going vessels; Contention of the states that EPA's refusal to regulate ballast discharges violates provisions of the Clean Water Act; Response of the EPA on its decision not to police ballast discharges but instead to work with the Coast Guard to carry out the National Invasive Species Act.

Reports on an Environmental Protection Agency plan to stop dredge waste from being deposited into Long Island Sound.

Reports on the release of an environmental statement in New York regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Concerns on the impact of redevelopment activities on animal life in the area; Approval of the environmental statement by the board of Lower Manhattan Development Corp.; Urgency of the environmental statement.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has deleted 278 sites from the 1,200 on the Superfund Manual national priorities list. Each has been defined as clean in a different way, and with few exceptions, the offending pollutants were never removed. What makes the notion of clean so slippery is the relative newness of the idea of decontaminating industrial sites and the unpalatable truth that treating pollution, even rendering it harmless, almost never means getting rid of it. The sin, once committed, cannot, be entirely undone, and this is something no one really wants to hear.

The article focuses on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that has opened the door to possible revision of its fuel economy tests. In an advisory on its web site, the EPA said on March 24, 2004 that it would publish a notice in the Federal Register soliciting comment from all interested parties on Bluewater Network's, an environmental group, call for a revision of its test procedures within 120 days.

Reports that U.S. President George W. Bush has nominated Utah Governor Michael O. Leavitt to replace Christie Whitman as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Reactions of business, Republican Party groups and environmental activists; Remarks by Bush and Leavitt; Outlook for a politically charged battle over Bush's environmental record when Leavitt's Senate confirmation hearings are held; Views of Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.); Background on Leavitt; Leavitt's stance on land issues.

Editorial. Comments on the statistical assessment report of the U.S. environment issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003.

Reports on the legal challenge filed by nine states in the Northeastern U.S. to air-pollution rules for power plants and other industries. Concern that these rules would bring more acid rain, more smog, more asthma, and more respiratory disease to Americans; Defense of the rules by the Environmental Protection Agency; Opinion of the nine states that the rules represent the most serious effort at rolling back the Clean Air Act.

Focuses on the U.S. President George W. Bush's administration's initiative to reduce pollution from power plants. Plans to replace air quality controls and apply emissions trading to other pollutants; Warnings of environmentalists and economists that the plan threatens to intensify pollution in certain so-called hot spots; Bush's failure to focus on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide; History of emissions trading, which was set up by Congress; Implications of the plan; Views of experts.

Reports that United States federal regulators have recommended relaxing an air pollution regulation that requires power plants to upgrade pollution control equipment when upgrading operations. Push for the move by energy and industry groups, many of whom have supported President George W. Bush; Protests of environmental groups; Dilemma that Bush is facing; Views of environmentalists and politicians.

Reports that an accord has been reached between the United States government and several environmental groups regarding the protection of several vanishing or endangered plant and animal species. Agreement by environmental groups to not demand the government's immediate compliance with various court orders which overwhelmed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Species which are targeted by this agreement, including the Chiricahua leopard frog and the Island fox.

Discusses the role of Reed Beauregard 'Beau' Turner in caring for ranches and properties purchased by his father, Ted Turner. Description of Beau's relationship with his father, which both men describe as close; Environmentalism of Beau, who is unofficially part of movement to shape environmental policy in the western United States.

Discusses the environmentalist efforts of New York Governor George Pataki and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer's action on environmental campaign pledges; Pataki's reputation as a conservationist; Competition and cooperation.

States that President Bush is expected to announce soon that he will fly to Brazil for a United Nations environmental conference that his conservative advisers call a trap and his economic experts see as a fiscal debacle. The US is the Earth's most prolific polluter and its prime source of clean-up technology and money.

Focuses on the frustration of some environmental groups with Vice President Al Gore. Their view that Gore has failed to exert strong influence on the priorities of toughening air pollution standards and negotiating cuts in worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases; The groups as warning they may abandon him in the 2000 Democratic primaries; Response of Gore; Other Clinton administration positions criticized by environmental groups.