A $10 million annual fellowship program that provides money to graduate students in environmental science, policy, and engineering has been eliminated by the Bush administration, officials announced late last week. The fellowships, which were part of the U.S. EPA's Science to Achieve Results program, were the only federal monies specifically earmarked to fund environmental studies students. Prior to being axed, the program was supporting 311 students, each of whom received between $30,000 and $34,000 for one to three years, and some 1,350 people had already applied for the 2003 fellowships. The program appears to have gotten lost in the shuffle …

Speaking at the Florida Democratic Party Convention -- widely regarded as the first stop on the 2004 campaign trail -- former Vice President Al Gore attacked the Bush administration on Saturday for favoring corporate America and trashing environmental protections. In his most outspoken speech since the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore decried the return to "the days of deficits and debt, the days of irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy, the days of loosening environmental safeguards to satisfy the polluters." Gore did not say whether he would run for president in 2004, but observers said that if that is his intention, …

A picture is worth a thousand words: So reasoned Interior Secretary Gale Norton when she mailed copies of a videotape of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to major television stations and encouraged news producers to use the footage in their coverage of the debate over drilling. (In contrast to videos of the Arctic Refuge produced by conservation organizations, which generally feature wildlife and breathtaking views, the video shows a desolate-looking winterscape.) According to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Norton committed a major no-no. The video was developed by Arctic Power, a pro-drilling lobbying group, and Markey says Norton illegally used her …

The Florida Supreme Court dealt a blow to environmentalists and landowners yesterday by ruling that property owners in the state must continue to foot most of the bill for Everglades restoration, despite overwhelming support for a 1996 amendment to the state constitution that would have made polluters pay instead. The court determined that the amendment, which was approved by two-thirds of state voters as part of a plan to restore the Everglades, was too vague for the state legislature to be able to act on. Environmentalists contend that state lawmakers purposely failed to implement the amendment because they are beholden …

Senate Democrats accused the Bush administration yesterday of slowing the pace of toxic waste cleanups under the Superfund program as a favor to industry, which historically has picked up most of the tab for the costly cleanups. A Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee asked Superfund officials to explain why the administration dropped 25 sites from the cleanup list this year and shifted much of the cost from industry to taxpayers. The Bush administration explained the reduced number of cleanups by saying it had chosen to focus on a handful of "megasites," but Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the …

The good news: President Bush will ask Congress to support a global treaty to phase out 12 highly toxic chemicals. The bad news: He will not back a provision of the treaty that would make it easier to eliminate other toxics as well. If ratified by at least 50 nations, the treaty on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) will ban the "dirty dozen" -- PCBs, dioxins, furans, DDT, and other toxics that cause health problems such as cancer and developmental defects. Bush vowed to support the treaty almost a year ago, and today, U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman and Acting Assistant …

In the first-ever gubernatorial veto of a presidential decision, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn (R) yesterday rejected George Bush's proposal to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Federal lawmakers granted the state veto power over any presidential decision related to Yucca Mountain in 1982; now, two decades later, Congress has 90 working days to override or sustain Guinn's veto via majority vote. The outcome will determine whether the Bush administration can proceed with a plan to transport 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain. Guinn and …

The Chicago-based Oil-Dri Corporation, which, as the maker of Cat's Pride, is the world's largest kitty litter company, wants to dig an open-pit clay mine on public land outside of Reno, Nev. But county commissioners have effectively thwarted that plan by refusing to issue a permit to operate a processing plant for the cat litter on nearby private property. The controversy has drawn national attention to Western mining issues, because it hinges on the 1872 Mining Law, which allows miners to extract resources from federal lands without paying royalties to taxpayers. The law makes it virtually impossible for any actor …

The Bush administration has indicated that it will rewrite the Northwest Forest Plan, the nation's first attempt to manage a broad ecosystem across an entire region of the U.S. In an development welcomed by timber interests, U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth has asked regional heads of the USFS, the Bureau of Land Management, and other agencies to recommend changes to the plan, which was approved by President Clinton in 1994. As it stands, the Northwest Forest Plan protects millions of acres of federal forests while allowing logging of about 800 million board-feet per year. The timber industry says that …

So much for the information age: Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to limit access to data on the federal government's farm subsidy program. Last fall, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group touched off a political firestorm by posting on the Internet a database of farm subsidy recipients from 1996 to 2000. Information on the site was used by senators in a debate that resulted in a vote to reduce maximum farm subsidies by 40 percent. Now EWG says both chambers of Congress are crafting language for the Farm Bill that would restrict public access to information on subsidy spending. The Senate …