Even as the Bush administration works to relax clean-air regulations on coal-fired power plants, New Jersey's biggest energy supplier agreed yesterday to spend $337 million over the next 10 years to cut emissions from two plants. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the settlement between PSEG Power showed a "continuing commitment to enforce vigorously the Clean Air Act." The Clinton administration sued PSEG Power and several other utilities for violating new source review regulations that require owners of older power plants to update pollution-control systems when making other significant improvements to their plants.

If the voting record is any measure, most Americans are green at heart when it comes to conservation. Last year, voters approved spending $1.7 billion for parks and open spaces, according to a tally released today by the Trust for Public Land and the Land Trust Alliance. Seventy percent of 196 local ballot measures in 24 states were given the thumbs up. The fine people of Massachusetts had a particularly impressive voting record, passing 68 greenspace measures last year. The numbers were down from 1999, the last off-election year, when voters across the country okayed 90 percent of land protection …

In other mining news, President Bush did not mince words about his energy plan during an address in the town of Belle, W.Va., yesterday: "We need to use coal. We got a lot of it," he said. The president touted exploitation of domestic coal and other traditional energy resources as a way to avoid dependence on foreign oil and jumpstart a flagging economy. But that theory was skewered yesterday by likely 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, a Senate Democrat from Massachusetts, who said that adopting Bush's energy plan would leave the U.S. more dependent than ever on foreign oil in …

Bad news on the environmental justice front: Poor and minority residents of Camden, N.J., aren't having much luck with efforts to sue the state for allowing a cement factory to spew pollution in their neighborhood. The residents successfully convinced U.S. District Judge Stephen Orlofsky that the siting of the plant was discriminatory, but Orlofsky's decision was undermined by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in another case that individuals suing states for discrimination must prove that there was intent to discriminate. Now the residents are trying to get the courts to hear their case on other grounds, but so far they …

The U.S. Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear a challenge to the protected status of the endangered fairy shrimp, a tiny crustacean that lives in rainwater ponds in California's Central Valley. The decision was a boon to fans of the Endangered Species Act, but a blow to property-rights advocates, for whom the case was one in a series of recent legal crusades to limit the federal government's power to protect wildlife. The property-rights advocates argued that the federal government has no authority to protect species that, like the fairy shrimp, exist in only one state and have no commercial purpose. …

The Bush administration weakened protection for wetlands, streams, and swamps across the U.S. yesterday by making changes to the Clean Water Act, despite the objections of the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The changes, which were proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers and approved by the White House, make it easier for developers, mining companies, and others to obtain permits to dredge and fill wetlands. Supporters of the plan claim it will reduce bureaucracy and enable the government to focus on genuine threats to wetlands. Opponents, however, argue that the plan has no scientific basis …

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) reiterated his opposition to offshore oil drilling in his state yesterday and vowed he would fight the Bush administration all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to stop development of 36 drilling leases granted by the federal government. Because of a moratorium imposed by the first President Bush, most new oil drilling is banned along the California coast; however, the ban does not cover preexisting leases. Davis said he plans to look into whether the proposed drilling is consistent with state and federal laws. The offshore drilling could negatively affect air quality …

Here's the latest bit of unconscionable news from the U.S. Department of the Interior: Interior Secretary Gale Norton failed to submit comments from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service blasting a proposed Army Corps of Engineers plan to relax wetlands protection rules. As a result, the Army Corps will announce its final version of the plan today without any input from the wildlife service, which claimed the proposal lacked any scientific basis and would "result in tremendous destruction of aquatic and terrestrial habitats." DOI spokesperson Mark Pfeifle said Interior ran out of time to submit formal comments, a situation he …

President Bush headed to Pennsylvania on Friday to sign into a law a five-year plan to revitalize brownfield sites around the country. Under the plan, which was approved by Congress last month, the feds will allocate up to $250 million per year to states, local governments, and Native American tribes, with the goal of cleaning up some 450,000 of the polluted industrial sites. The sites will be converted into public, residential, or commercial areas. After the U.S. EPA certifies the areas as clean, developers and new owners of the sites will have liability protection, shielding them from having to pay …