Under the Bush administration, the Superfund program to clean up toxic-waste sites is seemingly becoming not-so-super. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the U.S. EPA completed cleanups at 42 toxic waste sites, down from 47 in the previous 12 months. This year's total was unimpressive compared to the average of 76 sites cleaned annually during the Clinton administration. The total might have been even lower if environmentalists and congressional Democrats hadn't accused the Bush administration of being lax with polluters after the EPA's inspector general revealed that 33 Superfund sites hadn't received federal money three-quarters of the way …

Sixty-six environmental justice activists, hailing from a broad range of states, were arrested early this week in Nevada after demonstrating over the weekend against nuclear energy and weapons. The protesters, including individuals from South Carolina, Washington, and Mississippi, blamed nuclear facilities for high rates of cancer, birth defects, and skin disorders in black, Latino, and Native American communities nationwide. Most of the protestors were arrested for trespassing on the Nevada Test Site, where 928 full-scale nuclear weapons tests were conducted from 1951 to 1992. The country's proposed nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain would also be located on the site.

Ecologists and sport-fishing fans have succeeded in blocking a decree by the Mexican government that would have increased commercial shark fishing and threatened other fish stocks. Mexico currently requires shark vessels to stay 50 miles offshore; the new rule would have allowed them to come within a half-mile of the coast, dragging mile-wide nets and six-mile-long lines that ensnare marlin, sailfish, dorado, and other game fish populations. The outpouring of public protest about the proposal was an embarrassment to President Vicente Fox, who suspended the shark fishing decree in mid-September and asked for public hearings on it. On Friday, those …

In what it is calling a remedy to the excesses of the Clinton years, the Bush administration is paving the way for Western states to gain control over huge volumes of water previously claimed by the federal government. One prominent example of this new policy involves the Black Canyon National Park in Colorado; in 1978, a court ruled that the feds had the right to unspecified quantities of Gunnison River water to protect the park (then a national monument). In an effort to quantify the amount, the Clinton administration went back to court to win the right to control all …

Environmentalists and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) are duking it out over the regulatory language of the colossal $7.8 billion Everglades restoration project -- a battle that will work against Bush in the upcoming gubernatorial election. Critics say Bush is less interested in restoring the Everglades than in securing a water supply for South Florida businesses and developers. The U.S. Senate agrees: In June, the Energy and Water Development Appropriation Committee said it was concerned that the project may be "too heavily weighted in favor of commercial development of water supplies rather than the restoration of historic water flow characteristics …

Breaking with the federal government's long history of supporting California's clean-air efforts, the Bush administration is saying the Golden State went too far by revising its zero-emission-vehicle rule last year. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Justice Department, the White House sided with DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, which have taken California to court over the law. A Department of Transportation spokesperson called the zero-emission-vehicle legislation an "impermissible intrusion" into federal jurisdiction. California is the only state allowed to set its own air-quality standards and has the nation's most rigorous air-pollution laws. The White House is objecting to the inclusion …

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have accused the Bush administration of stacking a government advisory panel on childhood lead poisoning with members sympathetic to lead-related industries. The 12-member panel advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on averting such poisoning, and in the past, the CDC has appointed the panel's members. Now, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who has been heavily involved in reshaping scientific advisory boards since the Bush administration took office, will replace three of the panel's members. The move comes at a time when the panel is about to consider whether to …

Despite a teeming black market for genetically modified seeds in Brazil, the country's leading presidential candidate says he would not lift a four-year ban on biotechnology anytime soon. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers' Party, who by all appearances was the victor in the first round of elections, held this weekend, opposes GM crops, saying they are harmful to small farms. His agricultural advisor, Jose Graziano da Silva, says, "We get premium prices on specialty markets that our competitors -- the U.S. and Argentina -- don't because they plant GM." However, the Brazilian Association of Seed Producers …

The superintendent of Yosemite National Park announced yesterday that he would retire rather than accept a transfer to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where he would have been called upon to oversee two controversial projects opposed by environmentalists and others. One project involves building a road across the largest undeveloped wilderness in the eastern U.S. to enable area residents to reach old, remote cemeteries; the other is a land-swap that would allow members of the Cherokee Tribe to develop 168 acres of meadowlands inside the southern park entrance. For decades, the proposed projects have pitted the likes of Sen. Jesse …

At least 20,000 chinook salmon and other fish have died in Northern California's Klamath River in the last two weeks, but federal officials are unwilling to attribute the deaths to the Bush administration's decision to divert water away from the river this year and into an irrigation project in southern Oregon. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams said fish health began to improve on Saturday, well before emergency releases of water from Oregon's Upper Klamath Lake reached the California "dead zone." He and other federal officials say that fact suggests that low water flows weren't responsible for the …