While EPA continues to argue that a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions at coal-fired power plants would be infeasible, a Kansas coal-fired power plant successfully lowered mercury emissions by 90 percent, according to the emissions control maker, ADA-ES. The company announced Nov. 18 that a month-long test of activated carbon injection at Sunflower Electric Holcomb Station successfully lowered mercury emissions of Western coal.

The Environmental Integrity Project recently released a report showing that civil penalties against polluters are at a 15-year low, with penalties dropping to $56.8 million in 2004 compared to $96 million in 2003. Enforcement of major environmental legislation has declined sharply in the past three years, contributing to the steep decline in civil penalties. Whereas the Department of Justice filed 152 lawsuits in federal courts against polluters in the last three year of the Clinton administration, in the first three years of the Bush administration only 36 such lawsuits were filed.

Tens of thousands of children are poisoned every year from accidentally ingesting rat poison. EPA responded in 1998 with a rule that added a bitter taste to the poison and a dye to make it more obvious that a child has ingested rat poison. The Bush administration promptly reversed course in 2001 and repealed these requirements, even though they do not make rat poisons any less effective at killing rats.

Interesting tidbit in Cindy Skrzycki's Washington Post column about OHSA. Charged with protecting the men and women of America who work for a living, OSHA has become, during the Bush administration, the black hole of government: nothing comes out of it, certainly not light. As we found in a recent report, the Bush OSHA has failed to produce a single economically significant protection of workplace health or safety.