from a salon article on the epa, which is seeing record numbers of people retiring:

"Late in the day on Dec. 23, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it is exempting 9 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from the so-called roadless rule enacted by the Clinton administration. The decision would open 300,000 acres of dense, old-growth woodland in the largest U.S. national forest to logging and road building, and expose a total of more than a million acres to damage from development.

The administration and Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) are defending this decision as a major economic stimulant, while environmentalists are calling it a major tragedy in which common federal land is being used for narrow local purposes. Of the nearly 250,000 public comments submitted to the Forest Service on this matter, fewer than 2,000 supported the administration's plan, according to the Heritage Forests Campaign. Critics of the proposal included the office supply giant Staples, as well as some Forest Service employees and a considerable number of Alaska citizens. The decision was, of course, most eagerly heralded by companies that have already proposed 50 logging projects in the area. Least enthusiastic, perhaps, are the wolves, bears, eagles, salmon and other wildlife that inhabit the forest and are steadily vanishing from the rest of the country.

Then, on New Year's Eve, the Bush administration said it would not stop companies from using treated sewage as fertilizer on farmland and abandoned mines, despite a petition from more than 70 groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Farmers Union that alleges the sludge has sickened, and in some cases killed, people and livestock. The EPA's Office of Science and Technology argued that the agency already forces waste management companies to filter about 40 pollutants from sewage sludge, and that there isn't a reasonable case that they need to do more."

not that this surprises me, or anything.