While they can

Why the urgency to weaken U.S. environmental safeguards? Because for President Bush's crew, time is winding down

If the mischief as one administration in Washington gave way to another were limited to a few iffy pardons and the random whoopee cushion, the country could live with that. The reality: Expect the iffy pardons, maybe even a whoopee cushion to embarrass a pompous new deputy assistant secretary or two. Expect as well -- in fact, it's already under way -- an effort to trash environmental rules and practices loathed by the Bushians and their big-business allies.

Make that some Bushians. Others are appalled.

Consider the reaction of the National Park Service's top official in Utah when he found out that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management was planning to auction off 51,000 acres for oil and gas drilling close by three parks -- Arches, Dinosaur and Canyonlands. "We find it shocking and disturbing," the Associated Press quoted Cordell Roy as saying.

Note to BLM: People visiting the spectacular red-rock national parks of Utah do so largely for the view. Who wants to peer through a scenic arch only to find the vista marred by a field of drilling equipment? The Department of the Interior, parent to both the Park Service and BLM, called for a compromise, but at last report the "drill, baby, drill" contingent was holding firm. Will it be up to Congress to jerk a knot in them?

The national parks, it seems, can't get no respect. If the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency has its way, the parks might also have to put up with such neighbors as coal-fired power plants and oil refineries.

What? The Environmental PROTECTION Agency is pushing to ease the rules for these air-pollution factories? Sure enough -- although The Washington Post reported that half of the EPA's 10 regional administrators had lodged formal dissents to the changes, and four others had criticized them in writing.

Perhaps the objections from within will overrule the sentiment at EPA HQ. North Carolinians should hope it does, what with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park among the nation's most threatened by air pollution.

Under the rules change, pollution levels would be measured in terms of yearly averages, instead of the much shorter increments now used. Looking at shorter periods enables the recording of pollution spikes when power plants and other energy facilities are running full bore.

If you're visiting the Smokies and want to see to the next ridge, what matters is the air pollution level on that day, not what it averages over the course of a year. So the current measurement method is better -- even if it might make it harder to build new coal-fired power plants such as Duke Energy's Cliffside project in the foothills west of Charlotte.

Meanwhile, the Interior Department has been frantically jumping through the bureaucratic hoops necessary to change rules protecting endangered species. The aim has been to put new, weaker rules in place by today. If that deadline is met, the incoming Obama administration couldn't easily undo the revisions.

President Bush's folks want to take independent wildlife biologists out of the loop in deciding whether a federally backed project might put an already endangered plant or animal at further risk of extinction. The folly in that is obvious. Again, it may fall to Congress to put a stop to what goes beyond mischief in its potential environmental damage. Vandalism is closer to the mark.