Even when fully complying with federal clean-air laws, refineries are nasty operations, spewing tons of hazardous pollutants into the air of neighboring communities. But under a regulatory loophole, refineries, chemical plants and other industrial facilities have been allowed to pollute even more during an equipment malfunction, or when shutting down and starting back up following a malfunction.

Why is it not surprising to learn that some of the nation's most notoriously dirty facilities evade clean air law by claiming that they are in startup, shutdown, or malfunction mode much of the time?

Bill Neukom is a seasoned attorney in a prominent Seattle firm. He served as Microsoft's general counsel and for the past year has been the President of the American Bar Association. His main project at the ABA is engaging leading lawyers, judges, politicians, and others around the world to promote the rule of law. He leads the World Justice Project and has developed the Rule of Law Index, measuring the strength of legal protections and the degree of corruption in the world's legal systems. Strengthening environmental law is one of the goals of this effort.

So Neukom's observations about the how environmental laws are faring here in the US carry particular weight. In a recent press conference, he talked about the failure of the Congress and the executive branch agencies to make sure that our environmental laws are enforced and are updated to address new problems and developing science. The critical task of putting teeth in our environmental laws, seeing that they are carried out to protect the public's health, wild places and wildlife, has instead fallen to public interest litigators. Because our political leadership has abdicated its job, Earthjustice and our allies have taken on the job as the front line of defense for environmental protection.

As has been often observed here on unEarthed, the Bush EPA has taken regulatory avoidance to unprecedented levels.(See Martin Wagner's July 11 post

A subtle, but nonetheless nefarious new tactic for avoiding regulation to protect human health and the environment is EPA's recent statistical devaluation of an American life. For purposes of evaluating the costs and benefits of proposed regulations, EPA has adjusted the value of an American life to be nearly $1 million less today that it was five years ago.

The Navajo Nation — America’s largest Native American reservation — has breathtaking scenery, disheartening poverty, and a lot of sunny, windy days. So it was good news both on and off the Rez that the Nation has contracted with an East Coast renewable energy firm to build 500 megawatts of wind power generation there.

The bad news is that the Nation’s leaders appear to be still wed to a mercury-spewing, global warming nightmare of a coal-fired power plant known as Desert Rock. Just days before the Nation signed its contract for wind power, it sued the EPA for not taking time to carefully review the air permit for the coal plant.