Murky skies.

Byline: The Register-Guard

It's a sad commentary that it's no longer even mildly surprising to learn that the Environmental Protection Agency has skewed an analysis of anti-pollution legislation to favor the Bush administration's preferred approach.

The Congressional Research Office, an independent, non-partisan research group, reported last week that the EPA's analysis of President Bush's Clear Skies proposal overestimated the costs of reducing air pollution and underestimated public health benefits.

Sound familiar? Earlier this year the Government Accountability Office and the EPA's own inspector general reported that the agency intentionally cooked the analytical books to make the administration's - and the energy industry's - preferred strategy on mercury pollution look superior to more effective and costly alternatives.

Bush's Clear Skies legislation, which aims to cut emissions of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and neurotoxic mercury by 70 percent after 2018, stalled in Congress earlier this year. Competing proposals from Sens. Thomas Carper, D-Del., and James Jeffords, I-Vt., would require steeper and faster reductions.

The congressional report said the EPA's analysis of the three bills tilted the playing field by overstating the cost of controlling air pollution and by understating the economic benefits of reducing deaths and illnesses linked to pollution.

The EPA study does contain one notable finding that President Bush isn't likely to highlight: Reductions in greenhouse gases called for in the Carper and Jeffords bills (but not Bush's Clear Skies) would cost as little as a dollar per ton. That estimate undermines the long-standing claim that mandated emissions cuts would wreak economic havoc.

The administration's politicization of information relating to environmental laws or regulations has been revealed time and again. It's part of an effort to weaken or dismantle the nation's three-decade old system of environmental protections. Democratic and Republican lawmakers, whose parties joined to put those protections in place, must now work together to stop the shredding - and start the strengthening - of our environmental safety net.