Bush Administration rushing to make departing Midnight Regulations!

The White House still has 75 days before it welcomes Barrack Obama as the chosen one for the next four years. In the meantime, the Bush administration is at full throttle with a host of midnight regulations before President Bush leaves the office in January.

Many of these last minute changes include environmental as well as the private industry regulations on top of the “Bush Change List”. According to watchdog groups these controversial changes will be difficult for the incoming president to undo. The sudden rushing governmental changes are predicted to affect both environment and consumers, and are further feared to even weaken the governmental policies in the times to come.

Environmental groups and good governance groups have joined hands to call for a ban on these last-minute moves. According to John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, many of the changes such as rolling back protections under the Endangered Species Act are totally uncalled for. One of the new rules also includes relaxing requirements for the road and pipeline builders to consider the impact of their projects on Endangered Species. Some of the other expected changes will allow increased emissions from power plants, factories, and oil refineries, and will permit coal-mining operations to dump toxic waste in valleys and streams.

Whether it’s getting wolves off the Endangered Species List, allowing power plants to operate near national parks, loosening regulations for factory farm waste, or making it easier for the mountaintop coal-mining operations, these proposed changes are definitely not favouring the environmental groups at all. The only good thing that the environmentalists were expecting from the administration was a cut on greenhouse gas emissions that is so far not on the agenda of the so called midnight regulations.

According to some news reports there are as many as 90 regulations are in the pipeline, out of which only 9 are considered environmentally significant because they impose costs or promote societal benefits that exceed around $100 millions annually. White House spokesman Tony Fratto while defending the midnight regulations argued that the Bush Administration is not trying to push through an excessive number of midnight regulations. It is only finishing up its final tasks. Fratto also pointed out that not all regulations would be viewed positively by business and industry. The truth however, these proposed policies are really ticking off the environmental groups at large!