Environmental▼News nearly 7000 in Lake 260 but are projected to disappear by next year, says Bob Evans, biologist with DFO. One cause of the decline could be that male fish are dying from kidney damage, he says. When exposed to estrogen, male fish produce vitellogenin, an egg yolk protein normally produced only by females, explains Vince Palace, research scientist with DFO. The vitellogenin compromises kidney function in male fathead minnows and leads to scarring and tissue death in the testes, he says. Another reason for the population drop is that estrogen is making
it tough for the minnows to reproduce, Evans says. The males are very immature and their testes contain little to no sperm, he says. The females are producing fewer and more immature eggs. As a result, there are no young fish, and the population will die out next year with the last remaining adults, he predicts. The quantity and age structure of the three other fish species in the study, pearl dace, white suckers, and trout, have not changed, probably because these longerlived fish do not reach sexual maturity for several years, Evans says. “I think it is just a matter of time
before these fish start experiencing damage,” he notes. U.S. EPA is cooperating with the Lake 260 study to see if gene expression of vitellogenin in male fish could be used as an early warning indicator, says Jim Lazorchak, chief of the molecular ecology branch at EPA’s National Exposure Research Laboratory in Cincinnati. If exposure to estrogen can be correlated to impaired reproduction and population decline in fish, estrogen could be classified as a toxic substance and controlled through limits set in water discharge permits, he says. —JANET PELLEY
Transportation spending plan could weaken U.S. clean air rules grams, say SAFETEA “will help ensure that transportation projects are completed on budget and on time, while protecting the environment.” In all, the administration has earmarked $58.7 billion of the spending package for environmental programs. PHOTODISC
President Bush has proposed a 6year, $247 billion spending plan for transportation infrastructure projects that boasts a number of provisions aimed at improving the effectiveness of environmental programs, as well as new initiatives to reduce transportation emissions. If approved by Congress, the scheme would allow states to choose from a larger pool of control strategies to reduce ozone and particulate matter pollution and encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles. But since being proposed in May, the bill has come under fire from state and local air quality regulators, together with environmental and public interest groups, who warn that the proposed bill is a big step backward for environmental protection, weakening Clean Air Act (CAA) provisions designed to ensure that transportation projects conform to state air quality requirements. Congressional leaders also criticize the administration’s suggested funding for the bill; some have recommended an additional $100 billion. Known as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA) of 2003, the legislation would reauthorize federal funding for highway and transit projects. Officials with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the overseer of these pro-
A proposed federal transportation bill has environmentalists and state and local regulators concerned.
DOT proposes to revise the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program to better address new EPA air quality standards for controlling ozone and fine particulates and speeding up the environmental review process for new transportation projects by granting state agencies more authority and shortening the length of time for public challenges from 6 years to 6 months. The bill would
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also delegate more authority to state transportation officials in decisions concerning project impacts to historical sites and parkland. Other proposals include revising high-occupancy vehicle lane provisions to encourage the use of cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles by giving states more flexibility to loosen lane restrictions for cleaner vehicles; installing electrical facilities along interstates to reduce engine idling of parked commercial vehicles by providing operators with power for heating, air conditioning, and communications; and calling for research on emerging technologies to quicken the auto industry’s transition to environmentally benign fuels. State and local air quality regulators, however, “are very concerned that the kinds of changes being contemplated in the administration’s bill will significantly weaken the regulatory tools that states have to ensure transportation projects conform with clean air requirements,” says Bill Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators/Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. Currently, transportation planners are required to analyze projects’ air quality impacts over a 20-year time frame, which corresponds to CAA provisions calling on states to bring their air into compliance with standards and to maintain those standards for 20 years.
would reduce the federal share for new mass transit projects to 50%, while maintaining federal funding for new road projects at 80%. “This would put local and state governments in a terrible spot when forced to choose between building a new freeway or building a new light rail line,” Replogle says. “We think it’s essential to keep a level playing field here.” Moreover, a number of studies have shown that increasing highway capacity only increases traffic and emissions. Likewise, the streamlining of environmental reviews under SAFETEA “chips away at the spirit, if not the letter, of the National Environmental Policy Act,” Lobaas says. The bill would allow environmental reviews to be conducted for a whole class of projects, rather than on an individual project basis, with environmental compliance regulation more centered at the state level, particularly with state transportation departments, “which don’t have the best track record when it comes to environmental protection,” Lobaas says. It’s unclear what will happen to the bill in Congress, where both chambers are recommending significantly higher funding levels and drafting their own reauthorization bills. A version being considered by the Senate Environment and Public Works committee would go even further than SAFETEA toward weakening CAA conformity provisions by granting the car industry exemptions to these requirements, public health groups say. For a copy of the president’s SAFETEA proposal, go to www.fhwa.dot.gov/ reauthorization/safetea.htm. —KRIS CHRISTEN
Androgenic activity found in air For the first time, researchers have used bioassays to screen biomass combustion and diesel emissions for androgenic activity. In a talk at the Air and Waste Management Association’s annual meeting in San Diego in June, Clyde Owens, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. EPA’s National Risk Management Research
Laboratory (NRMRL) in Research Triangle Park, N.C., reported that preliminary tests of organic extracts from air samples confirm that these emissions contain compounds that can be classified as endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). People have looked for EDCs in different sources—like wastewater
News Briefs Growing dependence on failing ecosystems “More concerted, focused action is urgently needed” to stop the continuing erosion and collapse of many of the earth’s systems that support life, says United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Director Klaus Toepfer. Toepfer’s comments pertain to a report developed jointly by the World Bank, the nonprofit World Resources Institute, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNEP. Released on July 10, World Resources 2002–2004: Decisions for the Earth, Balance, Voice and Power includes statistics indicating growing human dependence on deteriorating ecosystems such as river basins and forests. The report authors suggest that governments and businesses should improve their solicitation and understanding of public opinion related to decisions that affect ecosystems and should consider environmental impacts when making economic decisions. The report can be downloaded at www.wri.org.
More fish with high PBDE levels Tests of fish in California’s San Francisco Bay area show that six of the most commonly eaten local species have rapidly rising body burdens of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), according to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization. The tests, which were conducted by the California Department of Toxic Substance Control’s Hazardous Materials Laboratory in Berkeley, showed that all 22 of the fish collected last year contained 7 different PBDEs. Since 1997, the levels of PBDEs in striped bass have more than tripled, while levels in halibut have more than doubled. To read Tainted Catch, go to www.ewg.org.
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SAFETEA would shorten this horizon to 10 years. This change would allow the transportation sector to escape its long-range air quality impacts, particularly with bigger projects like outer beltways, shifting the burden of cleaning up emissions from cars and trucks to other sectors of the economy, Becker says. Equally troubling are the proposed changes to CMAQ, according to Becker and environmental and public health groups. This program was designed to help municipalities not meeting air quality standards to come into compliance by funding measures such as mass transit systems, bicycle routes, and other projects that reduce emissions. With new U.S. EPA standards for ozone and fine particulate matter on the way, the number of nonattainment areas is expected to triple, according to DOT documents. Nevertheless, the agency is only proposing a 9% increase in the program’s funding over SAFETEA’s 6-year life span, points out Michael Replogle of Environmental Defense. Additionally, DOT proposes opening the CMAQ program up to other emission control strategies such as diesel retrofits, notes Deron Lobaas, of the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. These ideas, while good, increase competition for program funds, and unless CMAQ is at least doubled in size, there won’t be enough money to go around, he says. Another big concern is that under SAFETEA, mass transit would get an increasingly smaller portion of the funding pie. Currently, new projects under both the highway and transit programs are eligible for 80% federal funding, but SAFETEA
