Earth Day Dust-Up Between Candidates

America’s 35th Earth Day celebration turned from garden party into political battle Thursday, as President Bush proposed a new initiative on wetlands, only to be accused by John F. Kerry and environmentalists of undercutting protections for wetlands during his first term.

The venues for the eco-punch-out included a scenic estuary here in Maine, where Bush proposed to restore 3 million acres of wetlands, and the University of Houston in Texas, where Kerry used the president’s home state to renew his call for 20% of the nation’s electricity to be produced from alternative and renewable energy sources by 2020.

The president marked Earth Day with a visit to the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, a 1,600-acre public-private partnership on the coast of Maine, just a few miles from the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport.

He pledged to “create, improve and protect” at least 3 million acres of wetlands over the next five years -- a significantly more ambitious goal than those established by his father, the first President Bush, or Bill Clinton, both of whom called for “no net loss” of wetlands.

The president did not propose new spending to meet his goal, but instead highlighted his fiscal year 2005 budget proposals, which included $349 million for two major existing wetlands programs, the conservation reserve program and the North American wetlands conservation act grants program.

The funding would represent an increase of more than 50% over fiscal year 2001, according to the White House.

“My administration has put in place some of the most important antipollution controls in a decade -- policies that have reduced harmful emissions, reclaimed brown fields, cut phosphorus releases into our rivers and streams,” he said.

But in Houston, Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, countered by arguing that Bush had compiled the worst environmental record of any president. He predicted that, if reelected, Bush would “walk away” from the wetlands goal.

Kerry’s critique, presented to an audience of nearly 1,000, was joined by two national environmental groups.

“America’s wetlands are in more trouble today than they have been in decades, because current federal policies increasingly expose them to pollution, dredging and filling,” according to “America’s Wetlands: Nowhere Near No-Net-Loss,” a paper released Thursday by the National Wildlife Federation.

The organization complained that the nation still could not reliably measure the health or extent of the country’s wetlands.

Julie Sibbing, the foundation’s wetlands specialist, said the president’s alterations to the Clean Water Act have resulted in the removal of an estimated 20 million acres of wetlands from protection.

Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club’s environmental quality program, also disputed Bush’s claim of expanding protections of wetlands.

“An Earth Day photo-op can’t hide the damage the Bush administration’s policies are doing to America’s wetlands,” Hopkins said.

The presumptive Democratic nominee was making his third environmental stop in the South in three days.

Unlike his appearance in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, which he used to introduce plans for cutting toxics, paying for more open space and supporting states trying to fend off coastal erosion, Kerry mostly hammered on the theme that America should seek alternative sources of energy.

“We need development. We need to grow.... We need to build the homes. We need to grow our cities,” Kerry said.

“But I know we can do it in a way that is sustainable and smart, that respects the laws of nature.”

He said that finding and developing new sources of energy would not only clean the skies and waters, but help create new jobs.

But in Washington, the Bush campaign released a statement by Christie Whitman, the president’s first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, that was critical of Kerry’s environmental record in the Senate.

“I question where John Kerry has been in recent years when environmental issues have been debated. Kerry’s silence was notable when the Clinton administration failed to act on mercury emissions from power plants,” Whitman said.

“Kerry calls the environment a top priority, yet he missed the vote on healthy forests legislation. Kerry also blocked the president’s energy bill, which included a provision to phase out MTBE use and increased funding for renewable energy.”

Kerry, meanwhile, was fending off an environmental bugaboo of his own.

In Tampa, Kerry implied he would favor oil drilling in some parts of the Gulf of Mexico -- an apparent effort to show that he was not an environmental extremist.

But when the University of Florida’s student newspaper, The Gator, reported that Kerry supported drilling off the Florida coast, a brief furor erupted.

Gov. Jeb Bush blasted Kerry for suggesting a policy anathema to the vast majority of Floridians.

The Gator quickly retracted its story, while complaining that Kerry had been ambiguous. And the Democratic candidate released a statement saying he never supported oil drilling near Florida, but only in deep waters off other states that are more sanguine about the practice.

Chen reported from Wells, Maine, and Rainey from Houston.