I don't want to alarm anyone, but it appears that the Bush administration is dropping the ball, intentionally, in prosecuting polluters. Who could have imagined it?

The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.

Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials, and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.

Eric Schaeffer, for example, was the director of the EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement in the Bush administration, but resigned in protest because the administration refused to seriously pursue enforcement. "You don't get cleanup, and you don't get deterrence," Schaeffer said. "I don't think this is a problem with agents in the field. They're capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House."