The predictability of the presidential election campaign cycle and the usual unpredictability of a wide range of other events make 2004 an environmental crystal-baller's worst nightmare.

Might the California wildfires of last fall be repeated? And if so, with what impacts on forest policies? Is another large regional electrical blackout in the offing? How would that affect congressional action on the energy bill narrowly defeated in 2003? Are more mad cows on the horizon?

Contrasted with the uncertainties of such issues is the calendar-driven inevitability of a presidential election campaign. Notwithstanding its own inevitable uncertainties and surprises, it's likely to be a campaign in which the eventual Democratic nominee, whoever it turns out to be, will try to elevate environmental issues –- perceived by many as a potential Bush administration weakness –- in the campaign.

Those charges and counter-charges will provide reporters ample opportunities to explain the candidates' positions, if editors will give them the space to do so.

A look at an admittedly selective sampling of environmental issues reveals the wide range of topics that environmental reporters might pay attention to in 2004:

If there's one area of environmental policy where Bush administration actions have generated the most media attention so far, it may be air quality –- particularly the administration's regulatory changes for dealing with pollution from old power plants under the Clean Air Act.

Regardless of whether it becomes a significant issue in the presidential campaign, several key developments in coming months will generate coverage opportunities.

By April, the administration is expected to finalize stricter regulations on diesel fuel and on upgraded non-road engines that burn diesel. As proposals, these rules have been praised by national environmental groups. As a result, key environmentalists anticipate that the Bush's re-election campaign will trumpet the formal enactment in an effort to blunt Democratic and environmentalist criticisms of the overall Bush environmental record.

Meanwhile, the diesel regulations could produce state- and local-level reporting opportunities by creating an impetus for rules requiring retrofits for older non-road engines. Such regulations have already been discussed in some locations as a way to reduce local smog and fine-particle pollution.

Also by April, federal officials are expected to release final maps designating metropolitan areas in violation of a new, stricter standard for ground-level ozone, or smog. Violation designations require state cleanup plans, and the new maps will trigger such measures in numerous locations not previously requiring them.

In late December 2003, a federal appeals court blocked implementation of the Bush administration's highly contentious rule changes to exempt certain expansions and modifications at large industrial plants from a requirement to install modern emission controls. In the months ahead, the ruling could re-ignite an already simmering controversy in several states over whether, and how, the administration will enforce old rules calling for such state-of-the-art pollution equipment.

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Water issues are expected to be prominent in a number of locations this year, as officials grapple with increasingly tough decisions about how to allocate water supplies among competing human uses and environmental needs.

In Texas, for instance, debate over water resources took a surprising Republican-versus-Republican turn in 2003. Much official attention will remain focused on water management this year, too, as a high-level state committee begins deliberation. Meanwhile, more discussion is expected over proposals for trans-basin sales of water within the state.

In the Southeast, more debate is likely over a controversial regional water compact –- now in the courts –- involving Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Last year, in a victory for environmentalists, an effort to privatize water resources failed in the Georgia legislature, setting the stage for more debate over related issues this year.

A key water issue in Florida also has national significance –- the restoration of the Everglades. An $8-billion state-federal restoration plan will continue to be implemented this year, but now under the terms of a new Florida law. Backed by the sugar industry and signed by Governor Jeb Bush last year, the law will delay some of the plan's actions if it survives legal challenges.

Veteran journalists also expect water issues to stay in the media spotlight in the arid West, where they've been particularly contentious lately because of heightened concerns resulting from 2002's severe drought.

In Colorado, for example, officials will contend with water-management issues this year in the shadow of voters' rejection last November of a $2-billion loan program for new dams and reservoirs. In other several parts of the West, there are extensive, unresolved Indian claims on water resources. And endangered species regulations continue to intersect with some water issues in the region.

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Diverse issues related to fisheries, coastal conservation, and oceans will attract environmental reporters' interest in a number of states.

In New England, strict, court-ordered fishing restrictions, scheduled to take effect this spring, are prompting outcries from disgruntled commercial fisheries and talk by some officials about trying to delay the federal rules.

In the Mid-Atlantic region, state officials will be trying this year to advance a new plan to turn the long-running effort to restore Chesapeake Bay more into a state-federal partnership like the Everglades plan. A key aim of the plan, announced in December, would be to obtain more federal funds to help pay for an $11-billion restoration effort.

In Louisiana, a long-awaited plan to restore the state's eroded coastline is on hold until the release, possibly this year, of a federal study and related environmental impact statement. The release of these documents was delayed by requests for changes from White House officials in the Office of Management and Budget and Council on Environmental Quality.

A major fight over wild salmon and electric-turbine dams may flare up this year as the latest chapter in a long-running controversy in the Pacific Northwest. Federal officials are under a May 2003 court order to devise a more aggressive plan for saving salmon from Columbia River dams' turbines, but utility officials want to reduce the costly water releases that have been ordered to protect endangered salmon in the past. A federal report in late December acknowledged that delays in some measures in a regional salmon plan were a "significant concern," but contended the plan was adequate.

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Among the many environment-related issues in the energy bill that came close to passage in Congress last year are provisions to increase oil and gas exploration and production on public lands, mainly in the Rocky Mountain region.

If a similar bill is passed this year and signed into law, expect more of the kinds of environmental fights already raging across much of the West over Bush administration moves to facilitate more energy-related activities on public lands.

In one recent flare-up, New Mexico environmentalists in January said they will fight a new proposal by the Bureau of Land Management to open a large area of pristine grassland in the southern part of the state to oil and gas activities.

Another long-simmering environmental controversy on public grasslands –- the impacts of widespread livestock grazing –- rolls into 2004 with renewed force in the wake of the administration's late-December release of a set of proposals to change various regulations.

Hearings are scheduled on these rule changes in four Western states and in Washington, D.C. in late January and February, and the proposals are already under attack from environmental and sportsmen's groups. One key proposal would let officials have more time than Clinton-era rules would allow before requiring livestock owners to modify environmentally harmful practices.

Recent events suggest no slowdown in news about forest practices and policy, either.

On December 10, for instance, several conservation groups sued to stop logging plans for Southeast Alaska's massive Tongass National Forest, the nation's largest national forest. Then, on December 23, the Bush administration removed an even bigger area of the Tongass from road-building and logging prohibitions imposed there in the last days of the Clinton administration.

Meanwhile, continuing fallout from last October's wildfires in Southern California generated news reports in December that signal the possibility of renewed debate this year over federal endangered species policies. Local officials blamed federal wildlife officials for delaying controlled brush-clearing burns on national forest lands for several years while they studied the potential impacts on rare plants and animals.

Taken together, these issues and the dynamic of a presidential election and congressional campaigns should provide plenty of grist for environmental reporters. The key question, as always, is how these issues will fare in the increasingly competitive battle for finite air time and print column inches.

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