PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT

Easy: Trees emit hydrocarbons and the new industrial plant will emit about as much as 30 acres of forest. So the company purchased 30 acres of contiguous pine forest, which it will cut down so as to comply with EPA standards. For as of now, the US has no agency to protect the environment from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Atta, boys! If the Washington, D.C., air should get too dirty, remember the Declaration of Independence, whose paper pollutes the environment with several picocuries of radioactivity - though not enough to compensate for the potassium 40 circulating in Ralph Nader's veins. Shred it, mash it, pulverize it and bury it deep in the ground!

But not in the ground of Oregon, for Oregon has a law forbidding the disposal of radioactive waste; and the law does not define any levels. Which means that coal ash must be shipped out of state, for coal and its ash are quite significantly radioactive. Neither man nor beast shall die in Oregon; or if they do, their earthly remains must be buried in a less environment conscious state, for they are radioactive, too. There simply is no waste that is not radioactive: No water must go down the drain, for even distilled water may contain tritium (radioactive hydrogen). No man's life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session, said Ben Franklin (or was it Mark Twain?), but the Oregon legislature will not even let you urinate: Mark Hatfield and Al Ullman should be arrested as felons if they ever use a toilet in their home state.

This fantastic law goes into effect on March 1, 1979, and we are grieved to hear that last-minute efforts are under way to repeal it. At last report (Feb. 6) it still stood, and we earnestly hope Oregon's environmentalists will succeed in keeping it on the books. It will have inestimable historic value; and there is a certain charm in it's insanity.