In a blow to oil refiners, chemical makers and other polluting industries, a federal appeals court threw out a rule that prevented states from implementing tougher pollution-monitoring requirements.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could lead to higher compliance costs and give states, local authorities and environmentalists more data that could be used to prosecute polluters, environmentalists said.

The decision marks the latest instance in which a federal court has rejected the approach to regulating harmful emissions taken by the administration of President George W. Bush. “It is a pretty serious rebuke of the Bush administration’s efforts to tie the hands of states at the behest of industry,” said John Walke, director of the clean-air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The court found the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule under the Clean Air Act “is contrary to the statutory directive that each permit must include adequate monitoring requirements.”

The court’s decision was one in a string of rulings scrapping Bush administration air-quality policies. Last month, the same court struck down the administration’s signature air-quality program, the Clean Air Interstate Rule — one of the few Bush administration efforts applauded by the environmental community. The regulation, announced in 2005 and covering more than two dozen states, sought to slash emissions that contribute to respiratory illnesses by instituting a “cap and trade” system in which companies that exceed their emissions caps can buy allowances from companies that do not.

In February, the appeals court rejected the EPA’s decision to remove mercury from a list of pollutants the agency is required to control at each power plant. Last year, a divided Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the Bush administration had wrongly refused to limit emissions of those gases.

At least someone is looking out for the environment, up until recently, NO one in Washington cared.