SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge today rejected President Bush’s attempt to exempt the Navy from environmental laws protecting endangered whales from sound waves caused by underwater sonar blasts during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast. Bush issued an order Jan. 15 that sought to override the judge’s order limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in Channel Islands waters frequented by whales and other marine mammals. The president said the restrictions would interfere with military exercises that are ‘essential to national security.’ But U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said today that Bush lacked authority in this case to suspend the National Environmental Policy Act, on which her earlier order was based. That law requires federal agencies to examine environmental damage that their actions might cause and propose measures to prevent the harm. Cooper – who had previously found that the Navy failed to follow those requirements – said that federal regulations, in place since 1978, allow the president to override the environmental law only in an emergency. ‘The Navy’s current ’emergency’ is simply a creature of its own making … its failure to prepare adequate environmental documentation in a timely fashion,’ Cooper […]