Most people wouldn't put a fire pit next to a family room. Obviously, they wouldn't want smoke dirtying the air in a place where they want to relax and enjoy leisure hours with family members.

But under President Bush, the Environmental Protection Agency -- whose job, you might recall, is to protect the environment -- is rewriting the rules to make it easier for major air polluters to locate plants near our national parks.

That's right, those places where millions of Americans go to get away from noise, ugliness and … dirty air. The most scenic parts of the country, where from high elevations you can see forever -- or until the view is ruined by murky clouds of toxic chemicals spewed by coal-fired power plants and oil refineries.

The new air-quality rules are a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to leave its mark on the landscape. And, if President-elect Barack Obama doesn't reverse them, they will smudge some of the most beautiful areas in the world.

The National Parks Conservation Association has identified 10 parks nationwide as immediately threatened by dirty air. At risk are Zion, Canyonlands and Capitol Reef national parks in Utah, the Grand Canyon and other parks and monuments in the West.

The new rules will change how pollution levels are measured so that spikes that violate the Clean Air Act can be ignored. This hardly seems in keeping with the EPA's mission to protect park environments, but that has rarely been the goal of the EPA under Bush.

Rather, the outgoing president has made a priority of encouraging industries to continue polluting and erasing restrictions and requirements that force them to reduce the gunk they spew into the air.

Even EPA administrators oppose the new rules. Five of the 10 regional administrators dissented, and another four submitted written criticisms. All but two are political appointees who, despite sharing party membership with him, obviously don't like their employer running roughshod over America's outdoor treasures.

The administrator covering Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, wrote in her dissent that the proposal gives the EPA "inappropriate discretion" in its pollution calculations.

Bush's fierce loyalty to the carbon-based energy industry and indifference to the environment will leave much for the new president to repair.