No bounds

It's incredible, the ability to continue to amaze and disgust after seven years.

A federal plan to protect endangered whales along the East Coast has been caught in interagency warfare and held in limbo by the White House, according to documents made public on Wednesday by a Democratic congressman and an environmental group.

Right whales, which were hunted to near extinction over five centuries, number perhaps 350. Roughly three a year are injured or killed in collisions with oceangoing vessels like containerized cargo ships.

The regulation drafted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would require ships to cut their speed by 40 percent or more, to 10 knots, near whale feeding and calving grounds.

The documents released by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, including replies by NOAA scientists to their critics in the Office of the Vice President and the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, indicated that the critics wanted to rework the agency’s scientific data and weaken the draft regulation.

The slower speeds would increase shipping costs and might also make it more difficult to steer through rough seas, shipping interests said.