So now we understand why Eastern urbanites and Washington politicians continue to extol that broken-down law known as the Endangered Species Act. It doesn’t apply to them. Or perhaps we should say, it didn’t apply to them. Consider the lawsuit over the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a multibillion-dollar project meant to ease gnarled traffic around Washington, D.C.’s fabled Beltway.

It turns out that even though construction could imperil several endangered species, including the bald eagle, bureaucrats at federal agencies — from Fish &, Wildlife to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (organizations that usually delight in environmental laws) — had quickly waved through the project.

The hypocrisy is so blatant that the National Wilderness Institute, a group usually critical of the Endangered Species Act, has felt compelled to sue to halt the project. The government, of all people, is fighting back.

It seems that Washington politicians and commuters are shocked — shocked that an ESA lawsuit is being used so blatantly to halt human activity.

Shortly after the National Wilderness Institute sued, then-Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley said that the suit was “disturbing to anyone who has ever had to sit in a traffic jam on the old bridge.” Good point. Come to think of it, we’re pretty sure Western and rural landowners would agree.

The Endangered Species Act was passed nearly 30 years ago in a show of bipartisan good intentions, to help animals on the brink of extinction. But since that time, environmental groups have hijacked the act, turning it into a bludgeon by which they can enforce their vision of a development-free America. It’s rural parts of the country, where small landowners lack deep pockets and political clout that bear the brunt.

The ESA’s capricious and uneven enforcement only underscores the utter bankruptcy of the law. According to a 1999 report from the House Resources Committee, while 543 species were listed in the five Far West states, only 39 were listed in the Northeast. Critical habitats were designated for 96 species in the West, for just nine in the East. Fish & Wildlife spends more than half its ESA budget in just five Western states alone. Funny how all of those “endangered” animals choose to live in only one-half of the country.

Westerners know from long experience that the ESA is no longer about saving animals, but a legal pretext for stopping lives and livelihoods. Take the recent case in Oregon, where, thanks to some successful hatchery programs, there have been impressive new populations of ESA-listed coho salmon.

Yet when a move was made to delist the fish, environmentalists argued that hatchery salmon were different from “wild” salmon — which must remain listed. But activists were craven enough to admit that the real issue was that delisting coho would allow logging to proceed on previously off-limits areas.

The misuse and power struggles have become so intense that the act itself is paralyzed. The government spends so much time and money defending itself from specious litigation, mostly by environmental groups, that there’s little left to actually devote to flora or fauna. The situation is such a shambles that in order to get anything done the Bush Administration has had to cut a deal: The Interior Department would put money into actually helping the 29 species most in danger of extinction in return for environmental groups giving it a breather from lawsuits over hundreds more species.

Meanwhile, urban hypocrisy rolls on. The Wilderness Institute is also suing over the Washington Aqueduct — the D.C.-area water treatment facility. For years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has dumped sludge from the facility into the Potomac River at levels hundreds of times that allowed in nearby states. The practice potentially violates both the ESA and the Clean Water Act, but the EPA continues to grant the Corps special dispensation.

“Regardless of your political disposition, midnight dumping into an endangered species habitat is unacceptable. What’s going on here is arbitrary, capricious, politically motivated and not scientifically justifiable,” says Rob Gordon, director of the Wilderness Institute.

Given the refusal of Senate liberals to deal with such easy environmental calls as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it seems too much to hope that ESA reform will happen any time soon. But in the meantime there’s some satisfaction in knowing the Woodrow Wilson bald eagles have come home to roost.