Clinton Has Builders and Businesses on Edge : Politics: A shift in environmental policy is expected to be evident as early as next year. Developers and industrial leaders are anxious about how the changes will affect O.C. and rest of the West.

COSTA MESA —  Although Bill Clinton is focused like a laser beam on the nation’s economy, not its ecology, one thing is clear: It won’t be business as usual when it comes to environmental regulations and enforcement, a prospect that has Southern California’s industrial leaders and developers a bit unnerved.

Clinton’s top advisers, outgoing Bush Administration officials, activists and business leaders predict that a transformation in environmental policy will be evident as soon as next year, with much of it aimed squarely at the West.

“Whatever happens in Washington will definitely affect us here,” said Pete DeSimone with the Orange County Chapter of the National Audubon Society. “We have the most environmental problems out here. . . . I expect to see some new faces, hopefully people who are more in tune with the environment.”

As Clinton’s team huddles in Little Rock, Ark., to hammer out its priorities, bits and pieces of his environmental agenda, though still vague, are starting to trickle out.

Bob Hattoy, who was recently appointed to Clinton’s transition team to oversee environmental issues, predicted that a long-debated bill to protect more than 7 million acres of California’s desert as national parks and wilderness will sail through Congress next year and set the tone of the Clinton Administration. Sen. John Seymour, the major obstacle to the bill, was defeated by Dianne Feinstein, who supports it.

“That will be the first big symbol--a ceremony in the Rose Garden with Bill Clinton signing the California Desert Protection Act,” said Hattoy, longtime director of the Sierra Club’s Southern California region.

Faced right off the bat with one of the most divisive issues, the new Administration will tackle the Endangered Species Act as it comes up for reauthorization by Congress.

As a first step, Clinton is expected to convene a “Forest Summit,” probably during his first year in the White House, to try to resolve Pacific Northwest’s long, bitter dispute over how to protect the Northern spotted owl that inhabits redwood forests. Environmentalists, community leaders, logging interests and the federal government, all at odds for four years, will be brought together for the first time.

The goal is to develop innovative ways to save the owl, as well as other endangered species, without major losses of jobs. By the time the new President takes office, the California gnatcatcher, a tiny songbird that nests in some of Southern California’s most valuable coastal real estate, will probably join the nation’s endangered species list.

Also near the top of the President-elect’s environmental agenda are new standards to control urban and farm runoff that pollutes streams and ocean waters, said Brett Hulsey, the Sierra Club’s Great Lakes program director who was the top environmental adviser and a deputy political director in the Clinton campaign.

A potentially huge and costly venture, the prospect of such standards has already prompted concern among Southern California developers as well as farmers in the heartland. The effort will kick off next year, when the Clean Water Act comes before Congress.

Clinton also plans to quickly focus attention on creation of a U.S. energy policy that emphasizes renewable and alternative fuels rather than oil drilling, and start enforcing about 50 rules on industry included but ignored in his predecessor’s Clean Air Act, Hattoy said. In the longer term, he will tackle a genuine “no net loss” policy for wetlands, a freeze of gases linked to global warming at 1990 levels, the shutdown of all waste incinerators and preservation of a large chunk of the oil-rich Arctic, according to Clinton’s three-page environmental agenda.

But as Clinton warns against miracles when it comes to the recession, the same holds true for the environment. In tackling such tempests as the Endangered Species Act and car fuel-efficiency standards, Clinton’s team will butt heads with the most formidable U.S. business giants, from oil companies and auto makers to farmers and ranchers.

At an annual meeting last week of oil company leaders, the hottest topic of conversation was the uneasiness they share over how to perceive the incoming President’s environmental policies. Their biggest fear is that Clinton will live up to his campaign promise to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and California’s outer continental shelf from oil and gas drilling.

“People in the industry are just watching and waiting,” said Earl Ross of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents 250 oil companies. “The key will be who his appointees are. Most important for us is who he appoints as (Environmental Protection Agency) administrator and the secretary of the Interior.”

Although the uncertainty makes industrial leaders edgy, some are optimistic that Clinton’s vow to balance the economy and the environment means the transformation won’t be bad for business--and might even be good. Many hope Clinton can break through the wall that has divided environmentalists and businesses on key issues such as the Endangered Species Act.

“I think there’s more hope than fear,” said Cliff Allenby, vice president of governmental affairs for the California Building Industry Assn., a coalition that includes the state’s largest developers. “If you listened to Clinton during the debates and the campaign, you could reach the conclusion that the Administration would be positive to the (building) industry.

“Clinton really did talk about the interests of both the environment and the economy, and investment in infrastructure in terms of transit and sewers. He said all the right words for the general population, as well as the building community,” he said. “Now they are anxious to see whether Clinton becomes what he said he would, or whether he doesn’t.”

After 12 years of Republican rule, the nation’s environmentalists have a long wish list, yet, realistically, they know they will have difficulty grasping Clinton’s full attention. They were virtually ignored during the presidential campaign, and every local and state environmental initiative in the November election failed--a strong indication that such issues are not top priorities of most Americans.

Still, says Ali Webb, associate director of the League of Conservation Voters in Washington, “there’s a lot of rejoicing going on because we’re back at the table. We don’t own the table, but at least we have a seat there again.”

Webb said the first real test for Clinton is whether his “Rebuild America” program translates into “Bulldoze America” or incorporates environmental concerns in the construction of roads, bridges and sewers.

Patrick Quinn, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency associate administrator in charge of congressional affairs under the Bush Administration, predicts Clinton will try to score some quick hits by offering federal grants for sewage-treatment projects, mandating that industry use the best available technology to control air pollutants, cleaning up contaminated inner-city property and signing a version of the bio-diversity pact that President George Bush rejected during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro this summer.

“My guess is the big issues are not going to get solved in the next two years,” Quinn said, mentioning wetlands protection, reform of the troubled Superfund toxic-waste program and unraveling of the tangled web of hazardous-waste disposal laws.

A couple changes, however, might come so swiftly that the Inaugural Day confetti won’t even have been swept from the streets of Washington before they arrive. If Bush goes forward with a plan to allow strip mining in national parks and a new, relaxed definition of wetlands, Clinton has said he would instantly eliminate both with executive orders.

Many new environmental policies cannot be set by the President alone, and harmony in Congress is far from assured when it comes to issues such as urban runoff standards or new wetlands laws. Congressional Democrats are split on some key issues, particularly wetlands, with Southern Democrats opposed to more stringent protection.

The White House, however, does control enforcement of existing laws, especially with the choice of top appointees, and the disparity between the two administrations is likely to be most striking in the Interior Department, which oversees endangered species, national parks, forests and other public lands.

Bush’s Interior Secretary, Manuel Lujan Jr., has supported mining, drilling and ranching on federal lands, and has been a vocal critic of the Endangered Species Act, saying the law shouldn’t protect all species. His agency also created a backlog of about 600 candidate species--including several dozen in Southern California--awaiting decisions on whether they are to be protected.

In comparison, a new appointee to Interior is expected to support the Endangered Species Act as it comes before Congress next year, and have a stronger conservation ethic that would trickle down to the staff. All the names being bandied about, for example, strongly agree with Clinton about protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and retaining science, not economics, as the primary force behind endangered species protection.

When it comes to endangered species, Clinton’s team can immediately tap into some common ground. Influential California developers, led by the Irvine Co., and environmentalists both agree on the need to switch the law’s emphasis to protecting entire ecosystems in advance, rather than scrambling to save species when they are already on the edge of extinction. Both sides also want the federal government to decide much more quickly which lands should be protected and avoid economic gridlock.

A similar change of direction is likely at the EPA and the Energy Department. EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, former president of the World Wildlife Fund, often had his hands tied by Bush’s budget managers and Vice President Dan Quayle’s competitiveness council.

Industry leaders are hoping to appeal to Clinton’s moderate side. For example, cleaning up runoff isn’t in itself worrisome to businesses, but they do fear the potential of standards so sweeping that street runoff flowing into waterways must be as clean as drinking water.

Sat Tamaribuchi, the Irvine Co.’s senior director of environmental issues, said that would be disastrous, especially to the home-building industry, with a potential national cost of $500 billion annually. “We are very, very concerned about being singled out . . . could have great impact,” Tamaribuchi told a recent gathering of Orange County builders.

Some insiders wonder whether Clinton’s summits and conciliatory approaches will accomplish much of anything. Gov. Pete Wilson made similar stabs at irksome environmental issues--from Sierra Nevada resources to water policy--but failed to knock down barriers.

Clinton’s team, though, grants more empowerment and, at least initially, inspires more trust among environmentalists, especially since Vice President-elect Al Gore is a strong supporter of their cause. “We now have friends in the White House,” Hattoy said. “That’s the big difference.”