White House Urges EPA to Ease Up
WASHINGTON — Under strong political and business pressure, the White House is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to be more lenient with cities, industries and utilities that face the prospect of having to make sharp reductions in air pollution over the next 15 years.
Some of President Clinton’s most senior aides, including White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, pressed EPA officials at week’s end to back away from a stringent plan the agency has proposed and instead accept a significantly softer alternative.
Critics of the alternative, including experts at the EPA, said it would offer little if any improvement over the current standards that the new plan would replace.
The White House effort prompted sharp resentment inside the EPA, with part of the ill-feeling stemming from the absence from the fray of Vice President Al Gore. Environmentalists were counting on Gore--known for his support of their causes--to rally to the EPA’s side in the internal debate over air standards.
“It seems he is strategically out of play,†one EPA official complained.
But within the White House, there is growing grumbling over the refusal by Carol M. Browner, the EPA’s top administrator and a Clinton appointee, to accept the suggested modifications to her agency’s proposal.
“She’s very stubborn--very, very stubborn,†a senior White House aide said. “And for some reason she thinks she’s got God on her side.â€
The dispute between the White House and the EPA reflects the complex politics behind what is by far the most difficult environmental decision the administration has faced.
The proposed revisions to the clean air standards were developed under the pressure of a federal court order directing the EPA to determine whether new knowledge about the health effects of air pollution dictated updating the government’s program. The standards define the concentrations of fine particles, or soot, and ozone, or smog, that are deemed unhealthful. Cities and states would have until 2002 to develop strategies to counter the pollution and then would have up to 10 years more to meet the standards.
Browner has argued that the court order left the EPA little room to compromise the proposed standards.
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Nonetheless, on Friday the White House sent her its latest proposal. Gene Sperling, the head of the National Economic Council, and Kathleen McGinty, who chairs the Council on Environmental Quality, proposed two options to Browner, one of them increasing by about 20% the amount of soot that could float through the air before the government considers the air unhealthy.
An EPA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, complained that this would set the soot standard at “the same level where you’re seeing detrimental effects.†These generally include aggravation of respiratory diseases, particularly asthma in children.
The White House officials also proposed changing the formula for measuring smog. The plan’s effect would be to allow local levels of smog to exceed accepted standards more often than they could under the pending EPA proposal before communities are subject federal penalties.
“These proposed standards are basically no more stringent than the current standards. It’s just a change in form, but not in content,†said David Fairley, a statistician with California’s Air Quality Maintenance District in San Francisco.
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Under the court order, the administration must issue the final standards by July 19.
The EPA plan has proved controversial since it was unveiled in November.
The Times reported earlier this year that internal documents reflected wide disagreement among other government agencies about the plan. The documents included a Department of Transportation analysis of the impact on states of the proposed standards. Under the EPA proposal, the department warned, California’s “economic recovery . . . could grind to a halt as prospective new industries discover a host of additional air quality obstacles.â€
And outside the government, the proposal’s foes include industries and utilities that fear that the tougher air pollution standards will force them to install expensive equipment to reduce their emissions. Community governments are worried that factories will be forced to close, eliminating jobs.
Congress has the option of turning down the plan, but it is not required to vote approval for it to take effect.
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