Ambushed from within: the White House tries to smother the Clean Air Act

Sierra, Sept-Oct, 1992 by Reed McManus

When George Bush signed the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act nearly two years ago, it was a rare opportunity for environmentalists and the Republican administration to stand side by side. Clean-air activists made numerous compromises to get the bill and the president in the same room together, but the bill's passage ended a decade of haggling over what to do with outdated legislation last revised in 1977. The 1990 act addressed acid rain for the first time, and included new ways of dealing with airborne toxics and smog.

The president's support was instrumental in maneuvering the bill through Congress, and Bush has gotten plenty of mileage out of the Clean Air Act since, often citing it as his major domestic-policy achievement. But along with catchy phrases like "no new taxes" and "no net loss of wetlands," the act is joining the administration's ballooning "that-was-then, this-is-now" file. Because of his conviction that regulations are the scourge of a healthy economy, George Bush has eviscerated the centerpiece of his claim to an environmental presidency.

The obvious difficulty facing the Clean Air Act is that it aims to force industry to accept some of the cost of cleaning up the air pollution it creates. This sets it up as a ready-made target for the White House's pro-business crusaders--the Office of Management and Budget and the Council on Competitiveness, the latter headed by Vice-President Dan Quayle. While the veep's cabal has no statutory authority, it has something better: the ear of the president. Making matters worse, the Environmental Protection Agency, charged with the unenviable task of writing regulations for a chief executive who's dug in his anti-regulatory heels, has repeatedly failed to put the Clean Air Act into effect.

The White House's most stunning repudiation of the act occurred this year when it moved to shut the public out of the law's crucial permit process. The states are in charge of issuing permits to some 35,000 factories, power plants, and other major pollution sources, but the EPA sets the minimum standards. Because industry howled when it heard that the EPA intended to allow the public to comment on minor changes in emissions, the Bush administration decided to allow a company to increase its emissions by what, in a worst-case scenario, could add up to 245 tons per year without prior approval or scrutiny. (EPA Administrator William Reilly's idea of a "minor permit adjustment" was five tons per year.) The new proviso also allows the companies to go ahead with their pollution increases during the 45 days the EPA and the 90 days the states have to object. If there is no objection by then, the requests are automatically approved. When Reilly balked at issuing a rule that EPA lawyers said was patently illegal, Bush simply bypassed the agency.

Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the principal authors of the Clean Air Act, immediately charged that the White House's pollute-without-penalty move "carves the heart out" of the law. The new rule may not be significant for an oil refinery or chemical plant, which may emit several million tons of pollutants every year; but for a smaller manufacturer, it's miasma from heaven. If several firms in a single industrialized area take advantage of the waiver at once, the effect could be an increase of a thousand or more extra tons of pollutants in the air every year. For citizens, public notice occurs when they start coughing.

It's really no surprise that the White House would attack the Clean Air Act, despite the president's claimed pride of authorship. The administration had already fought and lost two battles to eliminate public review during Senate debates on the bill. And the Competitiveness Council has pecked at the act ever since its passage, handing out exemptions like candy to power-plant operators, automobile manufacturers, and newspaper publishers, among others.

The EPA has also done its part to cripple the Clean Air Act. The agency has failed to meet more than 50 important regulatory deadlines, effectively leaving the states (which face a loss of federal funds if they miss their deadlines) up in the air. Minimum permit standards, for example, were issued months late and only after nine states, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed suit. When the missed deadlines piled high, Waxman went to court under the Clean Air Act's citizen-suit provisions. (He is likely to be joined by the Sierra Club.)

The EPA says it wants to comply; it's just that the 788-page 1990 law is so much bulkier than the 68-page 1970 one. Critics, however, cite congressional testimony in 1991 in which agency officials confidently stated that they had the resources to meet the act's timetable.

The crux of the matter isn't a weighty law, though, but political interference from above. "The EPA has actually done a fairly good job of drafting clean-air regulations," says Sierra Club Washington representative Blake Early. "What's causing delays is wrangling between the EPA and White House officials. The administration wants to snatch back the control it lost in legislative debate." Unless that impasse is resolved, a sweeping pollution law will continue to be swept under the White House rug.