From: Harel Barzilai <harelb@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Date: 16 Aug 92 17:34 PDT
Subject: The Environmental Pollution Preside
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1640500017:000:5614
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!harelb    Aug 16 17:34:00 1992


/* Written  6:58 pm  Jun  6, 1992 by harelb@math.cornell.edu in cdp:en.cleanair */
/* ---------- "The Environmental Pollution Preside" ---------- */
From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: The Environmental Pollution President


                   **************************************
                   "The Environmental Pollution President"
                   **************************************
		      *The New York Times* OP-ED
		  Wednesday, April 29, 1992 page 25A
                   **************************************
	  Transcribed by: Kwynn Buess <buess@phakt.usc.edu>

by Henry A. Waxman, a Democratic Representative from California and
chairman of the House Health and Environment Subcommittee.

reported from Washington

     On Earth Day, President Bush said that the main environmental
accomplishment of his Administration was "proposing, negotiating and
signing into law a new Clean Air Act that will cut sulfur dioxide
emissions in half, reduce toxic air emissions and clean up smog in
cities across America."

     What he didn't say was that in less than a year and a half, his
Administration has broken the law 35 times in failing to issue
regulations needed to carry out the act.  He forgot to mention that
his Administration refuses to control toxic lead emissions from
incinerators or cancer-causing fumes from motor vehicles.

     And this week he is expected to weaken the act further by giving
major air polluters the power to increase allowable pollution levels.

     Since adoption of the Clean Air Act in 1990, the Administration
has repeatedly violated the law to bestow political favors.
Campaigning in Texas last month, the President announced he would
relax controls on nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants.  One
week later, he went to Michigan and told auto executives he would
exempt them from controls on benzene emissions required by the law.

     Even worse, Administration officials have not kept a wall between
personal interests and official duties.  Vice President Dan Quayle
intervened to kill a proposal under the act to recycle
newspapers--even though his family trust had a multimillion-dollar
investment in a paper mill, which profited from reduced competition
with makers of recycled newsprint.  His top aide, Allan Hubbard,
changed a proposal to monitor sulfur dioxide emissions that was
opposed by a company in which he owns stock.

     I praised President Bush when he announced the new clean-air
legislation in June 1989.  Then I watched with dismay as his aides
worked behind the scenes to weaken it, as when John Sununu, the former
chief of staff, led a legislative effort to derail the President's
alternative fuels program.

     As the legislative process continued, the President became a
bigger and bigger obstacle.  He fought efforts to strengthen controls
on urban smog and toxic emissions.  He opposed tighter controls on
ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.  His aides lobbied against
proposals to reformulate gasoline to make it cleaner.  But in the end,
he lost most of these battles.  Congress passed a much-strengthened
Clean Air Act, and the President, to his credit, did not veto it.

     Now the new law may become an empty vessel.  Rather than carrying
it out, the White House is illegally seeking to rewrite it through the
regulatory process.  This effort is led by the Vice President's
Council on Competitiveness, which meets in secret with industry
lobbyists to set a deregulatory agenda at odds with the Clean Air Act.

     The requirement currently at the top of the Competitiveness
Council's hit list is a proposal by the Environmental Protection
Agency to require major air polluters to obtain pollution permits.
The council forced the E.P.A. to insert a loophole allowing permit
holders to increase pollution levels and rewrite important terms
without public scrutiny.

     This loophole is brazenly illegal.  The Clean Air Act states that
there must be "opportunity for public comment and a hearing...of
permit actions, including...revisions."  Although seemingly technical,
the loophole strikes at the act's heart.  Permits control urban smog,
toxic emissions, acid rain and ozone-depleting chemicals.  A weak
permit program undermines nearly all of the gains achieved by the act.

     The E.P.A. recognized the problem.  Last August, the agency's
general counsel took the unprecedented step of declaring in an
interoffice memo that the loophole was "highly unlikely" to survive
court challenge.  In October, the E.P.A. Administrator, William
Reilly, sent a new proposal to the White House that eliminated the
loophole.

     The permit rule has become the battlefield for control of
environmental regulations.  The final rule was required by law to be
issued last November, but the Competitiveness Council has refused to
let Mr. Reilly do so unless he reinstates the loophole.  Now the
matter is before the President, who will probably side with big
business and the Competitiveness Council, despite the absence of any
legal support for this decision.

     The President's calculus is entirely political.  He thinks few
people are paying much attention to complicated regulatory issues.  He
feels he can please important corporate supporters by undermining the
Clean Air Act without tarnishing his claim to be the environmental
President.

     Ultimately what is at stake is much more than the permit rule or
even the Clean Air Act.  Our constitutional system is undermined if
the President can ignore with impunity the requirements of a law that
took a decade of public activism to enact.