TURBULENCE AHEAD FOR THE CLEAN AIR ACT

...Under these circumstances, environmental groups apparently Will need to forge as many alliances as possible to ward off the attacks...

...In 1977, when the Act came up for amendment, Congress itself permitted a four-year extension—after the automobile industry threatened to shut down plants or ignore the law...

...But according to a Council on Environmental Quality report in January, 87 per cent of the nation's integrated iron and steel facilities are still violating emission limits...

...Some of these areas also fail to meet health standards for particulates, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide—all damaging to the health in both the long and short run...

...Government authorities generally have concentrated on controlling larger particles, which constitute the bulk of the total...

...Current regulations get in the way of energy development, industry argues—a claim called into question by the National Commission on Air Quality...

...Within the past two years, twenty-nine state governments have approved laws requiring auto emission inspection programs by 1982 to hasten cleanup efforts...

...21 billion annually in medical bills and damage to vegetation and property...

...In its current form, the Act requires EPA to set nationwide air quality standards, and then requires each state to adopt methods to achieve them...

...The stricter limits finally were imposed late in 1980, almost nine years after EPA first suggested a phase-down of lead in gasoline...

...Industry also wants to repeal the substance of provisions to prevent "significant" deterioration of air quality in national parks, wilderness areas, and other clean-air regions...

...But after a barrage of industry lobbying, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) extended the deadline...

...And even though three-quarters of 1981 model-year cars are meeting all statutory standards, the auto industry has begun lobbying Congress again to relax the carbon monoxide standard by more than 100 per cent...

...However unpersuasive the economic argument for loosening air pollution rules, industry could make the argument stick on Capitol Hill, captive as it is to Reaganomics and a sense of economic doom if action—any action—is not taken...

...The Air Quality Commission has suggested that Congress consider at least one possible approach to this dilemma: Compel EPA to set additional new "secondary" air standards to limit total emissions of a particular pollutant in a multi-state region...

...The commission also said Congress ought to push EPA to consider regulating tiny particles, responsible for much of the visible haze over urban areas...

...They have considerable power on their side...

...As a result, states frequently blame each other for pollution problems...

...To some extent, Congress itself has acquiesced in these evasions by writing vague prescriptions that have given industry leverage in lobbying the EPA...

...Industry, stung by the costs of pollution controls required by the Act, is eager to gut it...

...The kind of fine-tuning the Clean Air Act really needs would tighten the legal requirements established by Congress, and leave fewer areas to EPA's discretion...

...But the EPA has dragged its feet even when legislative intent was unequivocal...

...One of the changes the industry lobby would like to see is a legal requirement to weigh costs against benefits when air quality standards are set—a procedure which a House oversight subcommittee recently and properly concluded was "far too primitive" to be used as a basis for environmental standards...

...The environmental lobby played a key role in the 1977 revisions which,— in spite of the extension of some deadlines—closed many loopholes in the Act...

...An increase in diesel cars is expected to exacerbate the problem...

...A recent poll taken for the Council on Environmental Quality indicated that 76 per cent of the respondents continue to voice a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of concern about air pollution, compared to 16 per cent who were "not very much" concerned and only 7 per cent who were not concerned "at all...

...Industry, for its part, has used the courts to block or delay tighter controls...

...But even if all these events take place—and that is highly unlikely, given the Reagan Administration's anti-regulatory stance—the law appears inadequate to deal with several critical problems, including interstate pollution and emissions of tiny toxic particles...

...Currently, the law requires EPA to set national standards strict enough to protect such susceptible population groups as young children and asthmatics...

...With Reagan in office and the economy clearly in trouble, that view may find favor with Congress...

...Many state and local governments have enacted standards stronger than those required by Federal law to minimize local pollution...

...Reagan's environmental regulators certainly won't provide a counterweight...

...Only days later, Reagan fired the professional staff of the Council on Environmental Quality and closed EPA's public information office...

...EPA finally issued the rules eighteen months late, and only after environmentalists obtained a court order compelling EPA to carry out the law to avoid a contempt citation...

...The 1970 Act set strict goals, as former Senator Edmund Muskie put it, "to hold industry's feet to the fire...

...These stacks, located mainly in the Middle West and Southeast, reduce ground-level pollution in the immediate vicinity, but disperse it for long distances...

...Canada, meanwhile, strenuously argues that U.S.-generated sulfur pollution is destroying hundreds of Canadian lakes and threatening thousands of others...

...And Reagan's choice to head the EPA, Bell Telephone attorney Anne Gorsuch, was described by one acquaintance as "someone who's going to make Watt look rather benign" (although she did, as a Colorado state representative, support a controversial vehicle emission control program required by EPA...

...James C. Miller III, chief of Reagan's "regulatory reform" task force, has singled out the Clean Air Act as his top priority...

...A report recently published by the White House Council on Environmental Quality concluded that air quality improvement over the decade prevented almost 14,000 premature deaths each year and saved more than Francis J. O'Donnell covers environmental issues in Washington for Pasha Publications and is writing a history of the Clean Air Act...

...Other studies show poor people, who do not have the choice, usually live in areas with dirtiest air...

...through pre-combustion washing of high-sulfur coal—without threatening jobs...

...Much industry lobbying is being coordinated by an ad hoc organization known as the Clean Air Act Forum, set up late last year by such corporate heavyweights as the Business Roundtable, the American Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, the Edison Electric Institute, and the American Paper Institute...

...Muskie did not foresee the extent of bureaucratic diffidence, industrial recalcitrance, or Congressional timidity...

...But it could be worse, and would have been, had it not been for the Clean Air Act, which now faces a difficult battle for renewal by Congress...

...Most significant is the abContact For alerts on legislative activity (hearings, votes) relating to the Clean Air Act, write the National Clean Air Coalition, 530 Seventh Street SE, Washington, D.C.20003...

...sence of former Senator Muskie, the principal author of every clean air bill since 1963 and the acknowledged Congressional expert on the subject...

...Interior Secretary James Watt, responsible for protecting national parks, filed suit against EPA rules while director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation...

...Although industry likes to claim it only wants to "fine-tune" the Clean Air Act, its proposals would actually repeal some of the law's significant safeguards...

...The law is already the product of almost two decades of Washington-style compromise—a flawed instrument of reform...

...Unfortunately, air pollution disregards state boundaries...

...Whether or not the system will respond to the desires of its citizens is another matter...

...In the initial Act, for example, Congress gave the auto industry until 1975 to begin building cars that would reduce tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide and ozone-producing hydrocarbons by 90 per cent...

...The rocky history of the current act suggests the difficulty of getting industry to comply with the law—or even getting the bureaucracy to enforce the law...

...Federal authorities believe tall stacks contribute significantly to acid rain in Canada and the Northeastern United States...

...Electric utilities have built more than 280 tall smoke stacks to avoid installing pollution controls...

...Unfortunately, that kind of fine-tuning is not likely to emerge from the Ninety-seventh Congress...

...Environmentalists also have begun discussions with the United Mine Workers to try to find ways to reduce sulfur pollution— for instance...

...At best, such a change would probably legitimatize prevailing smog levels in Los Angeles, New York, and other cities...

...As if to point out who's calling the shots in this Administration, Vice President George Bush announced in March that EPA would relax rules designed to clean up dirty-air areas...

...But the Business Roundtable, the influential lobby headed by Exxon Chairman Clifton C. Garvin Jr., has suggested that the standards be loosened to protect only against "medically significant physiologic or pathologic changes, generally evidenced by permanent damage or incapacitating illness to the individual" (emphasis added...

...Within the past three years, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have blamed part of their pollution on Ohio, while Kentucky has made similar charges against Indiana...

...Environmental regulations have for some time been one of industry's favorite scapegoats for falling economic productivity...

...Stepping into the void is Republican Senator Robert Stafford of Vermont, new head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who says he wants to defend current law...

...air pollution was "substantially" under control...

...But other committee Republicans have already induced him to grant key business lobbies—including the National Coal Association , the Edison Electric Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce—veto power over an important committee staff position...

...If Congress were to do some checking, it would find no evidence to indicate that public concern about air pollution is dwindling appreciably...

...The commission noted that air pollution control has accounted, on the average, for only 2.38 per cent of industry's capital expenses...

...Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman, the likely author of the Administration's formal position on clean air amendments, personally championed industry's cause while a member of Congress...

...The same coal industry tract says current Federal standards are not really needed to protect against damage to vegetation and property, since "protected values" are "usually things that have some finite value and can be repaired or replaced if they are damaged or destroyed...

...New Jersey and Connecticut have assailed New York, while the Empire State has counterattacked against Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, and Michigan...

...Polls are not the only indicator of support for clean air...

...Current law empowers EPA to regulate "total" particulate pollution...

...While this approach has significantly improved air quality, recent scientific studies indicate it pays The loopholes are already insufficient attention to fine particles, which can carry toxic metals deep into the lungs and trigger a variety of respiratory diseases and possibly cancer...

...The fine particles problem could become much worse in future years, according to a recent National Academy of Sciences report...

...More than a decade after the nation's first sweeping Clean Air Act was passed, 140 million people live in regions that violate the law's health standards for ozone, the pollutant that drove scores of Los Angeles residents to hospitals last October 8—the same day Ronald Reagan proclaimed that U.S...

...The National Coal Association, a key lobbying partner of the Round-table, explains in a background paper that the change could permit "acceptable" adverse health affects, including labored breathing, "a runny nose or a cough...

...Environmental lobbyists, notably Friends of the Earth and the National Resources Defense Council, are asking Congress for speedy control of toxic pollutants and respirable particles, along with measures to control acid rain...

...The report says increased use of coal and synthetic fuels could increase fine particles pollution—even if total particulates continue declining...

...If industry has its way, the result could be significant new pollution, destruction of panoramic vistas in the Southwest, and the possible transfer of many industrial jobs to the Sunbelt...

...The lead industry sued four times to evade stricter limits on gasoline lead, a pollutant documented to cause brain damage in children...

...The original Act required major industrial plants to meet state-set emission standards by 1977...

...EPA is currently defending its regulations against fifty legal challenges by industry, while 121 industry groups are attacking recent EPA rules for setting fines for clean air violations...

...Steel and utility industries were, in some respects, even less cooperative...

...But this time around, environmentalists face a different economic and political climate...

...And EPA studies have discovered that Los Angeles and San Francisco area residents who can afford to are willing to spend considerably more in annual housing costs simply to relocate in areas with cleaner air...

...The chairman of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, Murray Weidenbaum, is well known for advocating use of cost-benefit analyses for air standards, while top White House environmental aide Daniel Boggs contributed to a Heritage Foundation report advocating the emasculation of EPA...

...Despite a vast number of new industrial and power plants and an increase in automobile driving over the past decade, emissions of several common and dangerous pollutants have actually dropped: Since 1970, urban levels of particulate and sulfur dioxide pollutants have been cut 40 per cent, carbon monoxide 35 per cent...

...The new Administration could exert substantial influence on Capitol Hill, particularly considering key Congressional changes since the law's last renewal...

...EPA career officials— including the acting chief of its air pollution control program—learned of Bush's action by reading the newspapers...

...the change was one urged by steel and coal industries...

...Congress ordered the agency to issue rules by August 1979 to protect scenic vistas in wilderness areas and national parks...

...The National Commission on Air Quality, which included a bipartisan delegation from Congress as well as representatives from business, labor, state, local, and environmental groups, recently concluded that most current air quality standards could be met in most parts of the country within the next decade—if defiant industries were forced to adopt needed controls, if new cars continue meeting current standards, and if urban auto standards are enforced through inspection programs...

...The consequence is that a half-dozen additional years worth of polluting vehicles are now on the road and will remain there for most of the decade...

...To achieve maximum impact, however, environmental groups probably need to make a more aggressive effort to cultivate businesses harmed by pollution, including recreation and tourism industries in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, and pollution-control equipment makers...

...The Act will soon come before a thus-far docile Congress, which may well help Reagan live up to his campaign pledge to "invite the coal and steel industry to rewrite" the law...

...Even with its limited success, the Clean Air Act has become an important symbol of environmental regulation, and it has therefore been chosen by the Reagan Administration as a major target for "regulatory reform...

...Turned into workers or consumers, clean-air loving citizens feel the strain of conflicting priorities...

...Opinion polls consistently show public support for air quality improvement regardless of cost...

...Major environmental organizations have won support from the United Steelworkers of America by agreeing to back extension of steel-related deadlines until 1985 if industry ploughs the saved money into modernization...

...Industry can always respond with powerful threats: to close down or move, to raise utility rates or automobile prices...

...Yet the National Commission on Air Quality found that the Clean Air Act has little impact on the economy...