House Rebuffs Reagan, Passes Clean Water Bill

The House, moving quickly to send a strong message to President Reagan, voted overwhelmingly Thursday for an $18-billion bill to clean up the nation’s lakes and rivers.

The Clean Water Act, which was approved unanimously last year by both houses of Congress but vetoed by Reagan, now goes to the Senate, where Republican and Democratic sponsors predict passage next week.

“This is not a partisan effort to embarrass anyone,” said Rep. James J. Howard (D-N.J.), who chaired the House panel that approved the legislation. “We are simply maintaining a commitment to clean up the environment. . . . It is not partisan to want clean water.”

Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt (R-Ark.), who also helped draw up the legislation, said that the proposal was reintroduced because it enjoys broad, bipartisan support and because it is “environmentally responsive and fiscally responsible.”

Offers Compromise

Earlier this week, Reagan offered a compromise, $12-billion clean water proposal to Congress. However, Democratic and Republican officials denounced the proposal as inadequate, saying that the anti-pollution funds should not be cut back any further.

Thursday, the White House criticized the House’s 406-8 vote as fiscally irresponsible.

“It’s a fiscal issue, it’s a spending issue, pure and simple,” said spokesman Rusty Brashear. “They (Congress) just can’t have it both ways. They can’t deal with deficits of that size and then pass a bill which is way over budget.”

The clean water legislation approved Thursday is a product of several years of complex negotiations and enjoys support from industry, environmental groups and state and local governments. It earmarks funds over nine years for construction of waste-water plants. It also creates new pollution-control programs, including funds to curb toxic runoff from farm land and from city streets.

For California, the bill would provide about $174 million annually over the next eight years for sewage plant construction. Another provision would establish San Francisco Bay as a “priority estuary” that would receive $65 million to improve water quality. The bill, which would extend clean water legislation originally approved in 1972, also would provide funding for an experimental sludge pipeline in Orange County.

The proposed eight-mile pipeline would carry concentrated sewage from a treatment plant at the mouth of the Santa Ana River into the Pacific Ocean off Huntington Beach. From there, the pipeline would follow the natural slope of the ocean bottom and deposit treated sludge at depths of 1,000 to 1,300 feet of water.

Cities are especially anxious to see the measure passed, because they face a 1988 federal deadline to upgrade their sewage treatment facilities. Without additional funds, many of them have said, they would be unable to remain in compliance with the law.

Stresses Similarities

At the White House, Brashear said that Reagan’s counterproposal was “a good-faith compromise,” and stressed that--apart from the differences in funds earmarked for waste-water treatment plants--both bills offered the same environmental regulatory provisions.

But the message seemed lost on most House members, only one of whom spoke in defense of the President’s proposal. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) said that his colleagues had ignored the “taxpayers who pay the bill.”

Brashear declined to speculate on whether Reagan would veto the legislation a second time, but House and Senate sponsors have predicted that they have enough votes to override one.

Reagan killed the $18-billion legislation last year, calling it too expensive. He did so with a pocket veto, which occurs when the President neither signs nor directly vetoes legislation within 10 days of receiving it after Congress has adjourned. Because Congress was no longer in session, it could not override.

Cite EPA Study

At the time, Reagan offered to approve a $6-billion allocation for clean water. But sponsors of the water bill vowed to bring it back before Congress, noting that a 1984 study by the Environmental Protection Agency had found that the nation needed to spend more than $100 billion by the year 2000 to curb water pollution.

Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose) complained Thursday that the President is seeking more than $19 billion in this year’s budget for foreign aid but is unwilling to spend a similar amount over eight years to clean up the nation’s lakes and streams.