Lawmakers Push to Beef Up Clean Air Act

WASHINGTON — With a flurry of bills and a gust of optimism, environmentalists in Congress have mounted a drive to strengthen one of the nation’s landmark environmental laws, the Clean Air Act of 1970, and to require tougher enforcement of the act by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Although the 1970 act is regarded as a success, especially in cutting down on automobile pollution, advocates of a tougher law argue that 80 million Americans still live in areas where the air is unhealthful.

Led by California Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who introduced a bill Tuesday, and Maine Democratic Sen. George J. Mitchell, the effort consists of proposals to reduce smog, combat acid rain, which was not covered in the original act, and regulate toxic chemicals.

Hope of Success

An important feature of the legislation would give a reprieve to Los Angeles and at least 13 other areas that face sanctions--including a ban on new construction of large polluting facilities--if they fail by the end of the year to meet current clean air standards. For Los Angeles, where smog exceeds acceptable levels 140 days of the year, complying with the act is expected to take many years.

It is the combination of newer, tougher requirements and more time to meet them that gives the congressional sponsors of the pending legislation some hope of success. Up to now, the Clean Air Act has been impervious to major changes as friends and foes alike have failed to strengthen it or weaken it significantly for a decade.

But the sponsors of the most recent legislation can expect formidable opposition from private industry, some members of Congress and the Administration. Last year alone, lobbyists representing the electrical power industry spent an estimated $3 million fighting off proposals to reduce acid rain.

This year, critics of the latest package of clean air legislation range from EPA Administrator Lee Thomas to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to the petrochemical industry to key members of both the House and Senate.

“I think we have a struggle ahead of us,” said Waxman, who says he believes that EPA officials will side with those in Congress who would relax the pending sanctions without mandating new limits on major sources of pollution.

While Waxman said he does not think such a strategy can prevail, he said he doubts that his side can prevail this year either. Instead, he said, he is pinning his hopes on the pressures of an election year when the public typically pays more attention to Congress and how it votes, especially on quality-of-life issues.

“I think the mood of the public has been building over the last couple of years to do more than we have done about smog and acid rain and toxics,” he said.

If no legislation is passed this year, and several cities and counties are slapped with sanctions, it will only add to the pressure to pass something next year, Waxman said.

Postponed Sanctions

But EPA officials believe that the sanctions can be put off without burdening cities and counties with additional requirements, at least not until those areas show a continuing inability to meet clean air standards.

While the bills under consideration deal with a variety of pollution problems, the focus of the clean air debate is on smog control because of the prospect of year-end sanctions against the nation’s smoggiest cities and counties. EPA officials said Monday that the number of areas threatened by sanctions could approach 35 by the end of the year.

Waxman’s bill would postpone sanctions from 3 to 10 years, with the longest delays reserved for the smoggiest areas, such as Los Angeles. In return, the bill also calls for significant changes in the way people drive and do business in an effort to lower levels of carbon monoxide and ozone, a principal component of smog.

For cars, trucks and buses in the most severely polluted areas, such as Los Angeles and Houston, the bill would require the use of alternative fuels, such as methanol, in 30% of all new vehicles by 1998. (In California, the state Senate recently rejected a bill that would have required car and truck manufacturers to begin selling cars and trucks that could run on methanol or other low-polluting fuels.)

Waxman’s bill also would require annual inspection by 1992 of all vehicles for smog control compliance. Such inspections are now mandatory in 29 states, but in some, like California, they are required once every two years.

Nationwide, the bill would necessitate more effective emission controls on new cars by 1992 and it would require by 1991 the installation of so-called “on-board controls,” devices attached to gas tanks that capture ozone-forming vapors.

Controls for New Plants

For business and industry in severely polluted areas, the bill would impose pollution controls across a much wider spectrum of operations than are now affected. The Clean Air Act currently requires only the biggest polluters, those that discharge more than 100 tons of pollution annually, to install pollution controls.

Under Waxman’s bill, in the most severely polluted areas, new plants discharging as little as 10 tons annually would be required to install pollution controls. Moreover, before such a plant began operating it would have to ensure a 50% net reduction in pollution by curtailing an existing source in the same locale. It could secure that reduction either by putting new controls on existing operations or by paying for new controls on facilities owned by someone else.

In the process, the cost of pollution control would spread from those who have traditionally borne it, such as oil refineries and industrial boilers, to much smaller enterprises, including paint manufacturers, dry cleaners, bakeries and even wineries.

Waxman’s bill would authorize sanctions for recalcitrant polluters. It would withhold federal highway funds from those areas that did not meet clean air standards after failing to put into practice pollution controls mandated by the act. The bill also would instruct the EPA to advise state agencies that oversee clean air standards on pollution-control technology appropriate for local businesses.

Broadly similar to Waxman’s bill, the legislation proposed by Mitchell differs in several respects. It would give cities and counties longer grace periods--three to 15 years--to comply with clean air standards, but it would impose sanctions on those places that did not meet the standards, even if they had done everything required of them under the bill.

Coal-Fired Plants

The Mitchell bill also would call on industry, primarily coal-fired power plants, to reduce by 50% the chemical emissions that produce acid rain. And the bill would make the EPA expand its list of hazardous air pollutants from seven to several hundred and set emission standards for them within three years.

Waxman has chosen to address acid rain and hazardous chemicals in two separate bills. Because he has not freighted his anti-smog bill with other matters, some in Congress say his approach has a better chance of survival.

“What the Mitchell bill has done, by putting in everything but the kitchen sink, has multiplied its enemies,” said a lawyer for one of the congressional committees studying both bills.

The lawyer, who asked not to be named, also warned that some of the requirements called for in the anti-smog legislation are costly enough that some areas may opt for sanctions at the end of the year.

EPA director Thomas was out of town when Waxman’s anti-smog bill was introduced, but last week he testified extensively on why he opposes virtually everything in the Mitchell bill.

‘Enormous Control Costs’

“The bill would impose enormous control costs on emission sources and an enormous administrative burden on EPA and local governments, with the likelihood of only marginal environmental improvements,” Thomas said before a Senate environmental subcommittee.

EPA officials insist that they are not opposed to any new requirements for dealing with chronic pollution. But they would not impose them automatically.

“We’d like to see (lack of) progress before we impose sanctions,” said Craig De Remer, EPA’s chief liaison officer with Congress. “If an area was not able to reduce ozone levels by, say, 8% a year, over a period of time, then we would want to look at some of the more stringent sanctions, such as increased motor vehicle inspections or some of the things the bills have in mind for dry cleaners or paint manufacturers.”