Clean Air Act Proposal May Ease City Deadlines, EPA Chief Says

The Bush Administration, intent on drafting a Clean Air Act able to withstand congressional criticism, is considering easing the stringent federal deadlines regulating air quality in the nation’s largest cities, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator said Tuesday.

The changes would seek to “reconcile what is ideal with what is also realistic,” EPA chief William K. Reilly said in an interview with The Times. At the same time, he said, the Administration would seek enhanced “carrot-and-stick” powers to increase its leverage over cities failing to comply with the new deadlines.

Such a proposal would come as an effort to close the glaring gap between the quality of air required by law and that currently breathed by 150 million U.S. residents. Los Angeles air remains the nation’s worst, but a new EPA study reported last week that ozone pollution in nearly 100 U.S. cities last summer violated federal standards.

The EPA chief refused to be more specific about the changes under consideration, saying that a proposal has not yet been completed and that it will be debated at a top-level White House meeting this week.

“I think it’s very important that the Administration have a unified position on this,” Reilly said of its attempt to reauthorize the Clean Air Act. A draft copy of the far-reaching legislation, which President Bush has described as one of his top domestic priorities, is expected to be sent to Congress next month.

Observers on Capitol Hill said that an Administration proposal to make the air quality standards more realistic likely would establish a sliding scale of deadlines permitting Los Angeles and other smog-choked cities more time for compliance than cities in which air pollution problems have been less severe.

Under current law, cities have been required to comply with uniform standards since 1982. But the EPA, acting on an ad hoc basis, has eased deadlines for Los Angeles and other cities.

Clean air advocates responded cautiously to news that the Administration was considering revising the Clean Air standards.

“The thing to focus on is how long we’re going to allow cities to take and what kind of pressure we’re going to put on them,” said Blake Early of the Sierra Club. “If we’re going to put off yet again the time at which people can breathe healthy air, let’s have a system to provide greater assurance that we’re eventually going to meet the goal,” he said.

Reilly’s comments about the clean air proposal, in one of the first interviews he has granted since taking office, came as he signaled a clear intention to assume an outspoken role on a host of environmental issues.

Suggesting that in the past the agency was regarded improperly as merely a “regulatory agency,” Reilly declared: “This agency, under this President, has a mandate to think big. And I intend to.”

As evidence, Reilly’s comments on a number of occasions reached beyond bureaucratic boundaries.

For example, on a matter now under consideration by the Transportation Department, Reilly made clear his view that automobile fuel economy standards should be tightened. On a matter normally the purview of the Department of Energy, Reilly said that he plans to speak out to instill a national sense of “urgency” about the importance of fuel conservation.

And on a matter that falls primarily under local authority, Reilly said that he hopes to “stimulate a debate” about dilemmas posed by the shrinking space available for waste disposal. “We can do that irrespective of the fact that our jurisdiction is limited,” Reilly said.

Reilly insisted that Bush’s modest budget proposal for EPA--unchanged from the Reagan Administration proposal, and an 8% decline from last year’s funding--should not be interpreted as an indication of a lack of commitment to the environment.

He noted that spending proposals contained in other agency budgets--including $200 million for federal land acquisition and $3.1 billion for cleanup of nuclear waste sites--address important environmental concerns.

But the new EPA chief ruefully acknowledged that scarcity of funding for EPA had caused his focus to wander.

“Since we have no money,” he said, quoting an unnamed scientist, “we have to think.”