But Called an Improvement Over Reagan : Bush Rated as Uneven in Handling of Environment

President Bush, who pledged during his campaign to be an “environmental President,” has set a new, more aggressive agenda on pollution problems during his first six months in office but largely has failed to change the pro-development course steered by President Reagan on public lands.

In interviews with environmental and industry groups, government employees and congressional aides, Bush’s presidential track record on the environment thus far is repeatedly characterized as uneven.

He strives to be a leader of global environmental initiatives but his efforts have been overshadowed by those of other world leaders. He gets high marks for his handling of the Environmental Protection Agency but he has pursued oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and retained many Reagan appointees in the public land agencies.

“He seems almost perfectly evenly split,” said Jim Maddy, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters. “When it comes to the EPA, his appointments have been creative and have drawn support from the environmental community, and some of his policy proposals have been helpful. But there is a whole other side to the environmental equation . . . wildlife, natural resources, wilderness--and we see no noticeable change there from the policies of Reagan.”

The climate in the environmental agencies and departments, even those most faulted by conservationists, has grown more conciliatory. Gone is the Reagan Administration’s antagonism to environmental regulation. Even in the much criticized Interior Department, the huge land management agency responsible for parks, wildlife, wilderness protection and oil and gas development, friction between political appointees and the most conservation-minded civil servants seems to have eased.

“It’s more relaxed and certainly less threatened,” said a senior official at the National Park Service. “The micro-management is absent. Before, we would never be allowed to make a strong case for our position. Now the Park Service position is readily asked for. . . .”

Bush also is more personally accessible to environmentalists, restoring the kind of relations that were enjoyed before the Reagan years. In a White House meeting in June with conservation leaders to discuss the proposed clean air bill, Bush was both engaged and informed and, some participants believe, open to suggestion and change.

Bringing Problem Home

Richard Ayres, who was acting as spokesman for the environmentalists, unveiled a chart that showed air pollution levels at Kennebunkport, Bush’s retreat in Maine, during a single week last July. On three of seven days, Kennebunkport’s air quality violated federal health standards and, on all seven days, the pollution exceeded levels that can impair lung function in children, the President was told.

Moreover, he was informed, the air quality is even worse in Connecticut, where he grew up; in Houston, which he lists as his legal residence, and in Washington where he now lives.

“Gee, I should be dead by now,” Bush was said to have replied.

His words may have been said in jest, but they seemed to have an edge. Paul Pritchard, one of the environmental representatives in the room, said Bush seemed visibly struck by the demonstration.

“If you affect someone’s pocketbook, that’s one way to get to them,” said Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a watchdog group. “And if you affect their sense of pride, that’s another. But affect their sense of being threatened, that is really a gut issue. I think that he was expressing that primordial sense.”

EPA Appointment

By almost all accounts, Bush’s most effective move on the environment so far was his appointment of William K. Reilly to head the EPA, which is responsible for administering and enforcing anti-pollution regulations. A moderate Republican, Reilly was a protege of former EPA Administrator Russell Train, who ran the agency during the Ford Administration and served as a key environmental adviser to the Bush campaign.

Reilly, 49, has solid environmental credentials. He headed the U.S. affiliate of the large, activist World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation Foundation, a small environmental think tank. Most environmental groups trust him and industry representatives speak respectfully of him.

As EPA administrator, Reilly has bucked Western development interests to protect wetlands, proposed streamlined procedures for taking unsafe pesticides off the market, worked to strengthen Bush’s clean air proposal and pushed the Administration to be more aggressive on global environmental issues.

Reilly’s long-term effectiveness may depend largely on how much Bush listens to him and how their relationship is perceived by others in the Administration with the power to thwart EPA initiatives. “When Bush and Reilly work together on something, the environment wins,” said David Gardiner, legislative director of the Sierra Club. So far, Reilly appears to have Bush’s ear.

Access to President

The President did not make him a Cabinet member, but Reilly attends virtually all of its meetings anyway. He was the only environmental minister to accompany a head of state to the recent summit in Paris, and he sends Bush a memorandum every other week that the President usually answers. The two men see each other an average of twice a week.

“What you want as EPA administrator is access,” Reilly said. “I have access beyond that of any of my predecessors.”

Their relationship is also social. Reilly and his wife occasionally go to the White House to dine or watch movies with the Bushes and they all recently enjoyed a weekend of swimming and relaxation at Camp David. Congressional and Administration officials who know both men say Reilly and Bush are similar in background: “Brahmin Republicans” and “Yalies” who are “very refined, gentleman-types.” They understand each other.

But Reilly’s influence has not always prevented the President from stumbling on environmental issues. Bush, for example, was widely criticized for being too slow in sending federal help to Alaska in March to contain the disastrous oil spill in Prince William Sound. Some conservationists say he learned his lesson and moved more quickly to provide help on two later oil spills off the East Coast.

He has yet to establish himself as a leader or expert on global environmental problems, such as the depletion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer by man-made chlorofluorocarbons and the warming of the globe from polluting gases.

A Follower So Far

The President did not call for a phase-out of CFCs until the day after Common Market countries did so, and he agreed to discuss negotiating an international treaty on global warming belatedly, four days after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proposed the idea. Although he decided to have the United States host an international workshop to start those discussions, the gesture was widely viewed more as face-saving than bold because of its timing.

Bush made the proposal during a week when his Administration was under attack by environmentalists and members of Congress for changing the written testimony of a top National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist in an effort to soften the scientist’s warnings about global warming. The White House blamed the editing on a low-level official.

Even the proposed clean air act, Bush’s widely proclaimed bill to reduce smog, acid rain and toxic emissions, failed to live up to expectations that the President himself had created. The final draft sent to Congress disappointed many environmental groups, even though few would deny him credit for at least having taken the initiative.

A Republican congressional aide who closely followed the drafting of the bill described the acid rain provisions as solid but called some of Bush’s smog provisions “very weak” and characterized the final overall proposal delivered to Congress as being “slightly weaker” than what Bush initially promised. The aide noted that industry, like the environmental groups, was also unhappy with much of the bill. The test for Bush, said the staff member, will be how the Administration responds to attempts by Congress to strengthen the bill.

The Disturbing Side

But it is Bush’s policies on public lands and natural resources, and not pollution, that most disturb environmentalists and their allies in Congress.

“I think they have drawn a very important line of demarcation between environmental protection and resource management,” said a Democratic congressional aide who works on issues involving the Interior Department.

“You’ve got some good efforts on their part to stake out the environmental perspective (on EPA issues). They have gotten rid of the confrontation. But if you look at Interior, it’s almost like night and day. It’s a dumping ground for Reagan retreads and paying off of political favors.”

Maddy of the League of Conservation Voters suspects that the Administration’s “schizophrenic” environmental policy is driven by the belief that the public cares more strongly about environmental issues that affect personal health than those that affect wilderness or wildlife.

“It looks to me as though . . . polls may be showing them that the public is pretty well informed and concerned about air pollution, water pollution and the health risks of toxic pollutants, but not terribly knowledgeable or significantly concerned about wildlife, natural resources and the wilderness,” Maddy said.

Reagan Retreads

Many former Reagan appointees continue to hold jobs in the Interior Department and to exert influence over policy. Manuel Lujan Jr., Bush’s choice to head the department, is better liked by environmentalists than his predecessors, Donald P. Hodel and James Watt, but is still considered pro-development. A former New Mexico congressman, Lujan voted with environmentalists only 16% of the time in the 100th Congress, according to the League of Conservation Voters.

The new Interior secretary has at times displayed ignorance of laws and regulations crucial to his department. During a March meeting with reporters, for instance, Lujan insisted that government was being compensated with mineral royalties for the public lands it sells for just $2.50 an acre. In fact, the government gets nothing but that under a highly controversial practice. His lack of knowledge was especially surprising because he had served for more than 20 years on the House Interior Committee, which oversees Interior Department programs and laws.

He also has infuriated environmentalists by approving water contracts for California without requiring an environmental assessment and by campaigning publicly against congressional moves to delay offshore oil drilling. On the other hand, Lujan has backed away from a Reagan proposal to allow strip mining in wilderness areas and parts of the national park system.

More Flexibility

“It’s going to be basically the same pro-development attitude at Interior that we’ve had under Reagan,” said David Alberswerth, director of public lands and energy programs for the National Wildlife Federation.

Alberswerth conceded, however, that there appears to be “a little more flexibility, a little more accommodation” by Interior officials now. “On things like strip mining . . . things that are just blatantly vexing to a host of politicians and the public, you won’t get the old lines you got from Hodel and Watt,” he said.

The Bush Administration’s support for oil drilling tops the list of most environmental groups’ complaints about the President. Bush wants to explore for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is run by the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service. Environmental groups want that area declared off-limits to drilling.

In keeping a campaign promise, Bush appointed a task force to determine whether drilling should take place off Northern and Southern California and southern Florida. But even though the task force has not finished its work, the Administration has defended offshore drilling in an attempt to block congressional moves to ban it.

‘Grim’ So Far

“I think the record so far has been grim,” said Lisa Speer, senior staff scientist for the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “It is very contrary to his campaign statements, which made a big deal about offshore oil, particularly in California, and involved commitments about protecting the environment.”

Other critics say the more pro-development appointments in the Interior and Agriculture departments--Bush, for instance, has nominated a former Watt and Hodel deputy to preside over the Forest Service--are designed to appease Western ranchers, farmers and developers who supported Bush in the campaign.

“My impression is that they made a political judgment that they really had to improve substantially over Reagan’s record on pollution issues, that the public just wouldn’t stand for it,” said Gardiner of the Sierra Club. But “the natural resource agencies, the Department of Interior and the Forest Service, are basically Western agencies and most of the West is rock-solid Republican anyway.”

Steve Goldstein, a spokesman for Lujan, says differences in the Administration’s approach to environmental issues has to do with the various missions of the agencies and departments. The EPA, he noted, was established to protect the environment while the Interior Department’s job is to “harvest our resources but to do so in an environmentally sound manner.”

Still Hopeful

Although they remain concerned, Bush’s critics agree that he has done nothing to forfeit his opportunity to be an “environmental President,” and it is doubtful that environmental advocates will let him forget his promises. They say there still is time to recover from early fumbles.

Take Boston Harbor. Bush snatched the environmental issue from the Democrats during the campaign with a commercial that accused Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis of failing to clean up the harbor as governor of Massachusetts.

The people at Boston Harbor remember. They say Bush has been stingy in budgeting money to clean up their polluted waterway and they want him to do more.

“Reagan was not the big environmental President, but money was more available for cleanup under his Administration than it has been under Bush’s so far,” said Robin Herman, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. “I can’t predict how things will change, but under his fiscal 1990 budget, they don’t look too promising.”