Panel Supports Tougher Rules on Car Exhaust

Key House members, reaching a compromise hailed as a “historic breakthrough” in the decade-long struggle to enact clean air legislation, agreed Monday to extend California’s tough new auto emissions standards to the rest of the country over a two-year period starting in 1994.

The compromise, approved unanimously by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and the environment, significantly tightens the controls that would be placed on smog-causing tailpipe emissions from cars and light trucks under President Bush’s new clean air bill.

39% Hydrocarbon Cut

Specifically, it would lower the amount of hydrocarbons cars are allowed to emit by 39% from current levels and reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, another component of smog, by 60%. The new standards go into effect in California in 1993.

The compromise would also more strictly regulate the emissions of cancer-causing toxic chemicals from motor vehicles and would provide for a second round of even stricter emission reductions early in the 21st Century, should the Environmental Protection Agency determine that they are needed.

The agreement was announced by subcommittee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the leading advocate of clean air legislation in the House. “For the first time in over a decade,” Waxman said, there is “a broad agreement on a package of measures that will reduce pollution from cars and trucks.

“This amendment doesn’t have every provision the environmentalists wanted and it has more controls than the auto makers wanted . . . . But when it’s looked at as a whole, I think almost everyone will agree that it’s balanced, fair, tough and will bring effective and sensible reductions in air pollution.”

Reactions Mixed

Reactions to the agreement, which was amended to the Bush bill by a 22-0 vote, were predictably mixed, with environmentalists praising it as “a significant step forward” toward effective clean air legislation and auto company spokesmen denouncing it as a biased measure that saddles their industry with an unfair share of the burden for cleaning up the nation’s dirty air.

“We supported the President’s original proposal as a valuable contribution to improving air quality, although it would have put a severe strain on our human and technological resources, but this action goes well beyond that,” Harold A. Poling, vice chairman and chief operating officer of the Ford Motor Co., said.

Poling contended that there is no need to apply California emission standards--which are the strictest in the country--nationwide because “those standards are tailored to California’s unique problems” with smog.

At the White House, however, Deputy Press Secretary Stephen Hart said the California standards, although tougher than the President proposed, are “really not too far away from ours.

“We’re glad to see that they’re using our model.” He said the White House would “have to see what comes out” of the committee before commenting further.

Although the Bush bill still has a number of legislative hurdles to overcome before it can become law, the compromise crafted on Monday--after a marathon round of day-and-night negotiations on Saturday and Sunday--was hailed by several legislators as a “landmark” achievement.

Underlying the lawmakers’ euphoria was the fact that the agreement represented a reconciliation between the two principal protagonists in the clean air battle in the House--Waxman and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, who represents a district in the Detroit area. Although they have worked together amicably on other issues in the past, Waxman and Dingell have been fierce antagonists on clean air issues.

“I would have sooner believed that Henry Waxman had been elected to the board of the National Rifle Assn. and John Dingell to the board of Greenpeace,” said Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.), expressing his surprise at the agreement reached between the two adversaries.

“When I saw Henry Waxman and Chairman Dingell in the same room together,” said Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.), “then, well, I knew the Earth had moved.”

The key to the compromise apparently was Waxman’s agreement to language that would allow the EPA administrator to “opt out,” in one committee member’s phrase, from the need to impose a second round of deep emission cuts after the year 2000. Dingell and other pro-industry legislators had complained that the second round of cuts were unnecessary and technologically unfeasible.

Under the compromise, the EPA and the congressional Office of Technology Assessment will be required to complete a study on the need for further requirements by June 1, 1997. The EPA administrator will have the discretion then to impose new standards no later than model year 2006. In the event the administrator does nothing, Waxman’s original proposals for future cuts will take effect by default on Jan. 1, 2003.

In return for this concession, Dingell agreed to strengthen the Bush bill considerably by accepting the more stringent California emissions standards.

Dingell also won a slight reprieve for auto makers by stretching Waxman’s deadlines for compliance with the new standards. Although the California standards take effect in 1993, they would not begin to apply to the rest of the nation until the next year, when they would be phased in over a two-year period.

Dingell acknowledged that the auto industry is unenthusiastic about the compromise but he called the agreement fair. Dingell and Waxman said they had agreed to support the compromise “all the way” and would resist attempts to strengthen or dilute it with other amendments.