Battles Loom as Congress Takes Up Clean Air Bill : Environment: Experts and lawmakers agree new legislation is needed. But the severity of the plan and who will bear the cost are points of contention.

Breaking a decade-long deadlock, Congress finally is poised to begin debate this week on one of the most complex and controversial pieces of legislation to come before it in recent years: a comprehensive rewrite of the 1970 Clean Air Act.

It has been almost 13 years since the act was last revised, and with the steady deterioration of the nation’s air quality reaching what environmentalists and health officials consider crisis proportions, virtually everyone involved in the debate agrees that new legislation is needed urgently.

The consensus ends there, however.

Fundamental questions over how best to clean up the nation’s air, the degree of cleaning required, the cost of the proposed legislation and, more to the point, who will bear that cost, all promise that the debate will be among the most contentious facing Congress in 1990.

Wide-Range Effect

Everyone who drives a car, cools off with air conditioning, burns a wood stove, uses electricity or takes a suit to the dry cleaners is liable to be affected to some degree by the legislation the Senate will take up as the first order of business when it convenes Tuesday following its winter recess.

Some people, of course, will be more affected than others, and that, in part, is what the debate is about.

Should Midwestern states, whose utilities emit much of the pollution that returns to the earth as acid rain, bear most of the burden and all of the cost entailed in reducing nationwide emissions of sulfur dioxide by 10 million tons as required under the Senate bill? Or should the costs be shared--spread across the nation in the form of user fees that would help pay for the expensive equipment these utilities would have to install to reduce acid rain as far northeast as New England and New York?

Should the automotive industry, which already has achieved major reductions in vehicle tailpipe emissions to comply with the 1970 law, be obliged to reduce them still further to meet standards that, while not taking effect for another 12 years, are technologically unfeasible today? Or should some of the burden for reducing emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides--two major components of urban smog--be shifted to the oil industry by requiring development of alternative, cleaner-burning fuels?

Who Will Pay?

Should small establishments such as dry cleaners--which release toxic chemicals that contribute to the so-called “urban soup” effect--be required to install expensive pollution control devices? Or should that burden be borne by the chemical and automotive industries, which together are responsible for most of the thousands of tons of carcinogenic toxins released into the nation’s air every year?

Is it enough to reduce emissions of the worst pollutants by only a portion of what is achievable in order to save jobs and ease the burden on industry? Or is the problem of pollution likely to become so acute that everyone, even the little old lady behind the counter at the neighborhood dry cleaners, should be required to contribute to the solution?

Everyone wants clean air, but no one is fighting to pay the check. No one is eager to foot a bill that ultimately will be passed along to the consumer in the form of costlier cars, higher electricity rates or, for that matter, bigger dry cleaning bills.

Reading like a college chemistry textbook, the language of the Senate bill is, for the most part, impenetrable. But it has many far-reaching provisions that, among other things, would:

--Require that auto makers build all new cars to meet California’s tough new auto tailpipe emission standards for hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide by 1993, with a further reduction of nearly 50% by 2003.

--Force 107 of the nation’s dirtiest industrial plants in the Midwest and Southeast to reduce their combined annual output of sulfur dioxide by 10 million tons by the year 2000, with a nationwide cap on emissions after that date.

--Mandate the use of the best technology available to reduce and regulate factory emissions of nearly 200 cancer-causing toxic substances over a period ranging from five to 13 years, depending on the substance. At present, only seven such toxics are regulated.

--Phase out by the year 2000 the production and use of the five most harmful chlorofluorocarbons, which are widely used in air conditioning and refrigeration systems but which deplete the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

Hefty Price Tags

Each measure forces major changes on the affected industries, and each comes with a hefty price tag, with estimates of the total cost ranging from $18 billion to $56 billion a year, depending on whose figures are used.

Faced with implacable industry opposition, Congress in the past did what its critics charge it does best: nothing. Abetted by the Ronald Reagan Administration, which was openly hostile to environmental regulation, lawmakers on Capitol Hill pretty much ignored opinion polls that, as far back as 1980, reflected a growing public concern about the environment.

Clean air did have its advocates--Democrat George J. Mitchell of Maine and Republican John H. Chafee of Rhode Island in the Senate and Democrats Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles and the late Mickey Leland of Texas in the House, to name a few.

But the battles they fought and won served mainly to keep the existing Clean Air Act from being weakened. Snarled in a gridlock of competing special interests, efforts to strengthen the outdated law invariably stalled at the committee level.

All that has changed.

“The movement has come up through the grass roots. Congressmen and senators are seeing local people in their statehouses and city councils being elected on environmental issues,” said Ali Webb, spokeswoman for the League of Conservation Voters.

Environmentalists also put two other changes at the top of their list: Mitchell’s elevation to Senate majority leader and George Bush’s election as President.

Geography figures in the first change. Mitchell is from Maine, a Northeastern state whose forests and lakes are being corroded away by acid rain. His predecessor as majority leader, Robert C. Byrd, is from West Virginia, one of the states where the high-sulfur coal blamed for acid rain is mined. Put simply, what goes up in Byrd’s state comes down in Mitchell’s.

As majority leader, Byrd repeatedly blocked Mitchell’s attempts to bring acid rain legislation to the Senate floor. Now that he sets the agenda, Mitchell has served notice that the clean air bill reported out of the Senate Environment Committee last November will be the first item on the floor when Congress reconvenes Tuesday.

The Senate bill is a substantially stronger version of the clean air bill that Bush, declaring his desire to be known as the “environmental President,” sent to Capitol Hill last summer. Another version, stronger than the President’s proposals but weaker than the Senate’s, is still at the committee level in the House.

The aim of the Democratic leadership in both bodies is to debate and pass their respective bills, combine them into one legislative package and send the new Clean Air Act to the White House in time for Bush to sign on April 22, the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.

Mitchell has said he expects the Senate bill to pass in that chamber “within a matter of weeks.” His main fight on the floor will be to keep the bill’s tough second round of tailpipe emission reductions intact while fending off attempts to delay passage until after Earth Day.

Waxman is the driving force in the House. He hopes the leadership will pressure fellow Democrat John D. Dingell of Michigan, the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to move the bill quickly through his committee and send it to the floor. Clean air advocates believe they have the necessary floor votes to pass amendments to strengthen the bill’s weaker airborne toxics and smog provisions.

The rush to pass clean air legislation in part reflects the symbolic importance of Earth Day. The White House has made it clear that it wants a bill to sign by that date at the latest. But more importantly, the sense of urgency also reflects a strong desire by congressional leaders not to let a Republican President steal a favorite Democratic issue.

With industry on the defensive and Republicans and Democrats alike trying to strike pro-environmental postures, the likelihood of a new clean air bill being approved this year is all but assured, Administration and congressional leaders say.

In an attempt to keep the Senate from strengthening the bill beyond what he originally intended, Bush warned recently that he might have to veto legislation if it imposed too onerous a burden on industry. But Mitchell and other clean air strategists say that a veto is highly unlikely. They figure the President will have to sign any “reasonable” bill that comes to his desk by Earth Day.

Still, a number of unresolved issues could delay passage by prolonging the debate.

The first is alternative fuels. The Administration’s original bill would have required auto makers to produce 1 million “clean” cars powered by fuels other than gasoline by 1997 for sale in Los Angeles and eight other badly polluted cities.

The House version guts that provision by requiring auto makers to merely develop the “capacity” to make such cars, while the Senate bill contains no alternative fuel provisions at all. The debate on the floor will be over whether to include a requirement and, if so, whether it should complement or substitute for the Senate bill’s second round of tailpipe emission reductions.

Fuel economy is a second contentious issue. The Senate bill would require that new cars achieve an average fuel economy of 40 miles per gallon by the year 2000, while also imposing the first limit on carbon dioxide emissions from cars.

Detroit says that satisfying the new fuel economy and hydrocarbon emission standards could add $500 to the price of a new car and eliminate most of the heavier models on the road today. “Once the consumer realizes what’s in store for him, he’s going to be very unhappy. The 40 m.p.g. standard is going to result in a fleet of micro-minis out there,” said Tim McCarthy, a spokesman for the Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Assn.

Environmentalists dispute that argument, contending that industry will have sufficient time to develop the technology to meet the new standards, which should add far less to the price of a new car than Detroit has claimed.

Tailpipe standards are another point of dispute. The Senate bill has much tougher emission standards than the House version, which requires a second round of reductions only if the Environmental Protection Agency determines they are both necessary and cost-effective in reducing pollution.

A final sticking point is acid rain. Several issues remain unresolved, the most contentious being whether to give Midwestern states some form of cost-sharing subsidy for their sulfur dioxide cleanup efforts.