Effort to ‘Cut Heart Out’ of Clean-Air Bill Charged : Pollution: Conservationists claim that the Senate and White House negotiators are making bad compromises.

Conservation officials from Southern California and 12 other badly polluted areas of the nation accused Senate and White House negotiators Wednesday of trying to “cut the heart out” of a new clean-air bill through compromises that would make it impossible for states to achieve federal clean-air standards.

“If the package they are putting together were to be enacted into law . . . we in Southern California will not be able to achieve clean air . . . not in 20 years, not ever,” said Norton Younglove, chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“I would much rather have no law,” Younglove added, than the one that is slowly emerging from “the wheeling and dealing going on in the Senate.”

Along with his counterparts from New York, Colorado and Massachusetts, Younglove came to Washington to throw California’s weight into a bitter lobbying war now being waged as the Senate prepares to debate and vote on the first comprehensive clean-air legislation to go before the Congress in 13 years.

Responding to an industry-led effort to weaken the strong clean-air bill drafted by a Senate subcommittee late last year, environmental groups from across the country launched a broad counterattack Wednesday. They called a flurry of press conferences to criticize the Administration and, in particular, the backstage role being played in the debate by White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

In a letter to President Bush, eight major environmental groups accused Sununu of attempting to “consistently undercut” Bush’s campaign pledge to be an “environmental President” who would strengthen clean air laws, protect wetlands and combat global warming.

Warning that Sununu’s “direct and personal involvement . . . in reversing your pledges is driving a wedge between you and conservationists,” the eight groups requested an “emergency meeting” with Bush to “clarify the direction in which you are headed on the environment.”

There was no immediate response from Sununu to the letter, which was signed by the presidents or directors of the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, the Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and the Izaak Walton League of America.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Sununu was just “doing his job” of ensuring that “all points of view are heard” in the environmental debate.

“The President,” Fitzwater added, “has made the decisions on environmental policies. They represent his point of view and his priorities.”

The concern over Sununu’s role in the clean-air negotiations--often at what seems to be the expense of the nominal authority of Environmental Protection Agency Director William F. Reilly--was echoed by Younglove and the other officials representing state governments that want tougher clean-air legislation passed this year.

The officials were from 13 states that represent more than 80% of the population that is exposed to substandard air quality across the nation. They met with Reilly and Senate negotiators to voice vigorous objections to the compromises tentatively struck last week in the closed-door negotiations over the proposed new Clean Air Act.

The agreements, which already appear likely to unravel before the debate moves back to the Senate floor next week, deal with the emissions of ozone-forming pollutants that contribute to urban smog and with the release into the air of cancer-causing toxic chemicals.

The officials said they were most concerned about provisions that would exempt smaller sources of smog-forming emissions from pollution controls, grant exemptions from certain controls if the cost of implementing them exceeds $5,000 per ton of emissions, and eliminate a current law that gives the EPA authority to impose cleanup plans on states that fail or refuse to implement their own.

Echoing the urgings of environmentalists, the state officials called on Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine to break off the talks with the Administration and move the debate back to the full Senate.

Mitchell agreed to the closed-door talks two weeks ago in the hopes of reaching a compromise that would head off a threatened filibuster on the floor. However, the negotiations have foundered over other even more contentious issues, and Mitchell said Wednesday that he expects to resume the floor debate early next week.

Mitchell, the Senate’s most vigorous proponent of clean-air legislation, also took sharp issue with allegations by Younglove that he had “jettisoned” other provisions of the bill in an effort to win agreement for strong curbs on acid rain--an issue of special concern to the senator’s home state of Maine.

“That allegation is completely false. . . . There is a difference between the best clean-air bill in the abstract and the best possible bill that can pass the Senate,” Mitchell said.