Negotiators in Accord on Clean Air Bill Auto Controls

Senate and White House negotiators resolved their last major disagreement over new clean air legislation Wednesday by adopting a complex compromise to lower the emissions of smog-forming pollutants from automobile tailpipes.

Senate sources predicted that the agreement, which brings national emission standards into line with those already approved for California, would make it possible to resume floor debate in the Senate this week on a new Clean Air Act.

However, spokesmen for several leading environmental groups quickly criticized the pact. They said they would oppose the bill when it returns to the Senate floor because of major concessions made to the Administration in four of the legislation’s five key areas.

“The overall product will not be an acceptable revision to the Clean Air Act,” said Richard Ayres, chairman of the National Clean Air Coalition, an environmental umbrella group. “It will not protect the public health. . . . . It will permit continued exposure to unhealthful air for millions of Americans.”

The original legislation, drafted by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee late last year, was pulled off the floor last month when Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) agreed to negotiate with the Bush Adminstration, which had warned that it would veto the bill as too costly and too onerous to industry.

After more than three weeks of marathon talks--sessions begun in the morning routinely have lasted well past midnight--the negotiators reached agreement on all but one set of pollution curbs dealing with measures to control acid rain.

Those negotiations continued Wednesday night, but sources close to Mitchell said he planned to return the bill to the floor today regardless of whether an agreement on acid rain is reached. Since the Senate committee’s differences over acid rain are not with the Administration but with a relatively small group of fellow senators from the Midwest, they should pose no obstacle to passage of the bill, the sources said.

The compromise over automobile emissions was the last of several changes sought by the Bush Administration, whose support Mitchell deemed necessary to overcome a threatened filibuster by a collection of senators representing the interests of the auto industry, the oil companies and the acid rain-causing high-sulfer coal states of the Midwest.

Other disagreements over measures to reduce smog-forming emissions from industrial sources, control the emissions of airborne toxic chemicals and to eventually replace conventional gasoline with cleaner-burning fuels were ironed out in earlier negotiating sessions.

Details of the compromise were not announced, but sources familiar with the agreement said it would phase in the tailpipe emissions standards adopted by California for 1993 model cars to all automobiles over a two-year period starting in 1993.

A second round of stricter emissions reductions would be applied in the year 2004 only if any 11 of 27 cities classified as “seriously” polluted have not met federal ozone standards by the year 2000.

“It’s a convoluted mechanism for attempting to clean up the nation’s air and what it means is that there won’t be clean air in California by the year 2004, or even by 2110,” said Daniel Weiss, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.

Echoing similar sentiments before the compromise on tailpipes was reached, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif) complained that the other weakening provisions accepted by the Senate committee would also do nothing for California, which wanted to see strong clean air legislation adopted this year as a federal back-up to its own anti-pollution efforts.

“This whole bill is going to be irrelevant to California’s concerns,” Wilson said.