Tidiest Victory of Bush’s Presidency : But Now Clean Air Bill Goes to Smoke-Filled Room

Two versions of a federal Clean Air Act now heading for conference on Capitol Hill should someday make many Americans breathe easier.

But the big winners right now are President George Bush and Southern California.

The proposed new clean-air requirements could unravel, of course, if John Sununu, White House chief of staff, gets too ambitious about the “fine-tuning” he says it needs while the Senate and House negotiate away differences in their bills. Or it could unravel if some environmentalists are right in saying that part of the fine print is fine-tuning that would weaken their impact.

But for now, and for Bush, the 401-21 House vote for the bill--with his marks all over it--is the tidiest victory of his presidency.

And, perhaps for the first time, Southern California has a chance for air clean enough to meet health standards, thanks to the militant diligence of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and bipartisan teamwork by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands).

And Bush got everything he asked for, and then some.

Both the Senate and House approved his pioneering program to control acid rain that is killing lakes and forests in Canada and the northeastern United States (mostly from industry in the Midwest).

Both bills call for 10-million-ton reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions.

Both versions went along with the Bush idea to give utilities that make an extra effort to cut emissions pollution credits that they could save for future use or sell to other companies.

And toxic emissions from chemical plants and other polluters would fall by as much as 75% to 90%.

But the most significant breakthroughs for Southern California are in new proposals, presented most effectively in the House version, for controlling automobile pollution, which accounts for half of the region’s smog.

In one example of what makes the House bill by far the preferable one, the Senate version dictates precisely how crude oil must be refined to make cleaner gasoline. (It seems that when politicians start practicing chemistry, strange things happen.) The Senate formula would, in effect, make carbon-monoxide-reducing ethanol, most commonly made from corn, the only gasoline additive that could raise its oxygen content to stipulated levels. This might make senators from corn states more interested in clean air. But ethanol also increases emissions of the basic ingredients of smog, and for Southern California and many other urban areas, that is bad.

The House version is much more flexible.

Both bills force 60% reductions in auto emissions of nitrogen oxides and 40% cuts in hydrocarbons by mid-decade; these are the two worst smog culprits.

And there’s a bonus for California.

When Waxman failed to get a mandate for production of cars that burn cleaner fuels than gasoline, he made a deal. He settled for a test program for California that would require the auto industry to build 750,000 cars in the next seven years that produce only half the pollutants allowed under existing law. They could burn natural gas or even reformulated gasoline as long as they met the standard. A terrific move.

The bills could cost American industry and consumers $20 billion a year, so writing the Clean Air Act was a bruising process. And it’s not over yet.

But at this point, it looks like winners all around.