ENVIRONMENT / OPPORTUNITY LOST : EPA Cabinet-Status Bill Stalls as New Provisions Are Added

When the idea of making the 20-year-old Environmental Protection Agency a full-fledged Cabinet department was formally proposed to Congress five months ago, it was an open invitation for the Bush Administration and every lawmaker in Washington to tidy up their environmental reputations on the cheap.

Earth Day was just ahead. The future of this year’s massive clean air legislation was uncertain. Lobbyists and corporate public relations executives were clamoring to climb aboard the global celebration of environmental awareness, as were politicians everywhere.

President Bush warmly endorsed the move. Members of Congress promptly predicted that on the April 22 observation of Earth Day, they would put legislation on his desk to make EPA the 15th Cabinet-level department.

UNANIMOUS APPROVAL: Everybody, it seemed, was all for it. It cost nothing. It was baseball, the flag and apple pie.

But the proposal that was supposed to give everyone a free ride on the environmental bandwagon has hit a brick wall instead.

It now appears that Congress could adjourn this year with the EPA still languishing ignominiously among other federal bureaus, commissions and authorities. Concerned that the measure as passed by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee threatens their turf, the chairmen and ranking Republican members on three other committees have put a “hold” on the bill, preventing it from getting to the Senate floor. The House, meanwhile, has passed a version of the bill that Administration officials say would receive a quick presidential veto.

“It was a bill that everybody wanted,” said one EPA official, pleading anonymity, “so it provided an opportunity for some to add their favorite provisions. The House bill and the Senate bill have both acquired entirely too many ornaments and bells and whistles, suggesting that Congress wants to reach down into the agency and manage it in micro-detail.”

LINGERING CONFLICT: Staff members on four Senate committees have gotten nowhere in their efforts to resolve the disagreement over the Senate bill. It now reposes in the laps of Government Affairs Committee Chairman John Glenn (D-Ohio), Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) and Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Quentin N. Burdick (D-N.D.).

The bill approved by Glenn’s committee, like the bill approved by the House, would create within EPA a Bureau of Environmental Statistics with broad responsibility for assembling scientific data on environmental hazards. It also would establish an interagency council on the environment and a commission on environmental law.

The White House has made it clear that Bush would veto the House version of the bill because it includes language that would insulate the chief of the Bureau of Environmental Statistics, making it impossible for the President or the secretary of the environment to dismiss the person without congressional concurrence.

NO FRILLS WANTED: Although Bush endorsed the Senate bill as originally introduced by Glenn and Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), Administration and Senate sources say it appears EPA Administrator William K. Reilly may get his Cabinet seat only if Congress produces a “clean elevation.” That means stripping the legislation of all ornamentation so that it does nothing more than declare the EPA a Cabinet department.

That could be done through closed-door agreements among the Senate committee chairmen and eventually in conference with the House, or through a new bill.

In either case, everybody has long since missed their chance to bask in the limelight of Earth Day.