An Uphill Battle to Halt Clean Air Bill : Congress: Rep. Dannemeyer is seemingly fighting for a lost cause in trying to block changes in the law. But he may get Dornan’s support.

In his dozen years in Congress, Rep. William E. Dannemeyer has embraced more than his share of quixotic conservative causes.

But the Fullerton Republican, who represents part of the smoggiest region in the nation, may be tilting at the biggest windmill of his career in opposing sweeping new clean air legislation that is all but sure to win final congressional approval in the coming weeks. One of the negotiators seeking to reconcile conflicting House and Senate versions of the clean air bill, Dannemeyer is not likely to derail, or even slow, the measure.

But his loud protests that new clean air legislation will cost industry and consumers too much money in tough economic times has raised concerns among other Orange County congressmen, and highlights a growing split in the county’s congressional delegation over environmental policy.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) said last week that he may switch positions and join Dannemeyer in opposing the final clean air bill that emerges from the ongoing House-Senate conference. Dornan had voted for the House version of the bill.

“I’ve decided no, now is not the time to go spending billions of dollars more” on pollution controls, Dornan said, “so I’ll probably go along with Dannemeyer.”

Dornan said he is also rethinking his recent change of heart about drilling for oil off the California coast. A longtime supporter of offshore drilling, Dornan changed his position this spring, he said, “not knowing that Saddam Hussein was going to go psycho.” Dannemeyer strongly favors offshore drilling.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), who has earned high marks from environmentalists, and Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents southern Orange County, said they remain committed to enacting a new clean air bill this year, although both expressed some concerns about the cost of the legislation.

“To say that the bill can be improved is not to say that we shouldn’t have it at all,” Cox said. “We need to make some progress on clean air, and we need to do so fast.”

Added Packard: “The Los Angeles air basin has got to be cleaned up.” Both Cox and Packard strongly oppose oil drilling off California.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who represents northwestern Orange County, “is going to wait and see” what the final clean air legislation looks like before making up his mind, a spokesman said.

Dannemeyer was one of only 21 members--and the only Californian--who voted against the House version of the clean air bill when it was overwhelmingly approved last May. Cox, Rohrabacher and Packard, along with Dornan, voted in favor.

Dannemeyer’s tough stand against new clean air legislation, and his increasingly strident attacks on those whom he calls “environmental extremists,” have been noticed in the environmental community.

“Congressman Dannemeyer is a much stronger advocate for the oil companies and the big polluters’ interests than for the people of Orange County who are forced to breathe the dirtiest air in the nation,” said Daniel J. Weiss, Washington director of the environmental quality program for the Sierra Club, one of the largest environmental groups in the country.

“We believe it is better to err on the side of protection of human health than err on the side of industry profits, which is what Mr. Dannemeyer would do,” Weiss added.

Dannemeyer, a longtime friend of the oil industry, shrugs off the criticism.

“The existing provisions of the Clean Air Act have worked effectively to significantly improve air quality, not only in Southern California, but around the country,” he said last week. “Legislation in this area should be based on science, not on fear or emotion. . . . What is needed is to let the law alone.”

Not everyone agrees.

“We have fought very long and hard for this,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who wrote the House version of the legislation and who is Dannemeyer’s longtime foe on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“What the Clean Air Act has most to do with is protecting people’s health,” Waxman added, “and that means reducing the pollution that is causing additional health burdens to the elderly, to children, to asthmatics and others.”

The Sierra Club estimates that 150 million Americans live in the about 100 metropolitan areas where air quality fails to meet the planned new standards.

So far, House and Senate negotiators have reached an accord on the core of what promises to be the first major revision of the nation’s clean air laws since 1977.

The 300-page Title I of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act is intended to dramatically reduce industrial pollution in the nation’s smoggiest cities by targeting even the smallest polluters, such as bakeries, breweries and auto body shops.

The measure would mandate adoption of new state pollution cleanup plans that would require industrial polluters to slash emissions of hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and other smog-forming compounds by installing smoke scrubbers and other anti-pollution devices.

But many contentious issues remain unresolved, including provisions that would set tougher tailpipe emission standards into the next century, promote the development of cleaner fuels and cars that burn them, reduce acid rain by cutting the use of high-sulfur coal in power plants, and limit the release of a host of toxic compounds by oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial plants.

One study commissioned by an industry group placed an annual price tag on the most expensive provisions of the House and Senate bills, taken together, at up to $91 billion. But the White House Council of Economic Advisers has said that even the highest-priced sections of the legislation, lumped into a single bill, would cost no more than $35 billion a year by the early 21st Century. Separately, the House and Senate bills each would cost industry about $25 billion a year, the council has estimated.

Environmentalists insist that the health benefits of cleaning up the air would far outweigh the costs to industry, but industry groups strongly disagree.

The region that makes up Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties has the worst air in the nation, and would be subject to the strictest provisions of the bill.

Even though local pollution-control measures planned for or already in effect in Southern California are more stringent than those that would be imposed by the new federal legislation, the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act are likely to have a profound impact on the Southland, officials say.

“The (federal) program is going to help California a lot,” said S. William Becker, executive director of the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, a Washington-based organization. “One fourth of (California’s) pollution comes from outside the state. . . .”

Orange County officials are particularly concerned about a provision in the House-passed version of the clean air bill that would, in effect, give the Environmental Protection Agency veto power over major new transportation projects. Technically, the provision would require the EPA to certify that projects such as freeway expansions or new toll roads are in compliance with state pollution control plans. That decision now is left to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“I think there are air quality improvements that are needed in the basin,” said Michael M. Ruane, director of the Orange County Environmental Management Agency, but “I don’t think there’s any assurance that adding a veto power (for the EPA) on a project-by-project basis would necessarily enhance our attainment. . . .

The EPA veto issue is likely to be one of the last resolved by the House-Senate conference committee.

Dannemeyer, meanwhile, is incensed about his colleagues’ response to a 10-year, $500-million study of the causes and effects of acid rain, one of the major types of pollution to be addressed by the legislation.

Among other things, the study concludes that reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by 8 million tons a year, instead of the 10 million tons contemplated under the clean air amendments, would cost about 50% less, or between $1.7 billion and $2.7 billion a year.

“It is tragic that we are permitting ourselves to be boxed into the position where we have accepted a political number of 10 million tons, with no scientific justification whatsoever,” Dannemeyer said.