Squabbling Between House and Senate Clouds Future of Clean Air Legislation

The long legislative battle to enact a clean air bill this year is in danger of being lost as lawmakers and special interest groups clash over provisions mandating the production of cleaner-burning cars and fuels.

The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, the first major revision of the nation’s air pollution laws in 13 years, have been described by the congressional leadership of both parties as the most important, complex and far-reaching legislation to come before Congress this year.

But despite three months of often bitter bargaining, House and Senate conferees have made only meager progress toward reconciling the myriad technical differences contained in the House and Senate versions of the omnibus bill. Unless they resolve the remaining disputes this week, there may not be time to reconcile the bills and pass legislation this year.

“This week is heartbreak hill for the clean air debate,” said an aide to one of the conferees, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

“The clock is ticking away, and there has been very little progress,” added Daniel Weiss, an environmentalist with the Sierra Club. He now rates the chances of passing clean air legislation this year at “no better than 50-50.”

The effort continues to be overshadowed by the current maneuvering over the federal budget. At the moment, clean air negotiations are bedeviled by differences over the development of a new generation of non-polluting “clean” motor vehicles and the fuels that will run them. Additionally, negotiators must work out disagreements about cleaner-burning “reformulated gasoline” for cars already on the road.

Both the House and Senate bills contain provisions to encourage the development of clean-fueled vehicles through stringent pollution limits on “fleet vehicles,” such as taxicabs and delivery vans, in the nation’s most polluted cities. They also establish a special pilot program for California, mandating the production and distribution of clean-burning cars and fuels. Both also call for the sale of specially blended reformulated gasoline in the nation’s smoggiest cities beginning in 1994.

But although the two bills take a broadly similar approach toward reducing automobile pollution, major differences lurk in the still unresolved details.

The House bill, for instance, preempts states from regulating smog-causing emissions from “non-road vehicles” such as farm and construction equipment. The Senate wants that stricture removed--as do California air quality officials. They argue that non-road engines account for about 10% of the state’s smog-causing emissions from motor vehicles.

Proving even more intractable is the stalemate over a proposal not in either version of the bill. Introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) on behalf of auto industry interests, the proposal would make the Environmental Protection Agency responsible for enforcing the California standards for clean vehicles in other states that choose to adopt them.

Fearing that the EPA would not act, environmentalists and states such as New York, which has already decided to adopt the California standards, want to retain the authority to enforce the program themselves.

“They’re locked into a debate over things that are not even in either bill. Industry advocates, led by Dingell, have succeeded in redefining the choices and reshaping the terms of the debate in their favor,” Weiss said.

In the process, differences have been widened, rather than narrowed, and compromises have been concocted that are so complicated that several conferees complained last week that they no longer even understand what it is they’re arguing about.

“Dingell and his allies are trying to weaken the bill through a strategy of delay that will force the conferees to choose between a bad bill or no bill,” Weiss said.

“Waxman is doing his best to fight for strong legislation, but he doesn’t have the votes on the House side,” he added. “And the preoccupation with the budget is keeping the House leadership from stepping in and saving the day.”

In the meantime, some conferees are becoming so disillusioned with the process that they are threatening to walk out of the conference and begin the process all over again next year if no progress is made this week.

One of them is Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), who warned last week that he would not be maneuvered by “a strategy of delay” into accepting a weak bill on grounds that it would be better than no bill at all.