Negotiators Reach Accord on Acid Rain

House and Senate negotiators, resolving their last major differences over new air pollution laws, reached an agreement on new acid rain controls Sunday as they put the finishing touches on a sweeping revision of the Clean Air Act.

Working around the clock, negotiators completed work on the broad outlines of legislation that aims to cleanse the nation’s skies of smog, acid rain and cancer-causing pollutants by the early part of the 21st Century.

The omnibus legislation, which President Bush is expected to sign as soon as the House and Senate give their final approval, reduces urban smog through tougher controls on automobile pollution and the use of cleaner-burning fuels and expands the regulation of toxic emissions from factories to lessen cancer risks. It combats acid rain by making utilities cut sulfur emissions and seeks to safeguard the Earth’s protective ozone layer by phasing out the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons by the year 2000.

“We have finally put in place policies for the next decade that are going to clean up the pollution that harms people’s health and threatens the ecosystem of our planet,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), one of the principal authors of the legislation. “It is the most far-reaching and aggressive program to clean up pollution anywhere in the world.”

The bill requires 107 dirty utility plants clustered in the Midwest and the Southeast to cut their emissions of sulfur dioxide by almost 10 million tons or half the current amount by the year 2000. Emissions thereafter would be capped at 1980 levels, but an innovative trading system will let utilities that cannot meet the limits buy “pollution credits” from utilities that make extra reductions.

The acid rain agreement was reached just before dawn Sunday after a nightlong argument over whether the Midwest, which bears the brunt of the reductions, was being treated fairly. In the end, the negotiators agreed to delay some of the reductions that Midwestern utilities must make until the year 2000.

They also accepted a provision that California lawmakers lobbied to get to regulate offshore pollution along the Outer Continental Shelf. Sponsored by Reps. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ojai) and Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), the provision obliges the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate offshore sources of air pollution, such as oil rigs in the same manner as onshore sources.

That left only a handful of smaller issues on the table, the most contentious being a provision to provide $250 million in relief for workers who lose their jobs because of the legislation. The Administration opposes the provision on cost grounds but negotiators said they were confident a compromise would be reached.

Congress must still approve the final accord and a few conservative senators have hinted that they may try to mount a filibuster. Supporters clearly have enough votes, however, to block any last-minute attempt to kill the bill, thus assuring passage this year.

The culmination of a decade-long struggle to revise the nation’s outdated air pollution laws, the bill has been described by congressional leaders as the most important piece of regulatory legislation Congress will pass this year.

Its impact will be enormous, as will its price.

Although there is disagreement over its cost, $20 billion a year is a conservative estimate for legislation that imposes a complex web of regulations on everything from giant steel mills and Midwestern utility companies to corner gas stations and neighborhood dry cleaners.

Industry spokesmen warn the price may be far higher. But clean air advocates and health officials say the benefits--in both lower health care costs and in the lives that will be saved by detoxifying the air Americans breathe--will be incalculable.

Inevitably with a bill this broad, the legislation that finally emerged from more than a year of committee hearings, floor debates and in recent weeks nearly around the clock conference negotiations was a compendium of compromises crafted by lawmakers representing the various industries, regions and other special interests affected by the regulations.

The result is a patchwork of provisions that, while described as very strict by industry lobbyists, falls short of what some environmentalists and state air quality control officials said is necessary to meet new turn-of-the-century deadlines for cleaning up the air in America’s most polluted cities.

“Overall, this bill is a net plus for the environment, but it also contains unnecessary delays and the auto standards are not as tight as they could have been,” said Gene Karpinski, an environmentalist with the Public Interest Research Group.

Backed by the White House and key allies such as Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, oil and auto industry lobbyists succeeded in getting the conferees to stretch out some deadlines and to adopt the generally more lenient motor vehicle provisions of the House-passed version of the bill. But industry officials declined to portray these compromises as victories for their side.

“There were no clear winners and no clear losers here. Everybody gave a pound of flesh,” said Tim MacCarthy, a lobbyist for the Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Assn. “We’re not totally happy either, but then we did not expect to be.”

The bill sets deadlines, ranging from three to 17 years, for cities to eliminate smog by lowering the ozone level in their areas to the national standard of 0.12 parts per million. Los Angeles, with the worst smog in the nation, will have an additional three years, until 2010, to attain the standard.

To achieve these goals, the legislation tightens federal controls on major sources of industrial pollution and for the first time extends them in severely polluted areas to small sources, such as printing plants and automobile paint shops.

To control the largest single source of smog-forming pollution--the automobile--the bill takes a triple-track approach. It tightens tailpipe emission standards, mandates the use of cleaner-burning “reformulated gasoline” in the nation’s nine smoggiest cities and establishes in California a pilot program for ultra-clean cars and fuels--a plan that other states may use and that eventually could set standards for the entire nation.

The tailpipe standards for new cars and light duty trucks will be phased in starting in 1994, with the aim of reducing emissions of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, the main ingredients of smog, by nearly 40% and 60%, respectively, by 1998.

A second round of 50% emission cuts will go into effect after the year 2000, unless the EPA determines that they are not needed or are too expensive.

California has already adopted these standards for cars sold in the state. But extending them to the rest of the nation means that the one in four cars in California that come from out of state now will also have to be cleaner.

For the first time, the bill also tackles the problem of acid rain and dramatically expands federal regulation of airborne toxins that can cause cancer, birth defects or other serious diseases. Only seven of these hazardous pollutants emitted by the chemical, oil and steel industries are currently regulated.

The bill expands that number to 189, leaving it up to the EPA to set specific limits for each industry, with the aim of achieving a 90% overall reduction in toxic emissions by early in the next century.

Although environmentalists had hoped for an even stronger bill, they conceded that the legislation represents a major breakthrough in a decade-long deadlock in Congress over revising the 1977 Clean Air Act.

Bush helped to break the logjam last year when, reversing the Ronald Reagan Administration’s opposition to environmental regulation, he proposed a clean air package. It later became the basis for negotiations with clean air advocates in Congress, led in the House by Waxman and in the Senate by Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

CLEAN AIR ACCORD

The House-Senate clean air agreement represents a far-reaching rewrite of the nation’s air pollution laws. This table compares current federal regulations with the new laws.

Smog

Current law: Restricts automobile tailpipe emissions to 0.41 grams per mile for hydrocarbons and 1.0 g.p.m. for nitrogen oxides.

Clean Air Agreement: Lowers hydrocarbon emissions to 0.25 g.p.m. by 1998 over four-year phase-in; drops to 0.125 in 2003, unless EPA says it is unnecessary or unfeasible. Restricts nitrogen oxides to 0.4 g.p.m. by 1998 and 0.2 g.p.m. in 2003, unless EPA rules against.

Clean Cars and Fuels

Current law: No requirements.

Clean Air Agreement: Reformulated gasoline to be sold in the nine smoggiest cities by 1995. Some new fleet vehicles like taxis and delivery vans in 25 dirty-air cities must meet California standards for low emission vehicles starting in 1998. Additionally, a pilot program for California mandates clean car and fuel production beginning in 1996. Cars would have to be 50% cleaner than conventional vehicles through model year 2000 and 70% cleaner after that. Although mandated only for California, other states can opt into the program.

Air Toxics

Current law: Controls the emission of seven chemicals classified as toxic, but enforcement has been lax.

Clean Air Agreement: Expands controls to 189 hazardous chemicals, with the aim of reducing toxic emissions by 75% to 90% over the next 20 years. EPA will set the specific reductions for each industry, taking health risks and technological feasibility into account.

Acid Rain

Current law: No requirements.

Clean Air Agreement: Requires utility companies to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by nearly 10 million tons by the year 2000 and cap them at 1980 levels. The Midwest bears the brunt of the reductions but can delay some cuts until the year 2000. Allowance system also lets utilities that make extra reductions sell “pollution credits” to others.