10-Year Struggle Draws to Close as Congress Passes Clean Air Act

A decade-long stalemate between advocates of clean air and industries that befoul it formally came to an end Saturday when the Senate passed and sent to President Bush a major revision of the Clean Air Act.

The vote was an overwhelming 89 to 10. The House approved the legislation 401 to 25 on Friday. Bush, on a campaign swing to Hawaii, said he was pleased by passage of the bill and called the action “an important milestone.” He is expected to sign the bill into law early this week.

“Some have said too much was compromised for the health of our economy. Others . . . that too much was compromised for the health of the environment. . . . The important fact is that with this bill we are once again moving forward,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.). “Today we end a decade of stalemate.”

Opponents argued that the bill’s $25-billion-per-year price tag is too high and that its impact on industry will be extreme. By the turn of the century, the bill will force virtually every major industry in America to make deep cuts in the emissions of pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, toxic hazards and the depletion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer.

But citing studies showing that dirty air contributes to 50,000 deaths per year, Mitchell said the “costs of doing nothing are much greater.”

Environmentalists hailed final passage of the 700-page bill, which took a year to draft and caps a debate that began in Congress a decade ago. “This bill has been like a nine-year pregnancy followed by one year of labor,” said Sierra Club lobbyist Daniel Weiss. “It’s an historic day for us.”

California’s senators, Democrat Alan Cranston and Republican Pete Wilson, both voted for the bill, which imposes tough new controls on automobiles and industries in order to eliminate smog from all American cities by the year 2010.

It also mandates a 10-million ton reduction in the sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain by the year 2000 and aims to eliminate all but 10% of the 2 billion pounds of toxic chemicals released into the air every year by industrial polluters.

“Some of us would have liked to see an even stronger bill,” Wilson said. “But this is a good compromise that is going to mean cleaner and healthier air everywhere in America.”

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.