Quayle Role in Clean Air Rules Assailed : Environment: House Democrats accuse the vice president of trying to gut the landmark law. GOP members leap to his defense in heated debate.

A simmering environmental controversy boiled over on Capitol Hill Wednesday when House Democrats angrily accused Vice President Dan Quayle and other White House officials of secretly but systematically trying to undermine efforts to implement the new Clean Air Act.

Led by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce environmental subcommittee charged that Quayle’s office had “browbeaten” the Environmental Protection Agency into proposing regulations that would gut the enforcement provisions of the landmark air pollution legislation passed last year after a decade-long fight.

Armed with internal memorandums obtained both from Quayle’s office and the EPA, Waxman said there was “unmistakable evidence that White House officials, spearheaded by Vice President Dan Quayle . . . are working with industry to undermine implementation of the new clean air law.”

Because they violate both the letter and the spirit of the legislation, some of the regulatory changes made by Quayle’s office are also “flagrantly illegal,” Waxman and other Democrats argued.

“It would be bad enough that the vice president is in over his head,” said Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.). “It is worse that what he is doing is illegal.”

That and similar accusations by other Democrats on the panel brought an angry retort from Republicans, who accused Waxman, the subcommittee’s chairman, of using the hearing to engage in partisan politics. As tempers flared and voices rose, Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.) got into verbal combat with Rep. Norman F. Lent (R-N.Y.), who heatedly charged that Democrats “longing to return to the days of Jimmy Carter” were “beating up” on the Administration witnesses called to testify before the hearing.

When Sikorski tried to interrupt, Lent abruptly cut him off. “Pipe down!” he snapped. “I’m asking the questions now, not you.”

The controversy causing all this legislative commotion concerned proposed EPA rules to implement an innovative air pollution permit system that is supposed to make it easier to monitor and enforce compliance with the major provisions of the Clean Air Act. Under the proposal, all major sources of pollution except for motor vehicles would have to obtain permits from state authorities specifying their obligations under the law, including the levels of pollution they are allowed to emit.

Released last week for 60 days of public comment, the rules were the first major set of regulations to be proposed under the Clean Air Act. But environmentalists immediately charged that the rules contained loopholes inserted by the White House that would make it more difficult, if not impossible, to enforce compliance with the act.

Waxman released copies of an 83-page memo from Quayle’s office that contained more than 100 changes to the original EPA proposals. “None of the changes serve to strengthen the permit program. Almost all of them would serve to weaken it,” he said.

Among the most controversial changes proposed by Quayle’s office was a provision that would give industries the “operational flexibility” to make changes in their operations by increasing their emissions of pollutants provided state authorities did not object within seven days of receiving written notice.

Waxman said that provision would give “polluters the right to write their own permits” without the benefit of public notice or judicial review. “If the state fails to object within just seven days, voila , the permit is automatically revised to allow the extra pollution. Not only is this horrible policy, it is also flagrantly illegal,” Waxman said.

That verbal assault set off Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, who charged that Congress was controlled by environmentalists whose real aim is to dismantle capitalism.

“The environmental party has put a ring through the nose of the U.S. Congress and . . . there are some in this environmental party who detest the capitalist system (and) yearn for a socialist system,” he said.