COLUMN RIGHT / ROBERT WENDOLL : Give Up ‘the Last Turns of the Screw’ : Environmentalists are starting to see the need for a balance with economic good.

We cannot yet say that reason is ascendant in the crusade for a zero-risk environment, but we can see signs that at least some of the former advocates of Clean-It-Up-and-Damn-the-Cost are beginning to use common sense.

And where zealots are resisting reason, the courts have begun imposing it. In California, for example, the paint and coatings industry has scored four resounding legal victories over air quality agencies that ignored evidence suggesting that certain regulations would increase, not decrease, air pollution.

It’s about time. For more than 30 years, the environmental movement has attempted to attach a loathsome connotation to words like technology, progress, industry and profit.

Now, not only are these words becoming respectable, two other despised phrases--”cost-benefit analysis” and “acceptable risk”--are beginning to be heard in save-the-planet discussions.

Martin Feldstein, former chairman of the presidential Council of Economic Advisers, and his economist wife, Kathleen, wrote in a July 23, 1989, Times article that “(s)ome pollution should be tolerated in modern society, because the costs of eliminating pollution cannot and should not be disregarded. There are too many worthy social goals that must compete with protecting the environment.”

That sentiment seems to have taken root and survived. Even that most sacred of sacred cows, the federal Superfund to clean up hazardous-waste sites, is now questioned on cost-efficiency grounds by enlightened environmentalists. The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch wrote that, according to a number of environmental experts, the benefits of restoring waste sites to pre-industrial condition “do not justify the costs, estimated by the government at a staggering $300 billion to $700 billion.”

The Times-Dispatch article of Sept. 1, 1991, quoted Tom Grumbly, an environmentalist who heads Clean Sites, a nonprofit organization that advises communities on hazardous-waste cleanups. In a startling departure from zero-risk dogma, he said: “The last couple turns of the screw cannot be justified on economic criteria.”

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is also starting to consider economic criteria. Introducing the district’s “New Directions” program, Henry Wedaa, chairman of the governing board, said: “We must develop new approaches to control air pollution to help our region maintain prosperity. We eagerly embrace our responsibility to create a better climate for a healthful environment and a healthy economy.”

Coming from representatives of organizations once fully committed to the “last couple turns of the screw” without regard to cost, these statements are revolutionary.

But such changes in attitude did not happen overnight, or without cause. After enjoying decades of virtual insulation from public criticism, the air quality district increasingly finds itself in hot water with not only the business community but also organized labor, consumer and taxpayer groups, state and local government officials, editorial writers and even the courts.

The paint and coatings industry, for example, has argued for years that some of the more stringent regulations affecting the formulation and use of house paints would impose enormous costs on companies and consumers but make little, if any, difference in air quality. They could even make matters worse. Legal challenges filed by paint companies have resulted in four rulings over 16 months that voided certain local district requirements.

The specific charge: Local districts did not respond to evidence that paints reformulated to comply with regulations do not perform as well as their predecessors, causing consumers to use more product to begin with, to add paint thinner (one source of the hydrocarbon emissions the districts are trying to eliminate) and to re-coat surfaces more frequently. The net result: More emissions, not less.

A major portion of the regulatory program of the South Coast Air Quality Management District is directed at paints, coatings and solvents, a source that contributes less than 5% of the total pollutant emissions locally. Yet, according to an independent economic study conducted last year, such regulations will cause two-thirds of the projected job losses resulting from the district’s 20-year plan.

The district now appears willing to take such matters into consideration. Environmental zealots may complain that the district is selling out. It’s not. The district is just coming to grips with a wider reality.