Chemical Plant Clean Air Rules Proposed : Toxics: EPA estimates that the plan will reduce release of cancer-causing materials into the air by 80%. It is the latest of several pre-election efforts.

Continuing a pre-election outpouring of clean air decisions, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a 1,000-page plan Thursday to control emissions by the nation’s chemical plants.

The agency estimated that the new rule will reduce the release of cancer-causing air toxics by 80%. As a bonus, the agency said the proposed rule will bring about a billion-ton-per-year cut in the industry’s release of volatile organic compounds, a principal ingredient in the formation of smog.

Critics, however, said the measure is inexcusably weak.

Mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act, the rule controlling air toxics was supposed to have been completed by Nov. 15, but like other regulations required by the law, it has been a subject of sharp and protracted differences between the EPA and the White House Competitiveness Council, which has waged a determined and highly publicized battle to minimize the economic impact of federal regulation.

The proposal will now be subject to public comment and possible revision. Consequently, it is expected to be another year before it is put into final form. The rule will take effect three years after that.

William G. Rosenberg, the environmental agency’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, hailed the proposal as the most significant step that will be taken in the next 10 years to abate toxic air pollutants. The beneficiaries, he said, will be human health, agricultural production, ecosystems harboring endangered species and streams and forests.

Provisions of the complex draft, he said, will reduce releases of 149 of the 189 toxic chemicals explicitly mentioned in the Clean Air Act, including chemicals cited as possible contributors to 1,500 to 3,000 annual cancer deaths.

Most significantly affected will be areas of Louisiana, Texas and New Jersey where the petrochemical industry is heavily concentrated, although the new rules will have bearing on facilities in 38 states.

Officials from the most-affected areas joined environmentalists and industry representatives, including the Chemical Manufacturers Assn. and the American Petroleum Institute, in lengthy negotiations over the proposed rule.

As the EPA touted the outcome, critics characterized it as weak in several important respects.

A joint statement by the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials said flaws in the proposal not only threaten its control efforts, but also could “set a dangerous precedent for future air toxic rules.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which had sued EPA in an effort to force release of the proposal, charged that the document had been watered down and weakened by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“The Office of Management and Budget held the EPA proposal hostage since Dec. 24, 1991--for 310 days,” said attorney David Driesen of the council. “The rule shows signs of having been tortured in captivity. It’s been through quite an ordeal.”

Specifically, critics attacked the proposal because it provides for cost-benefit analyses before control standards can be imposed that are more strict than the “floor” levels written into the Clean Air Act.

It also enables operators of huge industrial complexes to average emissions from control points. If one controlled aspect of their operation is emitting excessive toxics, they could compensate for it by exceeding control requirements at another location.

Although the EPA characterized the provision as flexible, Driesen labeled it a “shell game . . . giving polluters windfall credits that will be used to allow more toxic pollution.”

Amid charges that clean air measures are being rushed out to tidy up the Bush Administration’s environmental record before the election, the EPA earlier this week issued final proposed rules for combatting acid rain, completed proposed rules to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by electrical utility boilers and unveiled regulations to abate air pollution by steel industry coke ovens.

Besides offering its proposed rule for controlling air toxics on Thursday, the agency made final a rule that will give industries a six-year extension on meeting other increasingly stringent air toxic controls if they take early steps to reduce certain pollutants by 90% to 95%.