Environmental Riders Survive Spending Battle

Although the White House successfully squelched dozens of GOP proposals designed to limit the impact of key environmental rules, several remain in the omnibus appropriations bill agreed upon last week, including three that would affect issues important to California.

The money bill, slated to clear Congress Wednesday, includes measures that would delay the phaseout of methyl bromide pesticide, used heavily in California farming; increase logging in three national forests in the state and speed toll-road construction from south Orange County into northern San Diego County.

The wrangling over the riders--amendments unrelated to the subject of the bill--marked a change in tactics for the GOP. Three years ago, GOP conservatives failed when they attacked environmental programs head-on, incurring defeats at the hands of Democrats who were joined by a handful of Republicans.

This year, Republicans peppered the appropriations bills with riders in an effort to chip away at environmental regulations that they consider excessive, sometimes inserting restrictive language in conference committee reports, which often have the force of law.

Clinton administration officials have portrayed the final omnibus bill as a victory for environmentalists: Republicans initially sought to tack more than 50 such riders on various appropriations bills. Only about a dozen remain in the omnibus bill.

Heavy pressure from the White House persuaded Republicans to drop or dilute measures that would have increased logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, blocked any new studies of the Columbia River basin and barred further planning on how to deal with global warming.

But the bill still contains riders that would prevent a tightening of auto fuel-economy standards, allow ranchers to obtain grazing permits without environmental review and open coastal barrier areas to more rapid development--all anathema to environmentalists.

It also includes provisions that would halt the review of hard-rock mining regulations and delay the imposition of new rules for computing oil royalties, enabling oil and gas industries to escape tax liability on $86 million in royalties in this fiscal year.

“The administration is claiming total victory, that it has cleaned this thing up entirely, but we don’t see it that way,” said Daniel Lashof, senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There are some serious problems that remain.”

Environmentalists were enraged over the GOP assault, charging that pushing the measures through as riders was a ploy to avoid public hearings and roll-call votes that might have uncovered more opposition. Vice President Al Gore attacked the GOP for using “stealth tactics.”

In the end, Republicans scrapped the bulk of the riders during negotiations over the omnibus bill. President Clinton already has said that he will accept the remaining provisions to get the bill passed and avoid a government shutdown.

The provision affecting methyl bromide would postpone the federal target date for phasing out use of the pesticide until 2005--four years later than previously scheduled. California is a major consumer of the chemical, which is used as a fumigant by specialty fruit growers.

How rapidly to phase out use of methyl bromide, which environmentalists say destroys the ozone in the upper atmosphere 50 times more aggressively than chlorofluorcarbons, has been the subject of a major controversy in California over the last five years.

A second California-related rider, which still was in negotiation late Monday, would double the amount of logging permitted in the Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe national forests in the northern Sierra--to 230 million board feet a year, from 115 million board feet now.

Timber companies in the state say that the increase is needed both to help the lumber industry and to aid the state’s economy. But environmentalists contend that it will deplete resources more rapidly, accelerate the construction of roads and endanger local wildlife.

The third provision would relax environmental barriers to the construction of a toll road from south Orange County through San Onofre State Beach Park in San Diego County. Plans for that road, Foothill South, have been held up in the face of federal agencies’ opposition.

The rider, tacked on by Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), would limit federal authority to intervene in the road’s planning.

Local officials say the roadway is needed to relieve traffic congestion in the area. But environmentalists say that the route, which bisects some of the last pristine watersheds and wild lands in the area, would damage the local ecology and harm endangered species.