Clinton Proposes Avalanche of Rules to Seal His Environmental Legacy

When it comes to President Clinton and the environment, rules rule, with plans to protect forests, limit runoff and create monuments--to name just a few.

Conservation proposals are falling from the White House like rain as the president tries to create an environmental legacy without the help of Congress.

And with just a year left in Clinton’s presidency, agencies are working fast to try to get the rules --more than a dozen major ones--done this year.

Weary federal bureaucrats are holding hundreds of public meetings on the rules proposals. Outside groups are scrolling through thousands of pages of documents written in legal jargon. And an irritated opposition is being forced to play defense to try to slow down the regulatory juggernaut.

People inside and outside government cannot remember when there have been so many major rule-makings underway at one time.

President Clinton in October signed an executive order calling for regulations to place up to 50 million acres of already roadless national forests off-limits to development. Environmentalists said the move was Teddy Rooseveltian --one of the great conservation acts of the century.

Two months earlier, Clinton announced an ambitious rules proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency to clamp down on loggers, farmers and other landowners who may indirectly foul waterways with runoff from their property.

And last Tuesday, Clinton acted unilaterally to designate three new national monuments in Arizona and California, protecting hundreds of square miles of federal land from development.

Other regulatory actions would put forest health above all other priorities in managing national forests, encourage state and local rules to help threatened salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and broadly dictate land use on 64 million acres of public land in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, and on 10 million acres of national forests in California’s Sierra.

Dale Riddle, who tracks regulatory proposals for Seneca Sawmill Co. in Eugene, Ore., compares the blizzard of proposals to the New Deal years of the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Riddle said. “There’s so many, it’s hard to keep up with all of them.”

Bureaucrats are stretched thin as they hold hearings, collect hundreds of thousands of public comments and jump through other legal hoops that would make the proposed rules a reality.

The 29 meetings the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region has held on Clinton initiatives in recent months--combined with other local efforts--have overburdened employees and made the public weary and confused, said Lyle Laverty, regional forester for the area.

“Dialogue conducted under these conditions is not likely to produce the quality of feedback that you are looking for,” he told his boss, Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck, in a memo last month.

Critics say Laverty’s memo is a clarion call showing Clinton is trying to do too much in too little time. Rules crafted in such haste will only heighten public cynicism and prompt lawsuits, they warn.

The active rule-making is “absolutely unprecedented, literally in the history of the United States,” said Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.). “Overwhelmingly, the new rules and regulations are aimed at rural America.”

Clinton knows many of his proposals would die in Congress, so he is using rules instead, said Gorton, who chairs the Interior subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

But White House officials say Clinton has had little choice but to use his executive clout.

“Where Congress has been unable or unwilling to act, this administration has not hesitated to use its full executive authority to protect public health and the environment,” said Elliot Diringer, spokesman for the president’s Council on Environmental Quality. “This is all fully within his authority.”

The GOP-controlled Congress as a result has been left in a defensive mode--criticizing administration officials, threatening legislation and urging agencies to improve regulatory processes.

The advantage is that Clinton won’t get all the rules done before he leaves office, Gorton said. And the next president--perhaps a Republican--can undo many of Clinton’s actions, he added.

Environmentalists say it is clear Clinton officials have a sense of urgency to get the proposals done this year--before a George W. Bush or John McCain administration might take over.

“The administration is in its two-minute offense,” said Andy Stahl of the environmental group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.

Clinton is not entirely avoiding Congress, though. He is working with key lawmakers, for instance, to craft legislation that would secure billions of dollars of additional federal revenue for land acquisition.

And many of the regulatory proposals the administration has made --such as forest planning and land-use rules--are not overnight sensations; they have been bubbling up from local and regional officials for years, agency officials say.

While the blitz to finish the rules may be at times messy, awkward and demanding, “this is nothing short of democracy in action,” said Chris Wood, a top aide to the Forest Service’s Dombeck.

He noted that 500,000 people submitted comments on Clinton’s roadless initiative.

Ted Zukoski, a Boulder, Colo., attorney who tracks rule-making for a handful of environmental groups, acknowledged the thousands of pages of proposed regulations can be cumbersome, confusing and overwhelming.

But the environmental protections that will result from many of the efforts make the clumsy processes worthwhile, he said.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to see this administration end with a bang and not a whimper,” he said. “It’s the kind of work we’re happy to have.”