Environmental Bills Meet a Mixed Fate

Congress gave its final bipartisan blessing Thursday to a dramatic expansion of federal land conservation efforts, even as budget bargainers dealt a mix of victories and setbacks to environmentalists on other fronts.

Among those defeats was a tentative agreement between White House and congressional bargainers to language on a bill delaying Environmental Protection Agency plans to move ahead with efforts to reduce smog in major cities.

Two days after the House bestowed its own lopsided approval, the Senate voted, 83 to 13, for an $18.8-billion measure financing the Interior Department for fiscal 2001, which began Sunday. The bill includes an immediate $1.2-billion down payment for purchasing fragile lands, maintaining parks, preserving wildlife and other initiatives as part of a six-year program costing up to $12 billion.

The measure would more than double last year’s federal conservation spending, handing a victory to President Clinton, who has made land preservation a top priority and will sign the legislation.

Amid burgeoning federal surpluses, the overall Interior bill was $3.9 billion bigger than last year’s measure, $2.4 billion more than Clinton had requested and more than $3 billion larger than earlier House and Senate versions.

Barely a month before election day, it was loaded with hometown projects from every state, from $7.5 million for the Kenai Peninsula borough in Alaska to act against spruce bark beetles to $365,000 for restoring President Grant’s boyhood home in Georgetown, Ohio.

“The spigot is on,” complained Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent critic of such spending.

Western commercial interests won their own victories. These included permission for some ranchers using federal lands to renew grazing permits without environmental reviews, and money to enable loggers to remove debris from some national forests.

The bill also contained $105 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $7 million more than last year and the agency’s first significant increase since the GOP took control of Congress six years ago.

Separately, officials familiar with a tentative agreement on a near $109-billion measure financing housing, veterans, environmental and science programs said the measure would slow EPA plans to move against urban air pollution.

A provision would bar EPA until June from officially citing cities and counties for being in violation of new, stricter air quality standards.

Also, farmers who produce everything from avocados to milk would benefit from a $3.5-billion package of election-year aid.

House and Senate negotiators on Thursday put the money in an $80-billion appropriation bill that will fund operations of the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration over the next year.

The legislation includes $1.6 billion for payments to farmers whose crops were destroyed by drought or damaged by disease.