Bush Team OKs Clinton Arsenic Rules

The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will require an 80% reduction in the amount of arsenic in drinking water, implementing the same Clinton administration standard that it blocked eight months ago.

By making her decision Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman likely was seizing the last opportunity to set her own standard. A conference committee of Senate and House members was expected to decide as early as today whether to pass legislation requiring the EPA to set a standard no higher than 10 parts per billion, the standard Whitman put in place.

The current standard for arsenic is 50 parts per billion. Arsenic can cause cancer.

Whitman, unveiling her decision in a letter to the members of the conference committee, said: “This standard will improve the safety of drinking water for millions of Americans and better protect against the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.”

Congressional and outside observers of the political maneuvering over the arsenic standard said it was obvious that the administration saw this as its last chance to act on its own.

“They got caught because Congress refused to yield,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “We wasted all this time for nothing. They should have left the Clinton standard in place.”

“The conference committee was just about to make it law that the agency could not go above 10” parts per billion, said Erik K. Olson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The handwriting was on the wall. The science was in. [Administration officials] wanted to cut their losses.”

But Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) defended Whitman’s reassessment of the Clinton administration’s arsenic standard.

“I don’t see how anyone can fault her for getting the best possible science to justify the decision,” said Boehlert, a strong environmentalist.

Noting that the compliance date for the Bush administration standard is the same one specified by the Clinton rule--2006--he added that Whitman’s review did not delay the cleanup of drinking water systems.

The issue had become a political liability for the Bush administration. Environmentalists and their congressional supporters were outraged in March when Whitman revoked the Clinton administration standard, arguing that the costs and benefits of the reduction had not been adequately weighed as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

For months, environmentalists kept up the political pressure on Whitman, and this summer, both houses of Congress passed legislation to force Whitman’s hand.

Over time, public opinion polls reflected voters’ concern about the administration’s handling of environmental issues in general and the arsenic standard specifically, and some of President Bush’s lowest approval ratings were for his environmental positions.

Bush administration officials then began to backpedal, suggesting that they might even advocate a standard tougher than the one set by the Clinton administration. By August, President Bush had singled out the arsenic decision as one action he would like to do over.

Meanwhile, Whitman ordered studies by three separate panels to investigate the health risks of arsenic in drinking water and the costs to communities of removing the chemical from their water systems.

Wednesday’s decision came after one of those studies showed that even minute amounts of arsenic could lead to higher rates of lung and bladder cancer than earlier research had indicated.

A National Academy of Sciences study showed that the lifetime risk for people consuming water daily with 10 parts per billion of arsenic is 3 in 1,000 people.

Federal EPA standards generally seek to limit increased lifetime cancer risk to no more than 1 in 10,000 people, so the new standard has a cancer risk 30 times greater than the norm.

A previous study by the academy found that the current standard, 50 parts per billion, “could easily” result in 1 person out of every 100 developing cancer.

Environmentalists and some members of Congress said that the battle is not over.

“In light of their own study, I’m going to push for three” parts per billion, said Boxer, author of the Senate measure to force Whitman into action.

Olson, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the administration’s position that it was seeking out sound science a “charade.” If officials were willing to accept the implications of their studies, he said, they would have set the standard at three parts per billion.

For her part, Whitman said she is still concerned about the costs that small communities will face trying to comply with the new rule.

“It’s not enough just to set the right standard,” Whitman said in the letter to the conference committee. “We want to work with local communities to help them meet it.”

The EPA plans to spend $20 million over the next two years on research and development of cost-effective technologies for reducing arsenic in drinking water.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the drinking water of several regions of the country. It also can be introduced into the environment by other means, including mining activities and wood treatment.

Arsenic levels exceeding 10 parts per billion are found in 3,000 water systems serving 13 million people, most of them in arid Western states.

About 500 California water systems--most of them small--have arsenic levels higher than 10 parts per billion, according to David P. Spath, chief of the division of drinking water and environmental management for the state Department of Health Services.

State officials must set their own arsenic standard by 2004, and given the results of the academy study, they are considering whether 10 parts per billion is stringent enough.

“It’s in the ballpark of what we would think is appropriate,” Spath said. “If one assumes that these risks are correct, there is potentially some risk for exposure over a long period. But at the same time, Congress and the state Legislature have decided that we have to weigh benefits and costs when setting drinking water standards.”

Krista Clark, spokeswoman for the Assn. of California Water Agencies, was surprised but relieved with the announcement of the decision. Whitman had a deadline of February for coming up with the new standard, so water agency officials expected the congressional conference committee to have the next say on the matter.

“We’ve always had a lot of confidence that 10 parts per billion--for public health reasons--is where we want to go. We were surprised with the administration’s decision to review the standard,” Clark said.

But water agencies were “heartened” by the administration’s expediency in ordering new studies and coming to its own finding.

“If this really is the end of the road, we’re ready to get our financing together and our treatment plants built,” Clark said. “This has been a long, long time coming. I think the administration is doing the right thing.”