States, White House at Odds on Environment

No recent president has been quicker than George W. Bush to embrace the virtues of state and local control. But when it comes to the environment, William Becker discovered, that commitment can evaporate when state regulation would be tougher on industry than federal rules.

Becker, who represents administrators of state air-pollution programs in Washington, met with White House officials last month to appeal to them not to weaken the Clean Air Act.

He used the administration’s own rhetoric about the value of local decision making to support his case. Surely, he said, the administration would not stand in the way of states that wanted to enforce tougher clean-air rules on utilities and major polluters.

Wrong.

“My argument was totally ignored,” said Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. “They talk about states’ rights, but they take away key tools states have needed to clean up the air.”

Becker’s experience reflects a pattern apparent throughout the Bush administration’s implementation of environmental policy, according to state officials and environmental activists. When state and local interests collide with what industry wants, these activists and officials say, the administration has tossed its states’ rights ideology out the window. “We’ve seen a dramatic curtailment of states’ rights,” Becker said.

The trend does not stop with air pollution. Other, apparently similar cases include extending oil drilling leases off California’s coast and allowing the mining of clay in Reno to produce cat litter.

White House officials say the decisions result from collisions of two of the administration’s guiding principles, provided by the nation’s Founding Fathers.

“Thomas Jefferson’s views of strong states’ rights are clearly a part of the administration’s philosophy; we also recognize the value of Alexander Hamilton’s strong central government to promote commerce and a strong economy,” said John Graham, administrator of the office of regulatory affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget. “Balancing those two perspectives is very difficult.”

Early in Bush’s term, environmental agency officials tried to give states more control. The EPA asked Congress to shift $25 million annually from federal to state efforts to enforce pollution laws. And the Interior Department tried to send $450 million -- half of the money in its land and water conservation fund -- directly to state officials to use as they determined best. Congress said no.

Administration officials have continued to assert their commitment to state decision making. In a speech to the National League of Cities Conference in March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said: “I believe very strongly -- as does another former governor, President Bush -- that those closest to the problem are often best-suited to finding solutions that get results.”

Similarly, Interior Department officials say their commitment to state decision making has guided their hands-off approach to the conflict among California water agencies over the state’s allotment from the Colorado River.

But when states have made specific requests of the Bush administration, they have not always received the answer they wanted.

In the recent Clean Air Act case, some states asked for the authority to either adopt the new national rules or keep their existing ones. The new national rules give big polluting facilities more leeway in deciding when they have to install modern pollution-control devices during major modifications of their equipment.

The administration argues that industries will reduce pollution in exchange for the new flexibility. California and other states disagree.

“We feel our rules are better,” said Jerry Martin, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. “We think that it would be a big step back to adopt the Bush rules.”

The administration required states to adopt the rules or go through a complicated process to prove their programs are more effective. But state officials are worried that the EPA will reject any such efforts.

“Equivalency is in the eye of the beholder,” Martin said.

Jeffrey Holmstead, the EPA’s assistant administrator for clean air, called the complaints about the Bush administration usurping states’ prerogatives a “red herring” -- particularly in California’s case.

“California has [an air pollution] program that looks way different than the rest of the country,” Holmstead said.

Since the state’s efforts to control air pollution predated federal regulations, California was given a special right in the Clean Air Act to chart its own course.

But this year, the administration rejected California’s bid for a waiver from the federal requirement to include an additive, such as ethanol, in its gasoline to reduce vehicle pollution. The state said newer refining techniques made ethanol unnecessary.

Another conflict over air rules concerned California’s “zero emissions” vehicle program, which was implemented in 1990 in an effort to put smog-free electric cars on the road. California wanted to modify the program to reflect the new realities in the auto industry by giving manufacturers credit for producing hybrid cars -- fueled partly by electricity and partly by gasoline -- that they could use toward meeting quotas for “zero emissions” vehicles.

In October, the administration sided with DaimlerChrysler and General Motors Corp. against California in a case before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco challenging the program. The government argued that granting credits for hybrids preempted the federal government’s sole authority to set fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, because the criteria for hybrids are defined in reference to fuel-economy standards. The case has not been decided. Martin called this further proof of the administration’s refusal to let California decide for itself how to clean its air.

Graham agreed that, at least in this case, the administration had given the upper hand to national economic concerns over states’ priorities.

“We are arguing ... on both grounds of law and policy, that it makes sense to have one set of uniform fuel economy standards for vehicles,” Graham said. “Remember that we see value both in the opportunity for states to make their own choices and also for the federal government to promote economic development and jobs through a single, federal standard.”

This is only one of several examples of the administration’s going to court to thwart state initiatives. It has not always succeeded.

The White House has been fighting to overturn a district court decision that affirmed California’s right to review federal proposals to extend offshore oil leases. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals early this month upheld the lower-court ruling, effectively blocking new oil drilling off the California coast in the near future.

Critics say the administration occasionally appears to be acting not out of concern over the potential economic fallout from a particular decision, but out of fear of a precedent that could have broad economic consequences.

For instance, they cite a Justice Department friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit by the Chicago-based Oil-Dri Corp. against Washoe County, Nev. The county rejected a permit application for a project that would allow clay mines on federal land and a cat-litter processing plant on adjacent private land.

The Justice Department argued with the company that the county had overstepped its authority, because the 1872 Mining Act gave the federal government control of mining on public land.

“They have taken a position in support of the industry’s argument,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Madelyn Shipman.

California has felt the brunt of these decisions because the state is progressive on environmental protection, environmentalists say.

The biggest clash between California and the Bush administration may be yet to come. Graham hinted that California’s effort to regulate carbon dioxide from vehicle tailpipes could be next. California is writing rules that would make it the first in the nation to regulate greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Graham said that once the regulations are done, it will be clear whether the federal government will intervene.