For Bush, Environment Is Local

The Bush administration, reversing decades of centralizing environmental regulations in Washington, is seeking to shift responsibility for pollution control and public land use to local government and private interests.

In a series of policies proposed in recent weeks on global warming, power plant pollution, national forests and conservation, the federal government plays the role of facilitator rather than dictator.

No longer would stiff federal penalties fall on those who failed to clean their pollution. Business would be in charge of ensuring clean air and water.

No longer would government control federal land use. Local organizations, businesses and individuals would make those determinations.

In the end, the administration believes the environment would be protected--without such frequent recourse to costly court battles--even as energy production is increased and greater use is made of federal lands.

“The president’s philosophy is that not all wisdom lies in Washington, and to the extent that we can build partnerships with states and corporations and local communities, we’ll get much more accomplished,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman. “That’s something both of us learned as governors.”

Many environmental activists, however, fear that the administration’s principles hide an intention to turn environmental policy over to business. They cite recent Interior Department steps toward allowing snowmobiles to roam Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks if they abide by some limits on noise and gasoline.

“The reason federal environmental laws were cast in the first place was because the state governments, state legislatures and local governments were so dominated by local industries that the environment wasn’t being protected,” said Philip Clapp, president of National Environmental Trust.

(Many of President Bush’s goals--new ways of enforcing clean air standards, for example, and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--require legislation. Others do not; snowmobiles are already allowed in Yellowstone and Grand Teton.)

For climate change policy, Bush’s “new environmentalism” means businesses are asked to come up with ways to limit the increase of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. They are not required to meet any federally mandated targets.

To clean up power plants, a system of tradable “pollution rights” gives utilities financial incentives to reduce emissions of toxic mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Government leaves it to industry to decide how to meet nationwide emission caps.

To improve management of national forests, some would be taken over by local trustees--perhaps loggers, hikers, business executives and scientists who live nearby. Wildlife and wilderness would be cared for in lands adjacent to federal property with a new $100-million program that would give money to states and individuals willing to donate their time or money to conservation projects.

Bush’s environmental team--led by Whitman and Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton--argues that citizens and the businesses they run should be trusted to care for their environment. Unwieldy bureaucracies, they say, are not the answer.

“I believe that most Americans, especially those who depend on the land for their livelihood, are ready and willing to step up to the challenge,” Norton said in a recent speech.

Evidence may be found in the government’s successful acid rain program. Bush’s power plant proposal is modeled on the program, which has cut sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants faster than required and at 80% less cost to industry than predicted a decade ago.

The acid rain program sets overall standards for air quality and relies on market forces to compel utility companies either to pollute less or to pay other, cleaner utilities for the right to pollute more. The government tightens air quality standards by reducing the total amount of allowable pollution, making pollution rights more expensive and the incentives to clean more compelling.

Public health advocates and environmentalists applaud the program but say it works best in tandem with other programs that set health-based air quality standards. The advocates fear that the Bush administration wants to scrap some of these standards.

“The existing Clean Air Act is a remarkable success story,” said Paul Billings, an assistant vice president of the American Lung Assn. “We’ve had significant and consistent progress in cleaning the air. But the battle is not over. We still do not have clean air.”

Whitman said the administration is considering scrapping at least one provision of the Clean Air Act, which requires power plants to install state-of-the-art pollution controls during major renovations.

Under Bush’s separate proposal for power plants, the federal government would set nationwide emission caps for utility plants.

“But we don’t try to micromanage the utilities’ ways of getting there,” Whitman said. “We give them time to meet the goals and do it in a way that keeps them economically competitive.”

Such programs are only as tough as the caps, and many environmental activists worry that the Bush administration would not make them tough enough.

“It’s our fear that this proposal will mean more pollution than under the [current] Clean Air Act,” Billings said.

The Bush administration says its vision for less Washington in environmental policy is consistent with its goal of significantly increasing the production of energy on federal land.

“New environmentalism is about meeting our nation’s need for a vibrant economy and energy security--while at the same time protecting the environment,” Norton said. “Some people say it can’t be done. I know it can.”

The philosophy accepts uses for public land that make many conservationists cringe, including logging, mining and recreation, such as off-road vehicles in fragile deserts and snowmobiling in national parks.

“My goal for national forests is seeing whether we can produce more of everything--except controversy,” said Mark Rey, undersecretary of the Agriculture Department for natural resources and environment. He specified that his list includes logging, mineral extraction, recreation and the safeguarding of wildlife and wilderness.

Environmentalists contend that when the Bush administration must choose between energy production and local control, energy always wins. For instance, the politicians and people of California and Florida oppose offshore oil drilling, but the administration nonetheless has pursued more oil development off their coasts.

One clear goal of the administration’s policy is to diminish the courts’ role in environmental skirmishes among the federal government, environmentalists and businesses that pollute or earn money on federal lands.

When announcing his power plant proposal last week, Bush said: “It will replace a confusing, ineffective maze of regulations for power plants that has created an endless cycle of litigation.”

Environmentalists have had great success using the courts to protect endangered species, limit the size of timber sales in national forests and uphold tough air and water pollution laws. “What the president has done is say, ‘Let’s have a . . . system so nobody can tell any particular company to clean up,’ ” Clapp said.

Bush administration officials counter that litigation also has hurt the environment by slowing the adoption of regulations to protect it.

One of the most creative examples of the administration’s philosophy is the notion of charter forests, which it proposed last month. Modeled in part on charter schools, charter forests would be partially under the control of local trustees.

The local boards, while freed of many of the bureaucratic requirements set by Washington, still would be required to abide by environmental protections.

“We’re interested in collaborative approaches that come from the ground up as opposed to Washington, D.C.-based proposals that come from the top down,” said Rey, who oversees the 153 national forests.

No longer would competing interests--from bird watchers to timber companies--each appeal to Washington bureaucrats to decide the fate of the land. These groups would sit down at one table and negotiate with the power to make decisions themselves.

Rey dismisses environmentalists’ concerns that passing authority to local groups will result in exploitation of resources belonging to all Americans.

As evidence that charter forests are possible, advocates point to an accommodation reached in 1993 between environmentalists and farmers over Henry’s Fork Basin in Idaho and Wyoming. The two sides stopped fighting and agreed to protect fish habitats and let farmers irrigate and livestock graze.

“I believe most Westerners really do have a deep sense of care for landscapes that surround them, and they also have a deep sense of care for the ways of life that have grown up on them,” said Dan Kemmis, former Democratic mayor of Missoula, Mont., and director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. “Through collaborative efforts they’ve developed the capacity to protect both economic and environmental interests.”

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Times staff writers Nick Anderson and Edmund Sanders contributed to this report.