Battles Over Bush Policies Drain State

State Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer says that defending California’s environmental protections against a broad assault by the Bush administration has cost the state millions of dollars and will force his office to shift resources from fighting pollution.

Lockyer said in an interview last week that President Bush’s “pro-business” environmental policies have threatened regulations governing everything from offshore oil drilling and toxic cleanups to forest management and air quality.

“Protecting our natural resources and our environmental laws from the federal government’s rollbacks and attempts to preempt state enforcement will be one of the biggest single environmental challenges,” Lockyer said. “Resources that should be used for prosecuting polluters will have to be diverted to fighting the federal government.”

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, defended Bush’s record, saying there is a “fundamental disconnect” between what he called Lockyer’s extreme rhetoric and “what the Bush administration has accomplished in terms of environmental protection and resource stewardship.”

The attorney general is scheduled to appear today before the state Assembly Natural Resources Committee, which is holding hearings on “Challenges to Protect California’s Environmental Laws.”

The hearings come as the state grapples with a budget shortfall projected to be as much as $34.6 billion over the next 17 months.

Although the governor’s current budget proposal spares the attorney general’s $22-million environmental budget from cuts, Lockyer said the cost of the state’s efforts to preserve environmental laws developed over the decades is mounting, with no end in sight.

“On every conceivable front, they are pushing back environmental protection in California,” Lockyer said of the Bush administration. He said that it is fair to raise environmental issues, “but when it is Business 10, the Environment 0, you have to ask if they have a balanced, sensible policy.”

Lockyer identified several major environmental conflicts with the Bush administration:

The administration tried to renew 36 oil drilling leases off the coast of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties without letting the state review them for compliance with its federally approved coastal management plan. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state in December, saying the Coastal Commission gets a review before the federal government signs off on new leases.

Connaughton said the federal government is negotiating with the state and private parties to reach agreements on lease renewals.

A proposal released in December would allow commercial logging in old-growth Sequoia groves, including the Giant Sequoia National Monument east of Bakersfield. And the U.S. Forest Service issued emergency fire regulations the same month that would avoid environmental review of plans to thin forests and undergrowth.

Lockyer sent a letter of protest on Jan. 15, holding that the Bush administration is trying to expand commercial logging on federal lands and enhance the profits of companies without environmental assessments, all under the guise of fire protection.

Responded Connaughton: “We are working to protect communities and restore the ecological health of forests so we don’t see them burn down.”

The administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief when the auto industry challenged a California law requiring certain numbers of zero-emission vehicles. The government argued that because the law also has an effect on gas mileage, it is preempted by federal authority over fuel economy standards. The case is pending in the 9th Circuit.

Lockyer said the federal government previously has not allied itself so closely with the auto industry. “It is a radical departure,” he said.

Connaughton said the state has the authority to regulate fuel emissions. But, he said, “California crossed the line into setting fuel economy standards,” which he said “should be set nationally, not at the state level.”

The administration this month issued proposed rules that would implement a Supreme Court decision that said federal clean-water laws do not apply to seasonal ponds used by migratory birds. Lockyer said the new rules wrongly interpret the decision, leaving many tributary streams and vernal pools unprotected and jeopardizing wildlife.

Connaughton said California and other states can pick up where the federal regulations leave off.

As part of its military readiness program, the Department of Defense is seeking broad exemptions from environmental cleanup regulations, Lockyer said. If the exemptions could be applied retroactively, he said, they could harm efforts to clean up toxic waste at former military bases that are being converted to civilian use.

Connaughton said the proposal is not retroactive and would apply narrowly. For example, he said, it would delay, but not eliminate, the cleanup of ordnance at firing ranges until they are shut down.

The Bush administration, Lockyer said, has adopted a crusading attitude that leaves little room for discussion of environmental issues.

It’s ironic, he said, that a group identifying itself as a states’ rights advocate federalizes so much.

“ ‘Whatever is good for business is fine,’ they say, without regard to the environment. That is what we are hearing,” Lockyer said.