U.S., State Clash Over Environment

California’s environmental protection laws, among the toughest in the nation, are being challenged frequently as the Bush administration acts to blunt regulations viewed as inconsistent with national policy.

The administration has weighed in on matters ranging from offshore oil drilling to air pollution to toxic waste cleanups, outraging state officials and environmentalists, who warn that the actions threaten to undermine the role California has played as a laboratory for innovative environmental solutions intended to improve the quality of people’s lives.

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said Friday that the administration’s challenges have involved very narrow points of law and are not intended to undercut the state’s authority. “California has very broad authorities -- under most of the environmental laws -- to implement the federal laws and to identify the standards that are of greatest relevance to Californians,” he said. “We retain the strongest deference to that. We are strong proponents of federalism. We are very interested in helping the states define their own future.”

Other defenders of the administration, however, contend that California lawmakers have overstepped their authority in efforts to regulate such matters as automobile fuel efficiency that should be left to the federal government. Since President Bush took office, the administration has joined with the auto industry in a successful lawsuit to weaken California’s mandate to build nonpolluting electric cars.

Under Bush, the Environmental Protection Agency has called for eliminating a key measurement used to determine whether smog levels have reached unacceptable levels. The practical effect, the state’s air quality regulators say, would be many more years of unhealthy air. The administration has consistently challenged California’s right to have a say in regulating drilling in federal waters three or more miles off the coast.

Late last month, the Justice Department backed oil companies and engine manufacturers in a lawsuit pending before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn regulations enacted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The AQMD intended to hasten the conversion of fleets of taxis, buses, trash trucks and other vehicles to alternative fuels.

Also in August, the EPA announced that the Clean Air Act precludes state regulation of carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming, as California has sought to do with a law passed last year. Experts say the EPA’s stance will bolster industry groups that seek to overturn the California law and similar measures taken by other states. “It adds a huge weight on behalf of industry because the EPA, under all the case law, is granted deference in interpreting the laws. That carries a lot more weight than any private party. It’s a huge advantage in these cases,” one EPA official said.

The California Air Resources Board has announced that it will sue the federal government to force it to reverse its decision and recognize carbon dioxide as an air pollutant.

“This is crazy what’s going on. The assault is unending and astonishing in its size and scope,” said Winston H. Hickox, California’s environmental protection secretary. “I find it astonishing that this is going on, and the pace with which the Bush administration is showing its anti-environment colors.”

The differences have come into sharp focus as Gov. Gray Davis has put a renewed emphasis on environmental protection as he struggles to stave off Republican challengers in the Oct. 7 recall election. At the same time, as air pollution across the L.A. region has taken a turn for the worse, air quality officials say the federal government is impeding their efforts to make the air safer for millions of people.

“We are experiencing our smoggiest summer in more than five years, and the federal government is trying to take away the very tools we need to protect the health of 16 million Southern Californians,” said Barry R. Wallerstein, the AQMD’s executive officer.

The disputes underscore a philosophical split between California and GOP leaders in Washington. Faced with some of the nation’s most pressing pollution problems, California continues much as it has for the last few decades, aggressively promoting regulations in a bid to stimulate development of cleaner technologies. The White House favors voluntary cleanups and flexible, market-driven strategies that many business leaders say get sufficient cleanup for less cost.

“There’s a real difference in political preferences on a lot of environmental policies. And a lot of conflicts are emerging because of that,” said David Vogel, a professor of business ethics at UC Berkeley. “You have an administration that, in many environmental areas, isn’t doing a lot. And the states are trying to do more and more.”

But Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, said California, in its ambition to be a national leader on the environment, occasionally overplays its hand. “California is trying to set a precedent that the other states will follow. There are people in the federal government who may not think that’s the right thing to do at the state level,” she said. “There seems to be an extreme element -- California is more aggressive, more activist-oriented and more pro-government [regulation], and to some extent they are anti-development, anti-growth and anti-technology.”

A federal judge last year blocked the state’s so-called zero-emission vehicle mandate, siding with auto manufacturers who charged that the state had exceeded its authority and promoted alternative-fuel cars using fuel economy as an incentive. That authority is reserved exclusively for the federal government, the manufacturers said.

The industry takes a similar view in challenging the AQMD fleet rules requiring the conversions to alternative fuels. The Justice Department’s intervention bolsters the case for industry, which argues that only the federal government can regulate new-car emission standards. The AQMD says the rule does not set emission standards, but requires that dirty, old vehicles be replaced with new, clean-running models.

Wayne Nastri, administrator of the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region, said he does not believe the federal government is out to get California. Rather, he said, critics of the Bush administration are attempting to “politicize the environment” by filing lawsuits, seeking headlines and “trying to make the administration look as bad as possible.”

As long as the state’s regulations are in line with federal laws and national cleanup objectives, Nastri said, the administration doesn’t object. “We’re not taking California on,” Nastri said. “EPA is not targeting California. EPA is trying to improve environmental protection across the nation.”

Yet, sometimes in that effort, Nastri explained, the EPA is focused on strategies that make sense for the entire nation -- not just California -- which has unique environmental challenges, not the least among them air pollution, an issue on which California and the federal government most frequently clash.

California is not alone among the states to resist changes in environmental policy by the administration. Several states have sued to block a recent Clean Air Act revision by the EPA . The change allows factories and coal-fired power plants, some of which have no emissions controls, to expand their facilities without installing new pollution controls. The revision, which the EPA says is necessary to promote energy production, affects about 20,000 facilities nationwide, including pulp and paper mills, power plants and large manufacturers.

Setting the stage for another policy collision, state Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford) has sponsored a bill in the Legislature that would allow California to continue to use the previous federal standards under the policy, known as “new source review” that the Bush administration recently overhauled.

The regulations imposed by a state as large and populous as California can have effects well beyond the state’s borders, prompting members of Congress from other parts of the country to challenge the state’s authority.

U.S. Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) is pushing a bill in Congress that would forbid California and other states from regulating lawn care equipment, such as mowers and trimmers, as well as off-road diesel engines, including forklifts and backhoes. Those machines are a major source of sooty air pollution in Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, the smoggiest places in the nation. Later this month, the California Air Resources Board will consider a regulation to cut those emissions by one-quarter, the equivalent of removing 6 million cars from the road.

However, the control measure is opposed by Briggs & Stratton Corp., a maker of lawn mower engines and a campaign contributor to Bond. The firm has warned that it may have to lay off workers at its two Missouri factories if California approves the regulation.

“We support California efforts to improve its air quality, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of other states, and California should look at other options,” said Ernie Blazar, a spokesman for Bond. The matter will be considered by the full Senate later this year.

The growing dissonance between Sacramento and Washington is a concern to California business leaders and some Republicans.

Victor Weisser, president of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, said the disputes create uncertainty for businesses as they gauge whether state or federal authorities will decide the regulations. “I’m not sure the feds fully recognize how difficult some of these issues are [that] we are dealing with in California,” he said. “Everybody needs to do their fair share, and apparently the feds are not acting fast enough. It’s partisan politics, that’s the sad part. The issues of air quality and economic health should transcend partisan politics.”

Jim DiPeso, policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, said from his office in Tacoma, Wash., that California is increasingly in conflict with the Bush administration because the state has exerted more authority on environmental matters than other states and has a long tradition of pushing technology to achieve environmental gains. Speaking of California, he said, “The nail that sticks its head up will get hammered.”

“States are the laboratories of democracy,” DiPeso said. “They should have the latitude to find new and effective ways to manage our natural resources.”