Politics

Bush Endorses Environmental Rule

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 17, 2001 / 11:50 AM EDT / CBS

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will uphold regulations issued in the last weeks of Bill Clinton's presidency requiring thousands more businesses to report their releases of toxic lead into the environment.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman announced the action shortly after meeting with President Bush at the White House.

She said the new regulations, bitterly opposed by industry groups, will require any manufacturing or processing facility that emits at least 100 pounds of lead or lead compounds a year to report the releases to the government.

Current regulations require a facility to report any lead or lead compound emissions if the facility processes more than 25,000 pounds of them annually or uses 10,000 pounds a year.

"This action reflects the president's strong commitment to protecting America's children from the damaging effects of lead poisoning," Whitman said. "President Bush and this administration will continue to do everything that we can to continue to protect the health and well-being of American people through appropriate environmental measures."

Whitman said she anticipated that opponents would go to court to try to block the regulation. "We get sued in EPA for anything I do in any day of the week," she said.

Mr. Bush, in a statement, called the new rules, "an important and responsible approach that will protect American families and our environment from unnecessary exposure to lead."

EPA officials estimated the regulations would require at least 9,800 more industrial facilities to be included in the government's annual Toxics Release Inventory. The collection of data on toxic releases and their origins is made available to the public through several sources, including EPA's Internet site.

The regulations had been approved by EPA on Jan. 8 but were among dozens of new standards and rules issued in the last weeks of Mr. Clinton's presidency that Bush agreed to review upon taking office.

Lead exposure has been linked to developmental disorders and learning disabilities in children and high blood pressure and nervous disorders in adults.

An initial EPA proposal in 1999 called for lowering the threshold to the release of 10 pounds annually. That had been based on studies finding that lead persists indefinitely in ecosystems and also remains in human bone for more than 25 years.

Tuesday's move comes a day after the administration's decision to uphold another Clinton-era environmental rule to expand protection of the nation's swamps and marshes.

That rule, which is part of the Clean Water Act, states that activities such as landscaping or ditch digging in or near wetland areas must be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The issue of wetlands preservation has long been a battleground for environmental groups and the construction industry. The EPA estimates that 20,000 acres of wetlands have been destroyed in the past two years because of work one without government approval.

The administration has been criticized by environmental groups for previous decisions on arsenic content in drinking water and carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Environmentalists also attacked the president's decision to back away from the global warming treaty.

But CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer reports the White House is brushing off suggestions that the president is trying to "green up" his environmental record with his latest decisions, saying he's taking a balanced approach.

Environmental groups welcomed Tuesday's announcement, but remained wary of the president's commitment on environmental issues.

"This is more of a case of Bush deciding he will not stand in the way of a real protection and trying to claim that's environmental leadership," said Allen Mattison of the Sierra Club.

Jeremiah Baumann of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a grass-roots environmental group, called the decision a "first step," saying the administration will still have to "vigorously defend against the lawsuits that have already been filed" on the issue.