Critics: EPA Must Clear The Air

Despite requests from members of Congress, the EPA has not released analyses of proposed air pollution regulations that conflict with the version supported by the White House, a newspaper reports.

According to The New York Times, the agency has delayed testing new mercury requirements, declined to analyze a plan for reducing carbon emissions, and released only partial results of its study of another plan.

The EPA denies the moves follow any pattern. Spokeswoman Lisa Harrington said, "These decisions were not motivated in any way by politics."

But some members of Congress disagree. "This is an administration that lets its politics and ideology overwhelm and stifle scientific fact," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

The Bush administration is proposing an update to the Clean Air Act, called the Clear Skies program. Congress is considering legislation to impose the plan, which aims to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury with a market-based approach known as a cap-and-trade system.

Under the system, the government sets an overall cap on emissions of each pollutant and issues permits to firms, allowing them to pollute up to the cap. These permits can be traded, meaning that if one company finds a way to reduce emissions more than is required, it can sell its pollution rights to other companies.

As the cap is lowered every year, pollution is reduced.

Supporters of cap-and-trade systems say they provide incentives for firms to innovate to try to cut pollution faster, because they can sell their permits for a profit. This, they argue, avoids some of the economic damage that might result from a more restrictive regulatory scheme that required all firms to cut emissions by set amounts at the same time.

According to the EPA, the administration's Clear Skies plan will cut sulfur dioxide by 73 percent, nitrogen oxide by 67 percent and mercury emissions by 69 percent. By 2020, the administration says, the initiative will bring all but 27 counties in the country into compliance with ozone standards, compared to 268 that exceed it now.

Critics contend the cap-and-trade system would reduce pollution too slowly, drawing out the time that people are exposed to harmful pollutants. They say pollution would decrease faster under existing regulations than it would under Clear Skies.

The EPA typically analyzes different environmental proposals through a modeling process that projects their effects on pollution and their costs.

According to The Times, the agency planned to submit a proposal for regulating mercury to the Office of Management and Budget by Aug. 1.

But at a meeting in March where staff outlined the options they were planning to analyze, EPA official Jeffrey Holmstead said he had to check with the White House before the analysis went forward, and then called off the next meeting.

Holmstead said the meeting was put off so he could check to make sure the options on the table were permitted under the Clean Air Act, and told The Times efforts to propose regulations are still "on track."

Some of the staff proposals for dealing with mercury are expected to be tougher than the White House plan.

Lieberman says the EPA refused to analyze a bill he and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wrote to control carbon dioxide. Former administrator Christie Whitman told the two senators that the Energy Department was already reviewing their proposal.

However, the Times notes, the EPA and Energy Department both reviewed a proposal to cleanup power plants by Sens. Lieberman; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and James Jeffords, I-Vt. Because the Energy Department uses a more conservative approach, the findings were substantially different.

"I am disappointed that the E.P.A. declined to review the bill and do not feel it was normal procedure to refuse to analyze a bill that is under the agency's jurisdiction," Senator McCain told the newspaper.

In another case, the EPA reviewed an alternative to the administrations' pollution plan written by Sens. Thomas Caper, D-Del., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I. But the agency released only raw data from its study, not a summary indicating the Caper-Chafee plan had advantages over the White House plan.