We're Breathing it Everyday

[Guest guest]

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20020318/1029412.asp

3/18/2002

An environmental pattern

The abrupt and bridge-burning resignation of the Environmental Protection

Agency's top regulatory enforcement official put the environmental concerns

of the Bush administration in withering perspective. V. Schaeffer

walked out because he was fed up. He left no doubts why. Bush

administration delays on clean-air rules reviews, and signs industry is

winning its campaign to weaken them, are putting Americans at risk and

degrading the environment, he wrote in his Feb. 27 resignation letter. While

the EPA denies his claims, he's right - and he may now have a chance to

explain his dismay in congressional hearings.

" I left because I got tired and frustrated trying to enforce laws at the

same time that the energy lobbyists working with the White House, and their

friends in the Energy Department, seemed determined to try to weaken them, "

Schaeffer said in an ABC network interview.

What's disturbing here is not one man's discontent. It's that one man's

discontent is simply the latest piece in a pattern. The resignation tendered

by Schaeffer, appointed 12 years ago by President Bush's father, is at one

end of that pattern. At the other is the more cordial but still premature

departure of former U.S. Forest Service chief P. Dombeck, who

resigned near the start of this administration as Bush ordered

reconsideration of long-debated bans on new road construction in untouched

national forests.

In between are energy policy statements that call for eased environmental

restrictions to facilitate oil and gas exploration, an all-out push for

drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rejection of an

international accord on pollutants related to global warming, attempts to

conceal advisers who met with Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force and

a new " Clear Skies " program proposal that many environmental groups say

undercuts the Clean Air Act. Of the known energy policy meetings, seven

involved some 60 industry representatives and only one, with a single

representative, an environmental group.

Schaeffer's dismay centers on an EPA regulatory process called " New Source

Review. " Under the Clean Air Act, power plants and other pollution emitters

must install upgraded pollution-control equipment when they undertake major

expansions and equipment upgrades. Industry has complained that strict NSR

enforcement unfairly classed even routine maintenance in that category, and

that environmental benefits don't justify the high cost of compliance.

That's bunk, and we're breathing it every day. Upwind pollution from

Midwestern smokestack " hot spots " contributes to the aerosols that trigger

asthma here and the acid rain that kills Adirondack lakes. The EPA's own

regulatory impact analysis, reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget,

indicates every $1,000 spent to reduce emissions of just one such pollutant,

sulfur dioxide, returns $7,300 in public health and environmental benefits.

Data supplied by the EPA to the Senate Environment Committee, Schaeffer

pointed out, links the annual 7 million tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen

oxide emissions to more than 10,800 premature deaths, 5,400 cases of chronic

bronchitis, 5,100 hospital emergency room visits and 1.5 million lost work

days.

The EPA had joined New York and other states in aggressive legal pursuit of

violators. But since the administration's 90-day review of the rule now has

stretched to more than nine months, giving lobbyists time to work, industry

understandably has backed off some negotiated settlements and delayed talks

on others. Why settle now if the EPA is writing easier rules? That's why

Schaeffer got fed up. It's why we all should be. It's our health, our lakes,

our future.