Climate Change
With the Democrats now in control of Congress, the White House faces a new assault on its environmental policies
Toward the end of his first 100 days in office, President George W. Bush suspended proposed Clinton administration regulations to clamp down on arsenic in drinking water, arguing that more study was needed. His action drew the ire of Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. "I sent Arsenic and Old Lace over to the White House with a note that says, 'Don't you know arsenic kills? Watch the movie,'" she tells U.S. News. "I never got an answer." In the end, Bush allowed the Clinton rule to take effect. Democrats notched a win, but arsenic proved to be just the opening salvo in a red-faced battle over all things green.
Overshadowed by the high-stakes debates over Iraq and the war on terrorism, environmental policy has simmered as an ideological battleground for congressional Democrats and the Bush White House. Toting an M.B.A., Bush came to Washington determined to wed environmental policy with market-based reality. And for most of his time in office, the president clearly had the upper hand. Not only is he the chief executive of the Environmental Protection Agency, he was aided by a Republican-controlled Congress disinclined to raise questions. But as Boxer, who now wields the gavel of the Environment and Public Works Committee, recently declared: "Elections have consequences."
Suddenly empowered Democrats are vowing to push back. The environment committee just added a new legislative gunslinger, an attorney who specializes in clean-air regulation. Rep. John Dingell, Boxer's powerful counterpart in the House, is investigating the drop-off in progress cleaning up some of the worst environmental pollution cases, the so-called Superfund sites. And both have summoned the EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, to Capitol Hill to justify the agency's budget requests for the first time in the Bush administration.
The White House isn't blinking. The president issued a controversial executive order on January 18 that strengthened his hand, putting a presidential appointee in charge of rule making at the EPA (and other agencies) as well as decreeing that "market failure," or proof that a regulation is ineffective, will be the primary catalyst for stricter regulations-as opposed to other factors, such as new pollution-control technology. In short, the war over the EPA just escalated.
For observers, it's hard to imagine things getting much uglier. The arsenic flap raised tensions. So did Vice President Dick Cheney's early closed-door sessions with energy representatives as he composed a national energy policy rife with environmental implications. The affair affirmed some people's worst suspicions about the White House, although experts say industry advice on regulations is necessary. The problem is that "closed-door meetings favor perceptions that it's a one-sided debate," says James Boyd, an environmental policy expert at Resources for the Future, an independent research group in Washington.
Critics say it's more than perceptions. Eric Schaeffer, the EPA's former top cop, resigned in protest in 2002 after 12 years at the agency. In his parting letter, he wrote that the White House "seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce." He calls industry influence in the EPA today "totally over the top." William Wehrum, one of the EPA's top officials on air quality, counters that the agency, under the Bush administration, has enacted "two of the most health-protective clean-air rules we've ever adopted." One greatly curtails toxics from nonroad diesel-powered equipment; the other reduces power plant pollutants in some regions through a cap-and-trade program. Greens give the latter lukewarm reviews, faulting the program as slow and limited. "Those two rules alone reduce emissions by millions and millions of tons," Wehrum asserts. "There is no doubt we have made great progress."
But Democrats do have doubts, even about Wehrum. His former ties to the energy industry have raised the hackles of some Democrats, who have forced him to hold his position on an interim basis by blocking his confirmation, which is now more unlikely than ever.
In coming months, global warming will dominate the headlines (box, Page 30), but Democratic committee chairs are moving on other areas as well. Three key environmental fights to watch:
Hot air. Air quality is the biggest and baddest battle. How to enforce regulations on old power plants is now being slugged out in federal courts. Last week's 9-to-0 Supreme Court verdict against Duke Energy's bid to lower emissions per megawatt hour but increase total hours operated-supported by the Bush administration-is buoying Democrats and some Republicans peeved about how the Clean Air Act is being enforced.
On Boxer's list of concerns: a change made by EPA officials that injects policymakers earlier in the process when determining National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the national rules on airborne pollutants like smog-causing ozone. The NAAQS process was unique in the EPA by allowing scientists, inside and outside the agency, to pore over data, exchange reports, and eventually arrive at a consensus range of acceptable pollution levels. Then, that range was sent to EPA policymakers, who settled on a number. Now the process is open to policymakers' influence early on. The EPA calls it a streamlining maneuver, but environmentalists and public health advocates are crying foul, noting that the rule change topped the wish list of the American Petroleum Institute.
That change comes on the heels of another controversial move by the EPA: It rejected scientists' recommendation to toughen standards for particulate matter, or soot, a NAAQS pollutant linked to serious heart and respiratory ailments. "For the first time ever," says Blake Early of the American Lung Association, "the EPA really ignored the health basis for setting the standard." The EPA argues the science didn't justify a tougher standard. Democrats are trying to find a way to challenge the EPA's alteration of the NAAQS process, while environmental groups and more than a dozen states are gearing up for a court fight over the soot standard.
Super unfunded? Cleanups of Superfund sites-locations contaminated by industrial pollutants-dropped when Bush came to office, from 87 completions in 2000 to 47 in 2001. The number hovered in the 40s until this year, when the EPA announced that it would complete just 24 cleanups. Dingell and other Democrats angry over the slowdown blame the GOP's 1995 refusal to reauthorize the Superfund tax, a general fee on polluting industries. Today, taxpayer dollars alone fund the program, at a fraction of its 1990s heydays. The administration argues that money isn't the problem: "What we have found is the sites of today are significantly more complex than they were yesterday," Johnson declared at a House hearing. But even the EPA's inspector general, the agency's internal watchdog, called money "an issue of primary and current concern in the Superfund program."
Democrats are promising to ratchet up funding over Bush's request, while moving to reintroduce the Superfund tax. Many in the GOP are vowing to fight, saying the broad corporate tax penalizes polluters and nonpolluters alike. The House hasn't held a single Superfund hearing in five years. That's likely to change.
Irate over perchlorate. While it's not a household word, chances are perchlorate is in your household. This rocket fuel contaminant can be found in drinking water in 35 states, as well as in milk, lettuce, and other foods. It can cause hypothyroidism, particularly in women, and harm fetal development. But determining what level of perchlorate is safe has been the subject of a backroom Washington brawl between the Defense Department, the primary source of the pollution, and the EPA. In 2002, the EPA was on the verge of recommending a restrictive perchlorate standard on drinking water of 1 part per billion, when, to the surprise of EPA scientists, the assessment was handed over to the National Academy of Sciences, which came under pressure to downplay perchlorate's hazards, according to documents obtained by environmental groups.
After undertaking the unusual request, the academy recommended a standard of 24.5 ppb, enraging Boxer and others who represent states with perchlorate contamination. California is setting its standard at 6 ppb. In a testy February hearing with Boxer, EPA chief Johnson pointed out that EPA tests showed only 2 percent of water samples contained perchlorate levels over 4 ppb. To date, the EPA hasn't decided whether it will set any standards for perchlorate at all. And the military is deferring any cleanup until regulations are established. On her first day as chair, Boxer introduced bills that would require the EPA to continue testing and set a standard for perchlorate, measures likely to meet stiff objections from congressional supporters of the Defense Department. A similar fight is likely in the House.
Still, it's unclear if any action by amped-up Democrats will change the fundamental dynamic in Washington on so many environmental issues. In both chambers, majorities are slim, making legislation difficult to pass, and the Bush administration still has some 21 months to run.
This story appears in the April 16, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.