The Clean Air Battle Begins Anew

No one could prove the source of the pollution. Now, in response to a lawsuit, the National Park Service has used chemical tracers and found the smoking gun: the Navajo Generating Station at Page, Arizona, just 15 miles from the park boundary.

The Clean Air Battle Begins Anew

Thursday, June 26th, 1997 -- Yesterday, President Bill Clinton announced a sweeping new standard on air pollution controls. In a signal to environmentalists who have often criticized the Administration for soft-pedaling its public stance on clean air, Bill Clinton and Al Gore restressed their commitment to Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner, the author of the tough regulations, which the EPA says will save 15,000 lives a year.

But the White House seems willing to ease compliance by giving industry a long time to comply.

The announcement came only a day before the President goes to a world environmental summit where American policies on the environment have become a laughingstock and as moderates and conservatives on both sides of the aisle in Congress continue to back bills which cut back, rather than increase, allocations to environmental clean up.

This is round one.

The White House made few friends beyond the Sierra Club and other leading environmental lobbies and health groups with the new proposed controls.

The Congress now has 60 days to review the program for smog and soot protection and it will surely attempt to water down or eliminate much of the Administration package. Under the EPA plan, major polluters -- such as owners of large power plants -- would be required to meet new high standards or suffer severe punishment. But the US Conference of Mayors voted to oppose it earlier this week because the standards might jeopardize the mayors' local economies. Of course, the vote was more a result of intense lobbying by local utilities on mayors and city councils who don't want to spend the millions necessary to clean up their acts.

The White House, needing to mollify certain of its own ranks, quickly pointed out that utilities and other big polluters will have several years to comply.

Oh, really?

One must not wonder why Americans have become blasé about the environment. One reason is that Americans have been deluded into believing something is really being done about air pollution when in fact only small gains have been achieved over the past 30 years.

While the White House seeks a carrot to carry to the UN environmental summit today, it's willing to play ball with industry to soften the impact of costly retrofitting and lessen the penalty on industry's own malicious disregard for health.

In short, the Administration is willing to kill 15,000 people a year, by its own admission, for several more years under its plan.