Clean Air Rules Mean Trouble - Somewhere Gorton Rails Against Epa Rules, But Spokane Won’t Be Affected

U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton’s aides billed his Tuesday news conference as a dire prediction: Spokane would have to make “drastic concessions” in business and recreation to meet strict air quality rules recently adopted by the Clinton administration.

But the prediction fizzled when Gorton, a Seattle Republican, was told during the news conference Spokane’s local air quality experts say the area easily will meet the new standards for ozone and small particles.

Spokane has never flunked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone standard - old or new - and is expected to meet the EPA’s newly established limit for small airborne particles.

“I’m delighted to hear that Spokane is in compliance,” Gorton said at the Spokane Chamber of Commerce as his aides, chamber staff and two Spokane elected officials looked on.

But some Spokane industries and area farmers have expressed “deep concern” that they’ll be hurt economically by the new EPA rules, Gorton said.

The nation’s chambers of commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute have mounted a major public relations campaign against the new standards, saying they’re based on poor science and will cost too much.

For the first time, EPA is regulating the tiny particles of soot, called PM 2.5, created by combustion sources, including coal-fired energy plants, cars, industry and agricultural burning.

The new PM 2.5 standard is expected to cost $6 billion or more to implement by 2007. But that will be offset by $58 to $110 billion in improved public health, according to the EPA.

Studies show the PM 2.5 particles go deep into the lungs, where they aggravate lung disease and carry toxins into the bloodstream. The EPA says approximately 15,000 lives a year will be saved by the new standards.

Gorton said science doesn’t prove that. “Most of the science has been accomplished by scientists who have a vested interest in the results,” he charged.

He also criticized the Clinton administration for the long lag time in implementing the new rules.

“It’s troubling to set a standard and then say we don’t have to deal with this for 10 to 15 years,” Gorton said.

A Spokane City Council member who attended Gorton’s news conference didn’t like what she heard.

“I just saw partisan politics at its finest,” said Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, a clean air activist and the city’s representative on the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority (SCAPCA) board.

Dozens of studies show a direct link between elevated air pollution and higher incidence of breathing problems, Rodgers said.

“The science is in on this issue. I don’t know why he was trying to stir up the fires in Spokane. I hope most people realize there’s just not a big scare here,” she said.

Projected costs of complying with the new standards worry Spokane County Commissioner Kate McCaslin, another SCAPCA board member who attended Gorton’s news conference.

“In Spokane, we’ll be in compliance. But the rest of the country isn’t that way, and I have sympathy for those areas,” McCaslin said.

Gorton said he hasn’t decided whether to support a move to rescind the EPA regulations. Congress has until Aug. 25 to take action, but not all Republicans favor such a move.

Sen. Alphonse d’Amato, R-N.Y., said in June he’d fight any move to rescind the EPA regulations because they protect public health.

A move to roll back the regulations could hurt Republicans, as it did two years ago when there was a major public backlash against efforts in the House of Representatives to weaken the nation’s environmental laws.

In a July 15 poll conducted by the Environmental Information Center, 70 percent of 800 registered voters interviewed said they support the new EPA regulations.

The poll has a 3.5 percent margin of error, said Mike Casey of the nonprofit polling center in Washington, D.C.

A majority of those polled also said they don’t believe industry’s contentions that the regulations aren’t scientific and will be too onerous.

“Clean air and clean water are mom and pop issues. Any time people have perceived a real threat to their air and water, they react strongly,” said Jim Young of the Sierra Club’s Cascade Chapter in Seattle.

Spokane is one of the few cities nationwide that’s already monitoring its air for PM 2.5.

That’s because of a major research effort by Jane Koenig, a University of Washington environmental health professor. She is analyzing particle sizes in the air in Spokane and Seattle to see whether they correlate with increased illness and hospital admissions.

Scientists say they still don’t completely understand the connection between respiratory disease and small particles.

However, dozens of careful studies “link small particles to respiratory disease and death” from London to Salt Lake City, Koenig said.

“We are finding more and more evidence. The studies are all falling into place on this issue,” she said Tuesday.

The new standards will be hard to meet on the East Coast and in Southern California, where large coal-burning power plants generate energy.

Those plants create sulfur-dioxide gases that form secondary pollutants in the form of fine particulates less than 2.5 microns in diameter.

“We have very little sulfur-dioxide pollution in our area,” said Ron Edgar of SCAPCA. “I don’t see the new regulations as having a big impact here.”

The EPA’s new annual average for PM 2.5 particles is 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Spokane’s air contains 12-13 micrograms on average, Edgar said.

The EPA will require a review of the health studies and more measurements with state-of-the-art monitors nationwide through 2003 before the new standard is enforced by 2012 to 2017.

In Spokane, “the only thing we’re likely to see is a few more wood-stove curtailment days,” Edgar said.

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