Meeting New Air-Quality Rules Should Be A Breeze Scientists Advising Epa Say Continuing Current Efforts To Reduce Pollution Will Bring Most Cities Into Compliance

Controversial new federal air-pollution limits may not be as hard to achieve as Environmental Protection Agency estimates suggest, two top scientists told a Senate panel Wednesday.

The limits, due to take effect in late August, provoked an outcry from industries and local governments that said extreme measures would be required to comply. The EPA estimated nearly 1 in 10 counties would fail to meet either the new standard for ozone, the main component in smog, or for extremely fine particles of dust and soot.

But two of EPA’s advisers on air pollution - one who supports the new rules and another who opposes them - said Wednesday that for most cities, the standards aren’t that much of a challenge.

Many counties can achieve the new, lower pollution levels in five years with “control measures that are already in place,” said George Wolff, a General Motors Corp. scientist who is chairman of the EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Panel.

Morton Lippman of New York University, a backer of the standards, agreed. Because air pollution is declining in most cities, he said, “many will be in compliance” by the time the limits take effect in five or six years.

Some cities, particularly in the West, will actually have an easier time with the new ozone standard, Lippman said.

The proposed rule requires lower levels of the pollutant, but measures them over a longer period of time - which helps cities that have high smog levels only in the late afternoon.

Still, meeting the regulations will be expensive. The EPA puts the cost at $6.5 billion to $8.5 billion a year nationwide, which the agency says would save $120 billion in health care costs, and would prevent as many as 40,000 premature deaths each year.

Industry officials, scoffing that the cost would be much higher and the benefits uncertain, have organized a multimillion-dollar campaign to get the standards withdrawn. Congress can force the EPA to reconsider its decision.

Wednesday’s hearing, the first of many on the proposed standards, focused on an assessment of the advisory panel’s scientific research.

The 21-member panel unanimously accepted the need for new ozone regulations, and favored controls for fine particles by a 19-2 vote, Wolff said.

But the scientists could not agree whether the EPA has chosen the best level of pollution protection. Studies have found no “safe” levels of ozone and particle pollution, Wolff said.