Epa Effort To Tighten Air Quality Rules Resisted Spokane Air Officials Say Proposed Levels Within Reach

The nation’s environmental chief has failed at her latest attempt to convince Congress that America needs to tighten rules for cleaner air.

The evidence is overwhelming, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner told a House subcommittee “that the current standards for smog and for soot are not sufficient to protect the public health.”

But the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment took no action during a hearing last week on Browner’s request to strengthen ozone and particulate matter regulations without further research. Subcommittee members questioned the “quality of science” in Browner’s research, suggesting the EPA might have relied too heavily on just a few studies.

“This was not a rush to judgment,” Browner said. “The proposed standards are based on the most thorough and extensive scientific review ever conducted by the EPA.”

Spokane air pollution authorities say the levels in proposed EPA regulations are within reach here.

“Currently, Spokane is technically in a non-attainment area for current particulate matter regulations, but we have not (exceeded) a level in over four years, except for dust storms,” Eric Skelton, director of the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority said in a later interview.

“As far as ozone goes, we have never been out of attainment, but we could possibly come close to exceeding proposed levels during summer months,” he said. “Overall, it looks like we are in pretty good shape.”

The Spokane pollution control authority has heard from industry groups and local government officials who oppose EPA proposals on the theory that the new levels would be impossible to meet.

Skelton thinks that this opinion is largely based on complaints from the East Coast, a region more likely to feel negative effects of the new regulations.

Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., asked Browner how rural communities in Oregon could ever meet the proposed standards when pollen and dust in the air won’t even allow the areas to meet present standards.

Browner sought to assure Hooley that funding for implementation programs would be provided in every state.

Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., suggested at the hearing that imposing new, tougher standards would be “highly disruptive” to the relationship between the business community and the environmental community as they try to work together at gaining cleaner air.

He quoted a letter from the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee noting the lack of an obvious urgent need for regulatory change.

“There is no bright line which distinguishes any of the proposed standards as being significantly more protective of public health,” according to the letter. The committee is made up of scientists appointed by Congress to review EPA recommendations.

The EPA proposal comes after extensive scientific reviews conducted during the past 3-1/2 years. On April 16, the House subcommittee approved a bill doubling the money to research particulate matter pollution. Browner and the EPA want more research after regulations are set, and the committee is arguing that the research should be completed before regulations are put into place.

“I think you can make a better case than you have for regulating these standards,” said Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., himself a physicist. “I do not see a convincing case for changing the already existing ozone standards.”

Ehlers said during the hearing that the new regulations could cost taxpayers $107 billion, but an aide said later the congressman got that figure out of a “news article he read a few months ago.”

The same aide quoted an EPA cost figure as being somewhere around $9 billion. The cost of implementing the proposed standards throughout the country won’t be available until specific data is gained regarding which areas are in attainment and which are not.