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Show s' Western Resources Clean air report By Helene C. Monberg The recommendatons of the National remission on Air Quality "point the toward changes to make the Clean iY Act more effective. Our proposed hanees would give the American peo-what peo-what they want and deserve: PLer air with less government Stion."-Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., firman, NCAQ. 3-2-81. Washington With the aid of a massive report on the "real-world" I 'ration of the 1977 Clean Air Act, Confess Con-fess opened hearings on March 2 on amending the act, with the aim to , revise it this year. 1 The 13-member National Commission I on Air Quality, under the chairmanship I o gen Gary Hart, D-Colo., presented its findings and recommendations to a joint hearing at a packed Senate caucus room. The hearing was chaired by Sen. Robert T. Stafford, R-Vt., chairman of J e Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and by Rep. Henry A Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. Several members of the Commission and William H. Lewis, Jr., staff direc- I tor of the Commission, described the ' recommendations of the Commission, as "middle-of-the road." The report was approved by nine members of the Commission, drew three dissents and one abstention from Stafford, who said he felt he could not vote on the report as chairman of the authorizing Senate committee. Hart said, "The Commission's recommendations preserve the best aspects of the law, streamline other parts to make it more effective, K eliminate what is not working, and ad-v" ad-v" dress new issues which have been 6i; discovered since the Act was adopted," such as acid rain. Hart was able to line & up eight others to agree with the report and his summary of the Commission's l!; findings and recommendations: Mayor ' Tom Bradley of Los Angeles; Rep. : James T. Broyhill, R-N.C; Rep. John ili Dingell, D-Mich.; Edwin D. Dodd, chairman of Owen-Illinois, Inc., of r Toledo, Ohio; Jeanne Malchon of St. to Petersburg, Fla., Leonard A. Schine, a Westport, Conn., attorney; Harold Tso in:, of the Navajo Tribe, Window Rock, i Ariz., and State Rep. Tom McPherson of Florida, who served as vice chair-ief-'f man- Richard E. Ayres, attorney for the 8.4; '. Mural Resources Defense "Council, l j was ring-leader for the dissenters. In It addition to Ayres they were Annamarie F. Crocetti, a public health expert from f New York City, and John J. Sheehan of is!;., the United Steelworkers of America. t' They said they dissented because "We believe the Commission report's pro-;(J pro-;(J posals would significantly weaken our ppe: nation's effort to cleanse dirty air and j- conserve clean air." Ayres later told ir: the press the report had been rammed I I thru by the elected officials who served on the Commission and the industry- , oriented members, a criticism aimed "". particularly at Hart, McPherson and )rrj Dodd. 0 The Administration took no position ,.v! onthe report. Denver Attorney Anne M. Gorsuch who has been named by Presi-j Presi-j dent Reagan to head the Environmen-I Environmen-I tal Protection Agency (EPA) declined ,( to comment on it, on inquiry from Western Resources Wrap-up ( WRW ) on J March 3. Dr. John Hernandez, dean of ' ;.! the college of engineering at New Mex-,, Mex-,, ko State University at Las Criices, r named to be deputy EPA ad-ministrator, ad-ministrator, could not be reached. J STAFFORD PUSH, r i TWO-I'KONGED HOUSE Jfj HEARINGS . 'rlle ',J77 Clean Air Act expires on Pt. 30. Stafford made it plain as he I girted the hearings to amend the act I '"at he. welcomed the Commission is report as a means to speed up action on f-: a new clean air bill. "My personal hope s is that this set of amendments will bear h f me accurate title of the Clean Air Act f! amendments of 1981. ..My personal goal s to complete Senate action on the i authorization process by mid-Ptember mid-Ptember of this year.' ; ' He noted that j . , k ingress three years to put the j s" act on the books, "and with all of I e court suits which followed the 1977 i wndmcnts, some parts of the (1977) "an Air Act.. .have been in place for um' about 18 months," Stafford said. ! Congress will rely heavily on the ; 'nini'ssion report, both as to the fin- i f(Jj and lhe recommendations, Staf- i nteh at tlle Mareh 2 hearing- "II ev ,he fil'st comprehensive piece of ca. ,tnCe laid before Congress. In some I 11 may be the only piece of j n." he told Hart, the other Com- ; sion members and staff who ! aUh a'ld Provided back-up support ! 31 the rch 2 hearing. S chai'rT"' saking both as the new Cornrn f the House Enet"gy and miss 1 Committee and as a Com-'estifpH Com-'estifpH mJembers ad staff who ; at the , 31 Provitied back-up support c starch 2 hearing. : chairm "' sPeakin8 both as the new ; cn.mel r,he -House Energy and missi'n e cmniittee and as a Com- a'on onTmber' likewise ur8ed fast on the act. "Clearly, delay does not serve the public well," he said. Now that the Commission report, three years in the making, has been presented to Congress and a new EPA Administrator appointed, Dingell said, "Hopefully. ..the Reagan Adminstra-tion Adminstra-tion will be forthcoming in proposals very soon. ..It is in the interest of the nation, na-tion, including our health, our environment, environ-ment, our economy, and our employed and unemployed alike, to resolve these matters soon and not prolong uncertainty uncer-tainty and indecision." In a brief statement, Waxman said he hoped his Subcommittee could complete com-plete its hearings and mark-up by May 15. Asked later whether his panel could possibly meet the May 15 deadline, Waxman told WRW, "I don't know. We are going to have to work many weekends to do so." Rep. Edward Madigan, R-II1. , the ranking Republican on the Waxman health panel, told WRW he thought action by May 15 was out of the question. "We have 42 health acts that expire this year," Madigan said. He added that he really did not think there was the urgency urgen-cy attached to amending the 1977 act that Waxman and Dingell and Stafford had stressed. The House Oversight Subcommittee which Dingell chairs in addition to the parent Energy and Commerce Committee Commit-tee likewise plans hearings on amending amen-ding the Clean Air Act, even tho the Waxman panel has the legislative responsibility for the new authorization. authoriza-tion. The Environmental Study Conference Con-ference Weekly Bulletin reported on March 2 that the staffs of both the Wax-man Wax-man health panel and the Dingell oversight over-sight panel had dismissed "speculation that the oversight hearings might, be used us-ed to forge alternatives to air legislation legisla-tion developed in the health panel." The Dingell oversight hearings will only develop special issues and problems, the staff said. But some observers looked look-ed on the Dingell hearings as a prod to the Waxman panel to come up with amendments to the 1977 act pronto. With many new members on the Wax-man Wax-man Subcommittee, this may not be possible. (See WRW, Series XIX, No 6, dated 2-5-81) COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS The Commission's most basic recommendation recom-mendation was that Congress retain the current statutory formula for setting national air quality standards "at the ; level necessary to protect the health of the most susceptible... with an adequate margin of safety," Hart said. It explicitly ex-plicitly rejected proposals to consider costs in setting standards, he underscored. It did recommend, however, that costs should be considered in developing develop-ing "control strategies to meet the public health goals represented by the air quality standards," he said. There was a major difference in the Commission over deadlines. The Commission Com-mission majority recommended doing away with deadlines (1982 and 1987 under current law) to meet air quality standards largely "because we have found that the deadlines themselves have become an excuse for delay," Hart testified on March 2. Lewis said the deadlines were based on projections made by states "which aren't worth a damn," he told the press at a briefing on the Commission report following the March 2 hearing. The minority led by Ayres claimed that "standards and deadlines, together, are responsible for" improvements in air quality and better public health, including avoidance of premature death due to various types of pollution. In place of deadlines, the Commission recommended that EPA should review state plans every three years and required re-quired states "to meet air quality standards stan-dards in all areas as expeditiously as practicable." A second major difference in the Commission was over the majority recommendation that all new sources of pollution with certain exceptionsshould excep-tionsshould be required to install "best available control technology." It would be up to EPA to determine what the best available technology to control pollution was for a specific type of pollutant, the majority said. The majority ma-jority favored repeal of the present provision pro-vision in the 1977 act requiring new sources of pollution in areas exceeding air quality standards to install controls "providing for the lowest achievable emission rate." In the "real world," the majority maintained, the present provision provi-sion in the law has not been applied perhaps because states and local governments are not aware of emerging emerg-ing control techniques. The minority argued that the 1977 provision requiring the lowest achievable emission rate should not be changed because to do so would delay the time it may take to meet health standards. A third difference in the Commission's Commis-sion's recommendations was over EPA's approval of state implementation implementa-tion plans to reduce air pollution. EPA's approval of state plans and applications ap-plications for permits has been slow, the Commission found. So the majority put deadlines on EPA in both instances. Generally speaking, the majority recommended, failure of EPA to act within 90 days should "constitute automatic approval" of state plans and permits. The minority was outraged. The result would be "automatic approval ap-proval of even defective state programs" pro-grams" if EPA delayed reviewing them, the minority charged, adding "there is no justification for the extreme ex-treme 'solution' recommended by the Commission," The final major difference on the Commission developed over prevention of significant deterioration outside of national parks and wilderness areas. Hart said the 1977 act had included "a complex new scheme to preserve air . quality in areas cleaner than the national na-tional standards." Three classifications of areas were provided for, with Class I being the strictest, Class II less strict, and Class III least strict. Lewis explained explain-ed that the system appeared to be so complex as to be unworkable. The majority ma-jority recommended that;Class III be eliminated and the entire process be streamlined. The minority claimed the change in the present provision recommended recom-mended by the majority claimed the change in the present provision recommended recom-mended by the majority abandoned the management plan "designed to limit significant deterioration of clean air outside of national parklands and wilderness areas." OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS The Commission recommended keeping keep-ing all automobile and truck emission standards, but increasing the carbon monoxide standard to 7 grams of carbon car-bon monoxide per mile from 3.4 grams. Hart said findings of the National Academy of Sciences indicated that the difference in the effectiveness of the standard was very small "at most about one percent at any time" but the cost effectiveness of the 7 gram standard was substantial. "The change is expected to save $30-$60 per vehicle in manufacturing costs, and would improve im-prove fuel efficiency by one per cent," Hart said. This is vitally important to Dingell, from auto-manufacturing Michigan. I recommended that EPA address immediately the acid rain problem and other air pollutants not presently covered by the act and report to Congress Con-gress within one year after anactment of the new law. Acid rain is a major concern con-cern of Stafford. It recommended that standards for total suspended particulates (dust) ozone and carbon monoxide S'be reviewedtbe last "to de'tettrfhie whether a separate standard should be set for high altitudes" in much of the West. States should take a greater responsibility respon-sibility in air quality control, it recommended, recom-mended, with EPA concentrating its funds on better direction, research, surveillance and enforcement. EPA and Interior Department should set air quality standards for Indian lands, with the tribes handling the enforcement, it recommended. i |