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Bush administration has another environmental dilemma. This week
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) planned to release a proposal
to scale-back regulatory provisions that discourage the construction
of new industrial facilities and the modernization of existing plants.
While the regulatory provisions, known as "New Source Review"
(NSR) are supposed to reduce air pollution, they have the unintended
consequence of prolonging the lifespan of older, dirtier facilities.
By increasing the costs of new and modernized facilities — which
tend to be cleaner and more efficient — NSR impedes environmental
progress. NSR is also an obstacle to the construction and upgrade
of power facilities, making NSR reform a key element in the administration's
new energy strategy.
The NSR reform
proposal was due by August 17. Not anymore. In the face of exaggerated
environmentalist claims that NSR reform will cripple federal air-pollution
control, the administration decided to delay its announcement for
a month when it can be paired with related pollution control initiatives.
Even though NSR reform could produce substantial environmental benefits,
the administration would rather bury it from view lest the proposal
trigger another round of green assaults in the press. Environmental
activists have attacked the Bush administration's every environmental
move. Even regulatory moves defended by former Clinton officials
were savaged by environmentalist advocates and the major media.
Like the Republican Congress, the administration appears to be losing
its nerve on environmental issues.
Washington,
D.C. is a hostile environment for environmental reform. Nonetheless,
the Bush administration bears some of the blame for its environmental
problems. Upon taking office, the Bush team found that Clinton-Gore
regulators had left behind a morass of regulatory booby traps —
so-called "midnight regulations." The new administration
sought to undo the Clinton-Gore mischief with little appreciation
for the potential sensitivity of environmental concerns, and it
paid the price.
A perfect example
was the administration's decision to withdraw the Clinton-Gore proposal
to tighten the federal standard for arsenic in drinking water from
50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb. When this decision was made,
there was no serious effort to explain the move, let alone defend
it. Asserting the need for "sound science" could not deflect
the absurd claims that the Bush move threatened children's health.
Within weeks, the administration was forced to retreat. Shortly
after the initial announcement, the Bush EPA announced it would
issue its own arsenic rule, and that it could be even more stringent
than the initially proposed rule.
Defending the
arsenic decision should have been easy. Arsenic is a naturally occurring
substance in drinking water. In most parts of the country, arsenic
levels are well below those linked to adverse health effects. Where
arsenic is a problem, individual states are fully capable of setting
their own standards, as many have. The primary beneficiaries of
a looser standard were not major corporations, but drinking-water
systems in small communities that could have been bankrupted by
the tighter rule. Should the 10 ppb limit go through — and it still
might — many communities would see dramatic increases in their monthly
water bills, forcing some to abandon treated water in favor of local
wells. This could put more lives at risk than would hypothetically
be saved by the Clinton-Gore rule. Indeed, an analysis of the Clinton-Gore
rule by economists at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center on Regulation
found that dropping the standard to 10 ppb could, on net, increase
mortality. In other words, by withdrawing the Clinton-Gore proposal
on arsenic, the Bush EPA was saving lives, but you'd never know
it listening to the Bush officials defend the move.
Many of the
Bush administration efforts to curb the Clinton-Gore regulatory
excesses could be defended on environmental and public-health grounds.
But they aren't. Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press after
the arsenic controversy exploded, Karl Rove tamely insisted that
the administration was not anti-environmental because the administration
would tighten the arsenic rule, sign international environmental
treaties, and spend billions on other environmental concerns. Listening
to Rove one could fairly assume that the measure of a politician's
environmental commitment is his willingness to issue regulations
and spend taxpayer dollars. Accepting this equation of environmental
protection with government largesse is a recipe for disaster. It
is bad policy and bad politics.
It is probably
too late for the administration to rehabilitate the arsenic decision.
But it's not too late to learn from these mistakes and adopt a proactive
approach to regulatory issues going forward. In particular, the
administration must learn that pro-environment does not equal pro-regulation.
For instance, there's no doubt that revising New Source Review could
facilitate new energy production and industrial growth. These are
important goals, but they hardly appeal to those who fear the administration
is anti-environmental. The Bushies should explain that continuing
environmental progress is hampered by burdensome environmental regulations
that discourage the development and deployment of cleaner technologies
and more efficient facilities. NSR reform is not an anti-environmental
position.
There is no
need to apologize for reforming our nation's environmental laws.
Existing federal policies subsidize pollution and waste, discourage
toxic cleanup and recycling, foster habitat destruction, and impede
technological progress. Thus, there is nothing inherently anti-environmental
about environmental reform. Communicating this message is difficult
as most environmental journalists take their cue from pro-regulatory
activist groups. But it can be done. If the Bush administration
takes environmental issues seriously enough to articulate a pro-environment,
anti-regulatory message, it could make substantial environmental
progress and help reframe the current environmental-policy debate.
Playing perpetual defense on environmental matters is a recipe for
failure. It's time for the Bush team to go on environmental offense.
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