Hazy Outlook for the Clean Air Act

The first big legislative test of Ronald Reagan's pledge to ease the regulatory burden on private industry involves a law that was a hallmark of the era of environmental activism: the Clean Air Act of 1970.

Proposals to change the law, which will expire at the end of September unless it is renewed, have inspired unprecedented lobbying by a broad coalition of industries that include steel, auto and chemical manufacturers. They claim that it now costs about $25 billion a year to comply with the law and that many of the most expensive requirements result in only marginal air-quality improvements. Said a report last March by the Business Roundtable: "The act in its present form is inefficient, complex and overly costly without adequate recognition given to completing national goals."

No one can deny that the Clean Air Act has been beneficial. Air pollution levels in the U.S. have dropped significantly in the past decade. Indeed, the National Environmental Development Association, the business lobbying coalition, argues that the intent of the law has been fulfilled.

Among the specific changes that industry wants: an independent board of scientists to review standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency; elimination of the requirement that businesses must actually improve the air quality in certain areas where they expand; an end to the rule that air quality can be allowed to deteriorate only slightly in undeveloped areas with clean air.

Acid rain, a corrosive precipitation of pollutants that has been killing fish in many wilderness areas, will be another of the major battlegrounds. The causes of this problem are not yet well understood, and there is some suspicion that the Clean Air Act itself may have contributed to it. Reason: the law has led coal-burning plants to install taller smokestacks that carry particles high into the atmosphere, where they help to form the acid rain.

The Administration has not yet detailed the changes that it will seek in the Clean Air Act. But, says Anne Gorsuch, the new head of the EPA, "We have to be very concerned with relative cost benefits."

Environmental groups opposing any weakening of the act have so far remained curiously quiet. Says Vermont Republican Robert T. Stafford, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: "I find it hard to understand the overwhelming silence from groups other than those representing industry." Given the conservative climate in Congress, the Administration's first legislative battle over deregulation may turn into a cakewalk.

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