Smell That Fresh Air!

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

George Bush was under fire as "the environmentalist" President in campaign pledge only. But last week he managed to confound his critics. He broke a decade-long impasse by proposing major steps to reduce acid rain, smog caused by auto exhaust and toxic chemicals discharged into the air. In a political tour de force, he managed to draw at least grudging acceptance from almost all sides. Environmentalists were pleased that the plan met their minimum goals. Industry grumbled about heavy costs: $14 billion to $19 billion annually by the end of the year 2000. But utility executives sighed with relief that they would be allowed to choose whatever they found to be the cheapest method of cleaning up.

More important, the plan might actually lead to more breathable air. It calls for a 50% slash in acid-rain-producing sulfur-dioxide emissions by the turn of the century, a 40% tightening of emissions standards for hydrocarbons from automobile tail pipes, a 75% cut in cancer-causing toxic chemicals poured into the atmosphere over an unspecified period, and in its most visionary -- perhaps pie-in-the-sky -- aspect, a fleet of cars that run on fuels cleaner than gasoline (probably methanol, though ethanol or compressed natural gas could also be used). Some 500,000 such cars would be on the road by 1995, 750,000 the following year, a million a year from 1997 through 2004.

In Congress leaders agree with Richard Ayres, senior attorney of the environmentalist Natural Resources Defense Council, that "there will be legislation now." Bush's proposals are in the form of amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970, which has been altered only once, in 1977. Democrats blamed the lack of progress on the Reagan White House, and with much justice; Bush's plan marks his sharpest break yet from the policies of his predecessor. But Democrats Robert Byrd, the former Senate majority leader, and John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also blocked legislation, in deference to the fears of miners of high-sulfur coal in Byrd's West Virginia and automakers and -workers in Dingell's Michigan.

Bush unveiled his proposals Monday in the White House, then flew west to promote his plan. In Nebraska he took the wheel of an experimental car fueled by ETBE, an ethanol blend made from the state's abundant corn (the chauffeured Bush has not driven an automobile in many years). In Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, the President declared, "The most fundamental obligation of Government is to protect the people -- the people's health, the people's safety."

The political genius of Bush's something-for-everybody plan is that it meets environmentalists' objectives by giving industry unprecedented freedom to choose how to cut emissions. On acid rain, it calls for a reduction by the year 2000 of 10 million tons, or 50%, in the amount of sulfur dioxide spewed into the air, mostly by coal-burning electric utilities. Says an Administration official: "Ten million was clearly a litmus test with the 'enviros.' "

But power plants can achieve the reduction any way they want. They can install scrubbers on smokestacks, switch to burning low-sulfur coal or adopt new technology for cleaner burning of high-sulfur coal. Moreover, they can trade what would amount to pollution rights. If one utility cuts sulfur- dioxide emissions more than the law requires, it can sell the unused portion of the emissions it is allowed to another company that is having trouble meeting its standard. While the total reduction would be the same, both companies would cut costs: the seller because it would get extra money, and the buyer because it might be less expensive for it to purchase pollution rights than to make the required slash in emissions immediately.

In combatting smog, Bush conveniently opted to develop alternative-fuel cars in the future rather than move quickly to require costly reductions in tail- | pipe emissions; the controls he did propose nationally for gasoline-driven cars are less stringent than those that California has already enacted. Use of the new fuels would require an expensive redesign. For example, because a car can travel only about half as far on a gallon of methanol as on a gallon of gas, automakers would have to build cars with bigger fuel tanks. Worse, motorists would probably not want to buy methanol cars until the fuel was widely available, and gas stations would probably not install methanol pumps until large numbers of cars using that fuel were roaming the roads. Moreover, Bush ducked the single most effective device for lowering gasoline usage: a hefty gas tax, which would also serve to reduce the deficit.

His proposals on the discharge of toxic chemicals into the air are the least detailed part of his plan. Bush will ask Congress to revise ineffectual laws from the 1970s and order all polluters to adopt whatever the Environmental Protection Agency defines as the "maximum available control technology" to slash those emissions.

Before Bush unveiled his proposals, public opinion surveys were giving him exceedingly low marks on the environment. Actually, though, the President set up a clean-air working group immediately after the Inauguration. It proceeded in what is becoming a trademark manner for this Administration. The group met repeatedly with environmentalists, industrialists and key lawmakers but gave them no hint of what its members were thinking. The President's advisers then fought it out among themselves at six meetings of the Domestic Policy Council. EPA administrator William Reilly pressed for stringent measures; budget boss Richard Darman argued that the cost did not justify the health and environmental benefits. Bush attended three of those meetings and called environmentalists and industrialists into the White House to present their cases directly to him. Finally, White House chief of staff John Sununu took three 30-page single-spaced option papers to Camp David on Saturday, June 10. He and the President went over them line by line on Sunday, making the final decisions.

Bush's bill, expected to exceed 300 pages, will be drafted over the next month. The final law will be shaped by a hard-to-predict tug-of-war between those who want to go further -- environmentalists applauded the proposal only as a starting point -- and legislators seeking to protect the interests of industries in their communities. Still, Bush has given another reason to hope that what appeared to be the Administration's early drift and indecision was really only a matter of a new President taking his time.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Glenn Garelik/Washington