CONGRESSIONAL CHAIN-SAW MASSACRE

By DICK THOMPSON WASHINGTON

"Give them all [endangered species] a designated area and then blow it up. It sounds insane, but that's how insane the endangered-species people are."

--Sonny Bono, newly elected U.S. Representative from California

WHEN BONO TOSSED OFF THAT LINE during the fall campaign, he may have been merely poking fun at the save-the-planet folks, just as he used to trade put-downs with his old partner, Cher. But underneath the comic exaggeration was a serious message. The noises coming from Bono and many of his fellow Republican signers of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" signal a radical shift in Congress's attitude toward environmental issues-a shift that may bode ill for the health of snail darters, spotted owls and even the human species.

The change is symbolized in the office of Alaska's only Representative, Republican Don Young. On his walls are more animal heads and hides-and the guns that made them trophies-than in almost any room in Washington outside the Smithsonian. Young is the greens' worst nightmare.

Yet Young claims to love nature as much as anyone else. "I'm a true conservationist," he proclaims. "I'm one who believes that from the lands God has given this great nation comes the wealth of the nation." For too long, he argues, "protectionists" have built walls of red tape around that wealth. He wants to tear those barriers down so that it would be easier to tap-in a responsible way, he insists-into the nation's oil, timber and mineral treasures. Young's views are of no small consequence; he's the new chairman of the House Committee on Resources.

In that role, Young will be a leader in Gingrich's drive to pass the G.O.P.'s government-curbing contract. Of course, nothing in that heralded document attacks environmental preservation directly. For who, after all, would be against preserving the air, land and water? A TIME/CNN poll last month found that 88% of Americans consider environmental protection either "one of the most important" U.S. problems or at least "very important," while only 23% think antipollution regulations "have gone too far." But the same poll indicated that Americans support the Republican drive to reform the regulatory process.

Instead of using the word environment, the contract's provisions-some of which are embodied in legislation already approved by the House and Senate-speak of dropping "unfunded mandates," improving "risk assessment" and protecting "private-property rights." Yet in the opinion of the greens and the Clinton Administration, these are code words signaling a determined G.O.P. effort not only to rein in government regulation but also to hamper enforcement of every major environmental law, from the Safe Drinking Water Act to the Endangered Species Act.

Not since the reign of James Watt, Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, have environmentalists been so shaken. "This is James Watt times 10," says Brett Hulsey, the Sierra Club's Midwest representative. "These people want to turn our natural resources back to the robber barons."

While not so alarmist, Carol Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is also concerned. The Republican legislation, she says, would "create a convoluted maze that could prevent us from doing our jobs" and would also have "a real impact on our ability to protect public health." Had the Contract with America been in place two decades ago, she maintains, federal regulators would not have been able to reduce the use of leaded gasoline, which everyone now agrees is a major health hazard.

Newt & Co. say they are simply trying to bring reason to federal regulation. They relish citing examples of overzealous enforcement-the sheep rancher who was fined $4,000 for shooting a grizzly bear that was attacking him, or the landowners who were sent to jail for building on "wetlands," a broad term that regulators have applied to property that contains standing water for as little as 11 days in a year.

But state and local officials, too, criticize Washington rulemakers. Enforcers of the Safe Drinking Water Act, for example, require towns like Rutland, Vermont (pop. 18,000), to test for 121 chemicals in the water. Complains Mayor Jeffrey Wennberg: "More than 80% of those chemicals would never be found in our water because there is no farming or industry here. It's ludicrous."

Westerners are outraged at the EPA's costly new one-size-fits-all vehicle-emission standards, which they say make no sense in sparsely populated areas. "It's not fair applying Eastern, urban standards to rural areas," complains John Kelly, a policy aide to Arizona Governor Fife Symington.

Yet the benefits of EPA strictures are often worth the cost. Key West, Florida, a tourists' lair with a permanent population of around 25,000, is a case in point. As late as 1987, the village pumped its raw sewage through leaking pipes less than a mile out to sea, where it was laying waste to the nearby reefs and fishing grounds. Outside town, a waste dump had grown into what locals called "Mount Trashmore."

It was then that the EPA mandated that the village lay new pipes, erect a sewage-treatment plant, close the dump and build an incinerator. While the EPA eventually footed $18 million of the initial $32 million expense of the treatment plant, the village was forced to raise utility bills to pay the rest, and the costs associated with the improvements continue to climb. That helped bring Key West's cost of living to the highest level in the state, forcing many "conches"-native Key Westers-to move away. Even so, John Jones, the village engineer, admits "it was something the city had to do" to save the tourist and fishing industries. "We had to clean up our act or we wouldn't have an act."

The EPA admits to being overzealous at times and points to corrective steps now in the works, such as changing the 11-day rule in the wetlands definition. But environmentalists contend that reform is not what's on Republicans' minds. Says Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope: "The agenda they have set is not to fix these laws but to weaken them."

The agenda's controversial triad:

UNFUNDED MANDATES This proposal, already passed in somewhat varying forms by the House and Senate, would discourage Washington from imposing rules on state and local governments without also providing the funds needed to comply with those rules. Congress could still pass such an unfunded mandate but only after a sEPArate vote acknowledging that the Federal Government would not be putting up the needed money. The proposal would apply to any new rule, whether it regulated the contents of school lunches or standards for prison construction, but it would hit especially hard at costly environmental regulations. President Clinton, who opposes many provisions of the contract, has agreed in general with this one, declaring, "It's time for Congress to stop passing onto the states the cost of decisions we make here in Washington."

But environmental groups fear that in an era of tight federal budgets, the roadblocks to unfunded mandates will mean no new man-dates at all. One potential ruling that could be stymied would require the treatment of municipal water supplies for Cryptosporidium, a tiny Protozoa that sickened close to 400,000 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1993, and has been linked to more than 100 deaths. Milwaukee is voluntarily spending $90 million to protect its water supply against the invader, and scientists are studying the microbe to see if it presents risks to other water supplies. Should they recommend upgrading federal drinking-water standards to ward off further Protozoan disasters, Gingrich's mandate legislation would probably hamper any action-unless, says Jeff Fleming, a spokesman for the Milwaukee mayor's office, "the Federal Government wants to pay for upgrading all the treatment plants."

Will existing mandates be the next targets? Gingrich has proposed that once a month Congress have a "corrective actions" day, on which 20 or 30 provisions of federal laws that have "unintended consequences" could be rescinded or fixed.

RISK ASSESSMENT Is Alar on apples as risky as lead in paint chips? And what about radon, asbestos and second-hand smoke? Critics charge that the EPA focuses too much on threats that pose only tiny risks to the public. For example, under current regulations, the EPA can ban any products containing substances shown to be carcinogens in tests with laboratory animals. University of California chemist Bruce Ames, who developed the standard carcinogen test, notes that more than 500 chemicals found in roasted coffee can cause cancer in rats-if given in large enough doses. "This does not mean that coffee is dangerous," he says, only that the tests are so sensitive that they identify negligible risks.

The contract solution: 23 new hurdles for rulemakers that add up to a complex cost-benefit analysis, which would be reviewed by a panel of nongovernment experts. The panel would decide, using strict criteria, whether a particular health risk was great enough to justify the cost of the regulation. Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, is aghast: "It's going to be a waste of government money, and it's going to make it harder to do anything, even ease up on regulation." But Florida Republican John Mica, author of the leading House risk-assessment bill, is adamant. "If they think I am prEPAred to compromise," he warns, "they're in fantasy land."

While the EPA endorses objective calculations of risk, it fears being bogged down by endless cost-benefit studies. Agency officials want a limit, for example, on the number of risk assessments required for similar regulations in different parts of the country. Then, too, many environmentalists are nervous about the whole concept of cost-benefit equations. It's easy, they say, to figure the cost of an antismog device. But what is the value of saving even a single child from developing asthma?

PROPERTY RIGHTS Contract advocates believe that when Washington imposes environmental restrictions on landowners, preventing them from, say, filling in wetlands to build motels, the government has "taken" the value of the land-a concept based on the constitutional provision that the government cannot take personal property without "just compensation." The courts have accepted this principle but have made it tough for landowners to get payments; in some cases, government action must reduce the value of land 85% before any legal remedy is available.

A bill now before Congress would lower that threshold to 50%, a requirement that would increase the compensation paid to landholders. That would benefit Margaret Rector, who owns 15 acres of land northwest of Austin, Texas, that was valued in the mid-1980s at $1 million. In the early 1990s, she was informed by federal officials that her land contained the sort of old-growth cedar favored by the golden-cheeked warbler, an endangered species. For that reason, she says, "they told me I can't clear it, I can't build on it, and I can't cut it." And because of those restrictions, she can't sell it. These encumbrances, say supporters of the Gingrich legislation, constitute a federal "taking" of her land, for which she should be compensated.

More than 100 law professors and most state attorneys general have signed documents objecting to the "property rights" bill, claiming it would block new regulations by keeping environmental enforcers tied up in court. Under the proposed reforms, critics contend, anyone's neighbor could threaten to convert his land into a toxic-waste dump-and claim compensation from the government if he was not allowed to do it.

The momentum behind all the proposals has stunned ecogroups. "It's all happening very fast, without a lot of discussion, not by the public and not even by members of Congress," says Sharon Newsome, a lobbyist for the National Wildlife Federation. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, the greens' point man in the New York State assembly, thinks he knows why. "Newt's troops have to do this in the first 100 days because it won't stand scrutiny."

After weeks of virtual silence on environmental issues, the White House has at last gone on the attack. Vice President Al Gore stated flatly that President Clinton cannot support some of the property-takings bills, and a parade of Administration officials has trooped to the Hill to warn against hasty, ill-considered action.

Both the Administration and conservation groups admit that the Republicans have identified some real problems with the enforcement of environmental laws. But they also agree that the remedies the G.O.P. is proposing are so broad and excessive that they almost invite a presidential veto. If Congress and Clinton cannot compromise, the cause of environmental protection may be the main casualty.

--With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami, S.C. Gwynne/Austin and Richard Woodbury/Denver, with other bureaus

With reporting by GREG AUNAPU/MIAMI, S.C. GWYNNE/AUSTIN AND RICHARD WOODBURY/DENVER, WITH OTHER BUREAUS