STRICTER STANDARDS June 25, 1997 TRANSCRIPT

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President Clinton has come out in favor of the EPA's tougher air quality standards, despite criticism that compliance with the new rules will be too costly. After a background report, Margaret Warner leads a discussion.

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NewsHour Links: A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available. June 25, 1997: Kwame Holman provides a background report on the EPA's tougher clean air standards. June 25, 1997: Read our Online Forum: U.S.Representatives Julia Carson (D-IN) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) debated the effectiveness of the EPA. November 27, 1996: The Environmental Protection Agency proposes to reduce smog levels by a third. December 21, 1995: Spencer Michels reports on the changing role of the Environmental Protection Agency. Browse the Online NewsHour's coverage of the environment. External Links: Environmental Protection Agency Air Quality Resources on the Internet Clean Air Act Information Network

MARGARET WARNER: The EPA is scheduled to publish the new rules by July 19th. Unless Congress or the courts intervene to block the regulations, state and local governments will have to begin immediately drawing up plans to comply. But EPA officials say the new rules won’t be fully implemented until at least the year 2003. Here to discuss their likely impact are Paul Billings, deputy director of government relations with the American Lung Association, and Wendy Gramm, an economist and a former budget official in the Reagan administration. She’s now director of the Regulatory Analysis Program at George Mason University. What’s going to be the most significant practical impact of these new rules?

PAUL BILLINGS, American Lung Association: In communities across the country people will know when the air is unsafe to breathe, and start working to clean up the air and protect children’s health and protect the health of old people, and protect the health of everyone. It’s a positive step for public health, and that’s the effect.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it?

WENDY GRAMM, Economist: I see it as not only will it be costly, but it will not improve public health and EPA’s own science advisers have said that EPA’s proposals will not be significantly more protective of public health than the current proposals, which are producing clean air. In the case of ozone, public health will be harmed because ozone is bad, but so is melanoma, and you’re going to have more skin cancers and more cataracts.

MARGARET WARNER: So you mean because ozone actually protects against ultraviolet rays?

WENDY GRAMM: It is screening, much as the way that stratospheric ozone in the upper atmosphere, it is screening it, but so does tropospheric ozone, which is at this level. So you have to look at the tradeoff. We’re not saying ozone is good, but it’s going to create twenty-five to fifty more melanoma deaths per year as a result and will result in thousands of new cases of other kinds of skin cancer, as well as cataracts, and those things need to be considered.

PAUL BILLINGS: That’s true. If you can’t see the sun because the earth is too dirty, you won’t get skin cancer. That’s an absurd argument. What we’re talking about is ozone at the ground level that affects the lungs, makes people cough, wheeze, sends kids with asthma to the hospital. This is an important public health step. And, yes, we are concerned about skin cancer, but more air pollution is not the cure for skin cancer. Protecting the ozone level in the upper atmosphere is the way to protect people from skin cancer.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, how can there be such a difference between the two of you as to whether there is a public health benefit? You say there is absolutely none?

WENDY GRAMM: EPA’s own science advisors wrote in both of the closing letters--the Clean Air Advisory Committee that was mandated by Congress--they have stated that EPA’s proposals were not significantly more protective of public health in current standards. And, indeed, the air is getting cleaner under the current standards. And so there is a lot of reason to say, why don’t we continue to let the air get cleaner, let us really understand, because there’s a lot of uncertainty which the science advisors point out and the scientific communities point out. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what can happen. In fact, EPA’s getting some $25 million to study the effects of those particles.

PAUL BILLINGS: That’s not quite true. The EPA’s scientific advisory committee voted unanimously telling EPA to set an eight-hour ozone standard, and 19 out of 21 of those scientists said set a standard for the fine particle. So there is strong scientific consensus for tighter standards. The health research shows that.

MARGARET WARNER: Are you saying that lives will be saved?

PAUL BILLINGS: Lives will be saved. EPA estimates 15,000 lives we save from the soot standards and thousands of lives we save from the smog standards.

MARGARET WARNER: And you don’t agree?

WENDY GRAMM: Actually in the science advisors with regard to particulate--the soot--they said there’s some cause for concern, but they could not come to consensus about a level or the form of the standard. As a matter of fact, they testified in Congress. Only two out of the twenty-one advisors on that committee were in favor of a proposal that included the range EPA was considering.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let me turn to another issue that came up in the advertising campaign, which was what kind of lifestyle and industry changes would be required. What will be required? I mean, these new regulations are now going to go into effect.

WENDY GRAMM: Billions of dollars, that’s right. And let’s put it this way. We have not met the standards for the current Clean Air Act and the current standards. EPA in its proposal has no idea how it’s going to meet the proposals. In fact, their cost estimates--they look at the year 2007 and they simply truncate, saying, we can’t estimate those costs because they have no idea what the technology will be.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you have an estimate as to cost?

WENDY GRAMM: Our estimates are on the order of ten times what EPA’s will be--$55 billion, a conservative estimate, for particulates, and on the order of say between 9 and 83 billion dollars for ozone. And the fact of the matter is that that’s going to be very costly; if, for example, all of California went to totally electric vehicles, we still would not meet the standards.

PAUL BILLINGS: Viewers on the East Coast can look out the window today and see the air pollution problem--a major air pollution problem. The way to solve this problem is to clean up the dirty power plants that were grand-fathered under the Clean Air Act in the Midwest; they’re still burning dirty coal without any pollution control technology. Cleaning up dirty diesel buses and trucks will help a lot. So those are the big sources. EPA--the big guys that have been unregulated, who have an unfair competitive advantage; on the East Coast those sources have cleaned up. In the Midwest, they haven’t, and they all contribute to the air pollution downwind.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what about some of the other charges in the ads, for instance, that we’d all have to shut down our outdoor barbecues or farmers couldn’t plow on dusty days?

PAUL BILLINGS: These are ridiculous claims. EPA has said that’s not what this is about. Local communities help write their plans, and there’s not a mayor or a governor or a state senator in this country that’s going to vote to ban barbecues. In California they have reformulated the barbecue lighter fluid, consumers didn’t even notice, and reduced air pollution quite a bit. So we’re not going after barbecues. We’re going after big, dirty trucks, big dirty power plants. That’s where the pollution—

MARGARET WARNER: Do you see lifestyle changes coming?

WENDY GRAMM: Absolutely. Under the current clean air standards, we have not reached them yet, and we can continue to have cleaner air, as we have over the last decade. And we need to continue that trend; however, right now we can’t meet the standards, and if you impose these new standards, it’s only going to create a lot of confusion, and, indeed, what will happen is we cannot meet the standards, then each state will have to come to the federal government through implementation plans, and any time a new plant wanted to be opened, they will have to come to the federal government or to a bureaucrat to get their approval and--

MARGARET WARNER: And is that different from the way it is now?

WENDY GRAMM: If it--that’s the situation now if an area is not meeting the standards. And no area--you know, three quarters of the areas will not meet the standards in the EPA’s own estimation.

PAUL BILLINGS: We will see lifestyle changes. Kids with asthma won’t have to go to the hospital and the doctor’s office on smoggy days--old people won’t die early--that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about protecting public health so lifestyle changes will be for improved public health.

MARGARET WARNER: But why then do you think the U.S. Conference of Mayors came out against these?

PAUL BILLINGS: There’s been a multi-million dollar, thirty to fifty million dollar scare campaign targeted at these mayors, saying that we’re going to close your cities down. What President Clinton said today was we’re going to be flexible and work with the cities on implementation; we’re going to show flexibility. Mayors should be for this. Mayor Giuliani is for this in New York, because he knows that if we don’t clean up the pollution in Ohio, New York doesn’t get clean air. Sen. D’Amato is for it for the same reason. We’re seeing lots of support in the East and the West for cleaner air and for these standards because they know that it can’t get clean air unless everybody plays by the same set of rules and helps.

MARGARET WARNER: Does the stretched out--I mean, the President’s offer to stretch out the deadlines and work with industry in the cities--does that ameliorate the situation in your view?

WENDY GRAMM: I think it’s going to make it worse. That could, in fact, even reduce the environmental effects because there’s going to be confusion. There is going--you know, why clean up under the current standards when you might not have to later on; it’s going to be litigation heaven again as groups want to jockey for a competitive position. So it’s just going to be, I think, much more confusing, and, again, it then will mean that people will have to come to the bureaucracy for every little favor, every little extension of the rule. And the fact of the matter is--let’s go back to the basics--this is not going to be protective of public health, and in the case of ozone in fact hurt it, and EPA’s own cost-benefit analysis in the ozone rule shows the costs far exceeding the benefit.

MARGARET WARNER: But now, as I understand it, EPA--what they’re operating now, they’re not allowed to take costs even into account, is that right?

WENDY GRAMM: Well, that’s the way they interpret the rule, but in fact, they have stated themselves that on these proposals that they’ve made a policy decision because their science advisors could not find a threshold or they could not say--the science advisors couldn’t say that there is a level that is significantly more protective of public health. So themselves they’ve said it’s a policy decision.

PAUL BILLINGS: The law says set the standards based on the health science. That’s what the administrator has done. She looked at the scientists and said we need to update these standards to protect public health. It’s based on the science. Cost considerations come in the implementation phase, and that’s what President Clinton said today. The appropriate point for cost is on that phase. What EPA is also saying is we’re going to move ahead and continue to implement the old standards of air; we’re going to continue to make progress and we’re going to show flexibility to allow areas to meet these standards in the best way possible, with the least economic disruption and the most protection of public health. It’s a common sense decision. It’s a fair decision, and it’s the right decision for public health.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, Paul Billings and Wendy Gramm, thank you both very much.

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