EPA chief defends inactivity
WASHINGTON -- Nearly a year after being told to do so, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday he couldn't say when he would comply with a Supreme Court directive and determine whether greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles should be regulated.
In a tense exchange with a senator, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson suggested that few if any people at the agency were directly working on the issue now. The high court in April 2007 had said the EPA was required to determine whether carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases posed a danger to public health.
The administrator also was unable to clarify for senators the agency's position on regulation of mercury emissions from power plants.
Johnson originally had promised a reply to the court's greenhouse gas ruling by last fall.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein pressed the EPA official at a hearing, repeatedly asking him how many EPA employees he had working on the greenhouse gas issue.
"Is anyone working on this at the present time, Mr. Johnson?" she asked. "How many members of your staff are currently working on this?"
"I don't know the answer to that," Johnson replied at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations environment subcommittee.
Feinstein accused Johnson of "stonewalling" and said she found it strange that the EPA chief "can't give me a number (of people engaged) on something that is a Supreme Court finding."
"Madam Chairman, I am not stonewalling," Johnson said.
He said a law that Congress passed in December requiring automakers to achieve a fleetwide average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 has complicated the EPA's response on greenhouse gas regulation as required by the high court.
Johnson also used the new auto fuel economy requirements as a key reason that he decided to reject a request by California for permission from the EPA to pursue its own controls on greenhouse gas emissions -- mainly carbon dioxide -- from automobiles.
Johnson also said Tuesday he didn't know of behind-the-scenes efforts by EPA officials to blunt state attempts to reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Those efforts occurred even as the Bush administration argued in court that states are free to enact tougher mercury controls from power plants, The Associated Press reported last month, based on internal EPA documents.
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy questioned Johnson about the report.
"Has anyone with EPA ever pressured any state against instituting any more restrictive mercury regulation?" asked Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I don't recall having any firsthand knowledge of that," said Johnson. "I don't know if they have, no I don't," he added.
The Supreme Court ruling last April found that the EPA had authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases, so named because their accumulation in the atmosphere can help trap heat from the sun, causing potentially dangerous warming of the Earth. The court directed the EPA to decide whether the emissions endanger the public's health or welfare. If so, the court said, the EPA must regulate such emissions.
The Bush administration had long argued against regulating carbon dioxide, maintaining that it is not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and has opposed mandatory limits even in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
EPA scientists determined last year that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to the public welfare, government officials familiar with the decision have told The Associated Press. However, EPA officials said that once the new fuel-efficiency law was signed the process was restarted.
Johnson emphasized Tuesday that the decision on greenhouse gas regulation has to be examined broadly.
"I know we have staff working on a myriad of issues," Johnson told Feinstein as the senator pressed him on to what extent the agency was viewing the court's edict as a top priority.
"We have a lot of activities, important activities that we're working on as well," he added.
Johnson again defended his decision to deny California permission to implement its own law regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks. He said the decision was his alone and the right one, even though more than a dozen states have sued him over it and internal documents have emerged showing his career staff advised that the waiver should have been granted.
Johnson, a career EPA employee before he was selected as administrator by President Bush, has been under intense criticism from environmentalists for a number of pollution decisions, from dealing with how he would reduce mercury emissions, to the California waiver to what critics argue is a refusal to meet the global warming issue head on.
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On the Net:
Environmental Protection Agency: http://epa.gov
Senate Appropriations environment subcommittee: http://appropriations.senate.gov/interior.cfm
BC-EPA-Mercury, 1st Ld-Writethru,430
EPA head claims no knowledge of pressure to blunt state efforts to cut mercury emissions
Eds: Recasts long headline to clarify. Moving on general news and financial services.
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON -- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday he didn't know of behind-the-scenes efforts by EPA officials to blunt state attempts to reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Those efforts occurred even as the Bush administration argued in court that states are free to enact tougher mercury controls from power plants, The Associated Press reported last month, based on internal EPA documents.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., questioned EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson about the report at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations environment subcommittee.
"Has anyone with EPA ever pressured any state against instituting any more restrictive mercury regulation?" asked Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I don't recall having any firsthand knowledge of that," said Johnson. "I don't know if they have, no I don't," he added.
Leahy cautioned Johnson that such pressure on states was inappropriate, and if it did occur, "then the EPA gave misleading information to the courts, which is an extremely serious matter."
A federal appeals court last month struck down the Bush administration's industry-friendly approach for mercury reduction that allowed plants with excessive smokestack emissions to buy pollution rights from other plants that foul the air less.
Internal EPA documents obtained by the advocacy group Environmental Defense show attempts over the past two years to bar state efforts to make their plants drastically cut mercury pollution instead of trading for credits that would let them continue it.
Many states did not want their power plants to be able to buy their way out of having to reduce mercury pollution.
The push to rein in uncooperative states continued until the eve of the Feb. 8 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that struck down the EPA's program. A day before that ruling, the White House Office of Management and Budget approved a draft regulation to impose a "federal implementation plan" for mercury reduction in states whose mercury control measures did not meet EPA approval.
It would have required power plants to comply with the national cap-and-trade provisions, even it that meant ignoring state restrictions.
Yet even as the EPA tangled with the states behind the scenes, government lawyers representing the agency were in U.S. District Court in Washington saying states could require more than the federal program. A state restriction on emission allowances "is not a basis for disapproval" of its program by the EPA, the court was told.
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On the Net:
Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov