Time: Wed Jul 02 05:06:17 1997
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Date: Wed, 02 Jul 1997 05:03:39 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: The EPA must be stopped! (fwd)
After all, they are cleaning your air,
so that gives them jurisdiction over you,
right?
/s/ Paul Mitchell
http://www.supremelaw.com
<snip>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Queen Of Clean Air
>
>EPA Chief Browner wore down everyone, right up to the
>President, in her battle for tougher rules
>
>By Michael D. Lemonick
>
>(TIME, July 7) -- As a piece of understatement, the
>President's pronouncement last week was nothing
>short of a masterpiece: "I have approved some very
>strong new regulations today," he said, "that will be
>somewhat controversial."
>
>Tell it to Carol Browner. When the Environmental Protection Agency chief
>proposed a set of strict new clean-air rules back in November, she was
>ambushed from just about every direction. Conservative legislators,
>industry lobbyists and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal
>attacked Browner with unusual vehemence, declaring, that, among other
>things, the rules were based on bad science and would subvert the
>American way of life by banning barbecues and fireworks.
>
>That was bad enough. But Browner was also blasted by some of her
>colleagues within the Administration, who accused her of relying on poor
>data, showing indifference to the economy and--worst of all in a group
>that prides itself on consensus building--being unwilling to modify her
>position. Some White House aides even thought she should be fired for
>insubordination.
>
>But when the President announced the final version of the regulations
>last week, it was clear that Browner had prevailed. Over the next 10
>years, cities and states will be required to reduce ozone levels
>one-third and will for the first time have to control microscopic soot
>particles. Factories and power plants will have to clean up their
>smokestacks; auto pollution will have to be reduced, either by getting
>cars off the road or by switching to new technologies, such as electric
>vehicles; and yes, some tiny percentage of homeowners may even be forced
>to stop using their fireplaces or barbecue grills when the air is
>especially bad.
>
>The EPA is required by law to make regulatory decisions without regard
>to the cost of implementing them, and Browner, in her typical up-front
>fashion, acknowledged from the start that the cost of the new standards
>will be high--up to $8.5 billion a year, according to agency estimates.
>Yet the cleanup will, by her calculations, also save 15,000 lives, cut
>hospital admissions for respiratory illness by 9,000 and reduce chronic
>bronchitis cases by 60,000 each year. Surely that is worth a few
>billion.
>
>Maybe so, but friends and foes alike were quick to point out that her
>figures are anything but solid. The original trigger for Browner's
>proposal was a lawsuit brought by the American Lung Association. The
>suit accused the EPA of ignoring new scientific evidence showing that
>small particles in the air--bits of matter much tinier than the diameter
>of a human hair--are especially harmful to health. A federal judge
>ordered the agency to look at the evidence and, if the data warranted
>it, come up with new regulations.
>
>So the EPA reviewed 86 separate studies about the association between
>soot and dust particles and human illness. The agency was already
>thinking about tightening its rules on ozone, a noxious form of oxygen
>produced in the burning of fossil fuels. (Another fossil-fuel combustion
>by-product, carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas, responsible in large
>part for the phenomenon of global warming.) It reviewed an additional
>186 studies on ozone, making this, according to Browner, the most
>extensive scientific review undertaken for any air standard the EPA has
>proposed.
>
>The new rules, however, will not be issued in a vacuum. If they are
>adopted as written, hundreds of counties across the nation--some of
>which have worked hard to meet the old, looser standards--will suddenly
>be in violation. This infuriates businesspeople who would be forced to
>absorb the costs of any cleanup, and is why industry groups, including
>the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum
>Institute, carried out a major lobbying and advertising campaign to
>force Browner to retreat. Big-city mayors joined forces with the
>business lobby, fearing the new regulations would spur an exodus of
>factories from urban areas to places with lower pollution. They too put
>a lot of pressure on the White House.
>
>Charges by Browner's opponents that bad science underlies the new rules
>can't be dismissed casually. Despite those scores of studies, there is
>still no smoking gun linking soot particles, in particular, to lung
>disease. Cities that have lots of soot in the air do tend to have more
>illness and deaths, but that merely shows an association; it doesn't
>prove cause and effect. Nobody knows, moreover, by exactly what
>mechanism particles might cause disease. Given the state of the science,
>any analysis of pollution risk must be a judgment call.
>
>How good is the EPA's judgment? Industry groups are not the only ones
>saying it's questionable. The studies available today, says Robert
>Phalen, director of the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory at the
>University of California at Irvine and an occasional corporate
>consultant, are just setting the groundwork for future research on
>whether soot is harmful. "It could be a tragic mistake," says Phalen,
>"to jump toward a regulation before you know what is going on."
>
>Indeed, some scientists argue that restrictions on soot could,
>paradoxically, cause more illness, not less. It may be the smallest of
>the small particles that cause the most damage, according to Gunter
>Oberdorster, a toxicologist at the University of Rochester. But these
>ultrafine particles tend to be vacuumed up by their larger cousins.
>Filter out the latter--which is easier to do--and the former would be
>free to wreak even greater havoc.
>
>Browner and her scientific advisers are aware of the uncertainties, and
>don't pretend that their regulations are based on conclusive proof.
>"There are gaps in the science," acknowledges Dr. Jonathan Samet,
>chairman of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins school of public health.
>"But the science provides a warning." In any case, argues Browner, the
>law demands that the EPA set standards that provide an "adequate margin
>of safety." If public-health officials had waited to uncover precisely
>how lead and tobacco smoke cause illness, thousands of people would have
>died unnecessarily.
>
>While Browner's tenacity kept Administration opponents from watering
>down her original proposals significantly, victory wasn't assured until
>after Vice President Gore concluded two weeks ago that the
>Administration had no political alternative to backing her and Clinton
>endorsed that view. Gore's public silence during the deliberations had
>struck environmentalists as ominous: not only is the environment Gore's
>personal portfolio, it's also an issue he's expected to flog during his
>presidential bid. Beyond that, Gore has personal ties to Browner: she
>worked on his Senate staff during the early 1980s, helping write some of
>the environmental laws she now administers.
>
>The President's decision to support Browner is a major victory for the
>EPA chief, but the new regulations still face a challenge by Congress.
>Many Republicans and some Democrats have vowed to pass a law overturning
>them. Support for the EPA crosses party lines: Republican Senator
>Alfonse D'Amato of New York announced last week that he'd fight any
>attempt to weaken the rules. And even if Congress passes legislation to
>overturn the rules, opponents would probably be unable to muster enough
>votes to override a presidential veto.
>
>--Reported by J.F.O. McAllister and Dick Thompson/Washington
>
>The Terms Of Debate
>
>Browner says the new clean-air rules will...
>
>--save as many as 15,000 lives each year --cut annual
>respiratory-related hospital admissions by 9,000 --reduce the number of
>chronic bronchitis cases by 60,000 a year
>
>Her many critics counter that the rules...
>
>--are based on flimsy scientific evidence --will force people to give up
>fireworks and backyard barbecues --will cost industry billions of
>dollars, might even make people sicker
>
>_________________________________________________________
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>-> Posted by: "Brian Mosely" <bmosely@hotmail.com>
>
>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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