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Did you miss the EPA's announcement last week that it will relax enforcement of the Clean Air Act? You were supposed to.
When politicians do things they're really ashamed of, they usually fess up late on a Friday, in hopes that the news will be overshadowed while people are distracted over the weekend. What passes for the federal Environmental Protection Agency sneaked out not one but two pieces of very bad news late last week. Don't be embarrassed if you missed them; the Bush administration planned it that way.
In a shameful policy reversal, the EPA announced Friday that it would relax enforcement of the Clean Air Act so that thousands of older coal-fired power plants and refineries can renovate their facilities without having to install antipollution equipment that would otherwise be required of them. The reversal, long sought by the utility industry, creates a giant loophole for some of the country's biggest polluters. Under prior policy, the dirtiest coal-fired plants would have eventually been cleaned up or phased out as their facilities needed upgrading. Even that policy was a concession to industry, allowing years or even decades to bring plants up to modern antipollution standards. But the EPA reversal saves the industry additional billions - at the expense of the nation's health.
The timing of the EPA reversal was suspect in another respect. At the moment, the agency has no administrator to be held responsible. Christie Whitman has left the job, and Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, chosen by President Bush to replace her, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. By announcing the policy change now, the Bush administration has saved Leavitt from having to take responsibility for a controversial early decision. However, the timing also revealed the extent to which the White House, not the scientists at EPA, dictates federal environmental policy.
The other EPA announcement is one that will not escape the attention of people living in and around New York City, even though it, too, was timed for minimum exposure. The EPA acknowledged that it had, at the White House's direction, given misleading assurances about the quality of air near ground zero in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
According to a report by the EPA's inspector general, the White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones." As a result, the agency announced a week after the attacks that the air in the area of the World Trade Center was "safe" to breathe, even though EPA had not yet completed tests for PCBs, dioxin and other harmful agents. Thousands of rescue workers and other residents reported respiratory ailments in the months following the attacks, and they and other citizens concerned about the risks to which they were exposed still can't count on reliable information from the politicized EPA.
Based on the agency's recent malpractice, we all have reason to hold our breath and fear what other late-Friday surprises may be sneaked past us.