Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300297
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SENATE REJECTS AID FOR MINERS

The $500 million special assistance package was rejected 50-49. Both Virginia senators, Republican John Warner and Democrat Charles Robb, voted against it.

At least two senators who said they planned to vote for it reversed themselves after John Sununu, White House chief of staff, told them President Bush would veto the clean air bill if the proposal was included.

A veto would have killed the compromise bill negotiated between the White House and Senate leaders and probably would have ended prospects for clean air legislation this session. The White House said the provision for financial help for miners would make the clean air bill too costly.

The defeat of the amendment, which was offered by Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., the former majority leader, removes the last major obstacle to Senate passage of the legislation to strengthen the Clean Air Act of 1970. Final action in the Senate is expected by Tuesday.

The House is still drafting its clean air bill and has not addressed the acid rain issue and the problem of miners who might lose jobs.

The jobs would be in jeopardy because the measaure would encourage utilities to shift to a type of coal that would reduce pollution.

At first, Byrd appeared to have the votes to carry his amendment. But Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, who supported the proposal, voted against it after he left the floor during the vote to take a call from Sununu.

Biden reported after the vote that Sununu warned him the amendment would break the compromise agreement and "guaranteed the president would veto the bill"

Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., who Byrd said would have voted to help the miners, was attending a funeral and did not vote.

Thirty-seven Democrats and 12 Republicans voted for the amendment, while 16 Democrats and 34 Republicans voted against it.

The Byrd amendment was opposed by the majority leader, Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, and the minority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, who both argued that providing special assistance to the coal miners would set a bad precedent as workers in other industries would demand similar relief.

Byrd, still one of the most influential members of the Senate, made an extraordinary personal effort for his amendment. After he lost, he told reporters: "I did everything I could and, therefore, I don't feel badly about it."

The Senate bill, as well as legislation being prepared in the House, would require require a reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions of 10 million tons a year. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are the chief components of acid rain. All the reductions would be made by coal-fired power plants, most of which are in nine Midwestern states.

The reductions could be made by installing devices on smokestacks to remove sulfur. But a less expensive approach likely to be adopted by many utilities is shifting to lower-sulfur coal.

Such a shift is expected to result in the closing of a number of high-sulfur coal mines, particularly in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana.

Byrd said that the jobs lost by the time the acid rain controls are fully implemented after the year 2000 could reach at least 14,000.