DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711060247

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER

                                            LENGTH:  112 lines

BLOWIN' SMOKE LET'S CLEAR THE AIR ON HOW WE'RE SUPPOSED TO CLEAR THE AIR

President Clinton and his U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say proposed new limits on smog, soot and nitrogen oxide - a chemical emission from power plants, cars and boats (indeed, anything that burns fossil fuel for energy) - will make us all breathe easier. Great news, right?

Well, yes and no.

Health advocates and environmentalists say yes, new rules are long overdue for these potent air pollutants that continue to plague urban centers across the country, including Hampton Roads, Richmond and Northern Virginia. They argue that the regulations should help decrease respiratory ailments, such as asthma, a growing problem here among the young and the elderly.

However, state and local governments and businesses and industries - the groups that have to comply with these recommendations - are not even sure what the proposals mean or when they will take effect. If at all.

While such a ``Gee-I-don't-know'' response is stunning at first blush, it actually comes as little surprise, given the complexity and almost incomprehensible deadlines and details associated with the rules.

An interview with EPA staffers showed that they, too, are not clear how this new strategy for purging our skies will work.

``I can tell you that the commonwealth needs to require that they (businesses and industries) start reducing pollution now,'' said David Sternberg, an EPA spokesman in Philadelphia.

When pressed on such basics as ``How much pollution are we talking about here?'' and ``When will this be required?'' and ``Who must do what?'', Sternberg and an aide went silent on the other end of the phone.

``A lot of this will become clearer later on,'' he finally said. ``Some of this is subject to change and really is preliminary.''

That hardly seems comforting to hundreds of utilities and industries that face millions of dollars worth of anti-pollution improvements. Similarly Hampton Roads, a region just this year declared safe from smog by the same EPA, is understandably nervous about such vague pronouncements.

Also remarkable in this tale is the reaction to the proposed rules by Becky Norton Dunlop, Virginia's secretary of natural resources, the top environmental official in the commonwealth. Dunlop said in a written statement following the release of the rules last month: ``Until we know exactly what the EPA is proposing, we don't know what the appropriate course for Virginia is.''

Her statement went on to say that, as far as could be extrapolated, ``the proposed reductions may be close to what Virginia already is expecting to achieve.''

In short, these rules may do nothing here in the Old Dominion.

A spokesman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said last week that state air experts still are reviewing the rules, encased in ``several hundred pages'' of legal and technical vernacular.

What spokesman Bill Hayden could say with certainty is that after experts decipher what the rules would do, the state will send comments to the EPA. Those comments likely will protest some aspects of the clean-air program while letting others pass.

And states across the country will do likewise. And then the EPA will re-publish amended rules. And then Congress will get a crack at the parts it likes and the parts it dislikes. And then, maybe, in two years or so, the rules will require states to formulate plans that will outline what businesses must do.

This, of course, is how a democracy is supposed to work, and usually how new regulations are introduced. Slow compromise. Rule by consensus. And that's fine.

But something else is going on here that borders on the absurd. Or, worse, on pure politics.

The Clinton administration, it seems, wants to be perceived as tough on environmental issues. Vice President Al Gore, after all, wrote a book on the subject and likely will run for president in the year 2000.

The administration also wants to be fair to Big Business, providing companies and influential conglomerates as much wiggle room as their lawyers can get.

Hence, in response to eco-calls for tougher clean-air rules, and urgings from the other side to block such rules, the public gets something that on paper sounds really good but actually is pretty hollow.

According to EPA timelines, 25 separate steps must be taken before the new regulations become law. Each of the three pollutants has a different compliance schedule, and each requires a separate action plan.

And this ``implementation schedule'' assumes the proposals will get past Congress and the courts.

Let's look at one specific: nitrogen oxide, a chief elixir in the making of smog.

Under the Clinton proposal, Virginia must submit a plan by September 1999 to cut statewide emissions of this fossil-fuel byproduct by 21 percent. It has until 2002 to implement whatever controls are recommended, and until 2005 to actually show the 21 percent reduction.

The target of the program is power plants. Utilities in 22 East Coast states are going to be asked to cut their nitrogen oxide emissions by various amounts, according to this regulation, which took two years to draft.

Dan Genest, a spokesman for Virginia Power, the largest energy producer in the state, said that while the utility is not sure what the the final EPA rule will require, installing a few low nitrogen-oxide burners at its coal-fired plants likely will do the trick.

This is an expensive prospect, Genest said, but not particularly hard to do.

So why wait? Why not install the burners now and not worry about the outcome of the political debate that surely will surround the proposed regulation?

``It's not something you can fight,'' he said. ``This is in the state's hands and they have two years to come up with a plan. They'll then let us know what's expected of us. We'll comply fully.''

In other words, Virginia Power knows what to do, but will wait to be told to do it.

It seems, then, that we're back to a common-sense question: Why doesn't government go straight to utilities and say, ``Hey, do the right thing or else''? The ``or else'' could be a threat to introduce a new regulatory scheme, including inspections and government reporting and all that.

Maybe that would be too easy. MEMO: Scott Harper covers environmental issues for The Virginian-Pilot. ILLUSTRATION: SAM HUNDLEY/The Virginian-Pilot

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