[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 10 (Thursday, January 30, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S838]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page S838]]



                 EPA PROPOSED NEW AIR QUALITY STANDARDS

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to express my deep concerns with the 
Environmental Protection Agency's proposed changes to air quality 
standards. The EPA kicked off the last Thanksgiving weekend by 
announcing its intention to move their air quality goalposts yet again. 
It seems they change the rules more frequently than the NFL and the NBA 
put together. I doubt there were many State or local governments that 
spent Thanksgiving giving thanks for that announcement. I was the mayor 
of Gillette, a coal producing town on the plains of Wyoming. I know 
firsthand how hard many of our Nation's cities and States have been 
working. They have been expending a huge amount of effort and dollars 
just to get into compliance with the standards established in 1990.
  And let there be no mistake. Compliance, for better or worse, has 
been costly. It has been costly to small businesses, businesses that 
operate on thin profit margins in the best of circumstances. It has 
been costly to major industries that have spent hundreds of millions of 
dollars retooling their plants and factories to comply with that law. 
It has been costly to State and local governments that have had to 
divert scarce dollars to mandated planning and enforcement duties. And 
most of all, it has been expensive for the citizens who lose jobs when 
industries relocate overseas or to other areas of the country that are 
already in compliance. This costly compliance has resulted in the 
higher taxes levied to compensate for a smaller tax base. And citizens 
notice higher costs for goods and services.
  I do recognize that the EPA excludes economic concerns from the 
formulation of their air quality standards. The 1990 amendments to the 
Clean Air Act require that oversight. The air quality standards 
established in 1990 have been beneficial to our Nation's environment 
and, by extension, our public health. Of course, the more radical 
environmentalists point to the absence of an economic apocalypse over 
the past 7 years as proof that no environmental standard is too strict 
and nothing is impossible. You and I know that nothing is impossible. 
But arm in arm with successes has come a dangerous corollary. It is 
also easy to believe that nothing is too outrageous.
  In the name of species protection, logging in the Pacific Northwest 
has all but disappeared. Years of careful forest management had 
rendered these the most productive forest lands in the world. They are 
so productive that for every 100,000 acres of Pacific Northwest forest 
land taken out of production, we force a half-million acres of Siberian 
wilderness to be cut down to fill the void. Environmentalists may have 
saved a few spotted owls, but in the process they have probably signed 
the death warrant of the Siberian tiger. It is ridiculous to trade jobs 
for dubious environmental gain. It is ridiculous to think that we are 
saving the world by importing our natural resources. This is what 
Senator Hatfield used to refer to as ``environmental imperialism''--
imperialism inflicted on nations too desperate to ignore our resource 
markets yet too poor to enforce their own environmental standards.
  Can the word ``ridiculous'' apply to the proposed standards 
themselves? The current standard for particulate matter limits 
particles to 10 microns or larger. The proposed standard would change 
that to particles larger than 2.5 microns. For comparison, a human hair 
is about 28 microns in width. For ozone, the current standard of .12 
parts per million averaged over 1 hour would be replaced by a new 
standard of .08 parts per million averaged over 8 hours. In light of 
the fact that there are many cities across the Nation that have yet to 
satisfy the current standard and the fact that no one yet has justified 
these new standards, I think it is safe to say that the proposed 
standards fail the credibility test. The Congressional Research Service 
has stated that ``The new standards would substantially increase the 
number of areas not attaining the Clean Air Act's air quality standards 
and magnify the difficulties faced by present nonattainment areas in 
reaching attainment.'' And the hardship to be imposed is without 
reasonable evidence of any additional benefit.
  Billions--billions--of dollars were sent by cities and industry 10 
years ago to comply with the current standards. Yet, now the EPA 
intends to require billions more to comply with the new standards. The 
capital invested in current compliance has yet to be paid off, in many 
instances. Areas that are not yet in compliance with the current 
standards will have to strengthen their restrictions by several orders 
of magnitude. The possibility of mandatory car pooling and bans on 
backyard barbecues and lawn mowing are ridiculous, but probably will be 
the result.
  I can assure you they will not go over well in my State. Wyoming is 
populated with people gifted with a basic common sense. They are 
aggressively independent and free thinking. I can only imagine the head 
scratching that will ensue when they see county tanker trucks watering 
the dirt roads around there. After all, Wyoming has miles and miles of 
miles and miles, and many of those roads are gravel.
  Anyone familiar with the average Wyoming winter understands the axiom 
that sand is safety, yet sand applied to ice-bound roads results in a 
dust level, and that dust level already violates the proposed standards 
in many communities. The current clean air standards are already 
causing wrecks and injury to people.
  From an economic perspective, these standards will visit tremendous 
hardships upon my State and upon every State that depends on land-use 
industries. Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the Nation. Clean, 
low-sulfur coal, I might add. But mining does create some dust. Not 
really dust, it is smaller than that. That is why we are talking about 
the size of these particulates. I wish each of you would have an 
opportunity to visit a mine in Wyoming. Many of you would see a very 
clean industry. But now the particulates have to be even finer. And oil 
refining creates gases.
  The Nation simply cannot have job-producing factories or heat in 
their homes without those byproducts. We are led to believe these 
standards would eliminate billowing clouds of pollution, but the 
current laws already do that. These proposed standards would place 
enormous burdens on our mining and refining industries and would simply 
spell the end of many western refineries.
  The Environmental Protection Agency and its handmaiden, the 
environmental movement, are engaging in a form of execution attributed 
to the ancient Chinese. It is known as death by 10,000 slices, and its 
current victim is the American economy. Each swipe of the knife results 
in wounds that are individually minor but cumulatively disastrous. With 
every burdensome standard, the blade flashes and another small business 
goes under. With every new expensive regulation, a new slice drips red 
and another plant or factory moves overseas. With every additional 
surtax, the knife whistles by, and the American family has less money 
to place back into the economy.
  Mr. President, we must restore a semblance of balance and reason to 
our environmental laws. We must introduce cost-benefit analysis and 
risk assessment into the environmental equation. We must evaluate 
science above politics. We must honor the work of the last Congress in 
restricting unfunded Federal mandates. We must stop moving the 
goalposts on cities, towns, States, and businesses that are already 
working hard to comply. We must give business and industry incentives 
to work toward our spiraling environmental goals. It is a small planet. 
It is where you and I live. We can't keep shifting environmental 
problems to poorer countries who can't afford the level of clean air we 
enjoy. We must recognize that the worst thing in the world for the 
environment is not responsible logging or ranching or mining, but 
poverty.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 
minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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