[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3916-H3921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 THE CLEAN AIR ACT AND THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS HAVE BEEN A GREAT 
                                SUCCESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, as with the previous gentleman speaking, when 
the Government takes action or the Government takes inaction, it has an 
impact on all of our lives. Sometimes that impact that the Government 
has on our lives can be positive, and other times it can be negative.
  I would agree with many Republicans and Democrats, with many liberals 
and conservatives, with many in industry and in labor and in the 
environmental movement that one of the positive things that the 
government has done is to provide us with clean air. The Clean Air Act 
and Clean Air Act amendments have been a great success.
  Coming from my region of western Pennsylvania where we had 
unbelievably dirty air because of the heavy industry and the steel 
mills, and you go back 30, 40, 50 years ago, our region was once 
described as hell with the lid off. In midday the sun would be 
blackened out by the soot that would be coming out of smokestacks that 
would not allow the sunshine to get down to the people on the earth, 
and people had tremendous problems breathing. In Donora, PA, people 
were actually dropping dead in the street many decades ago as they were 
the victims of a temperature inversion and all of the poisons that were 
spewed into the air.

  We have gotten beyond that, and in fact, I would invite, Mr. Speaker, 
you or any of my colleagues to come to Pittsburgh, PA, today. It is a 
beautiful city, it is a clean city. The air is clean, the water is 
clean, and in all of our three rivers, which we are so famous for, you 
can now catch fish. But where there were once mill sites there is now 
level land. Where there were once tens of thousands of manufacturing 
jobs, there is now in many instances desperation and poverty. We are 
coming back in many areas; many areas, we are still going down.
  That is why I am here today, because I fear that my Federal 
Government, that Federal Government that I am a part of as an elected 
Representative of Congress, is about to make a very severe error. I am 
afraid that we are about to reverse what has been a steady increase 
toward cleaner air, and in what is a veiled attempt, I think, to try to 
tighten clean air regulations, my fear is that the EPA and anyone else 
who goes along with them will, in fact, allow the air to remain dirty 
longer.
  You see, we have definitive dates in place now whereby that soot; it 
is called particulate matter in scientific language, but all of that 
smoke stack soot that is going through the air, we are supposed to be 
reaching certain goals, and have that air cleaned, and we have been 
doing that. And that ozone, which is technical talk for smog, we have 
areas including here in Washington, DC, and Baltimore, specific periods 
in time at which we are to reach the goals and specific goals have been 
set.
  Well, here comes a lawsuit by the American Lung Association, and they 
are rightfully, I think, pointed out to the EPA that since we last took 
a look at particulate matter or smog back in 1987, many more than 5 
years has passed, and according to the statute every 5 years the EPA is 
supposed to take a look at these issues.
  And so it was that they went to court and they said to EPA you have 
to go back and you have to reexamine what you are doing with 
particulate matter. It does not mean they have to tighten the 
standards, it does not mean that they have to change the standards. It 
simply means they have to go back and review those standards.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, they have, and they formed a scientific advisory 
group that has made some recommendations, and we, in the Committee on 
Commerce, two of our subcommittees, the oversight and investigation 
subcommittee of which I am the ranking Democrat and the health and 
environment subcommittee, held a series of hearings, and we heard from 
some of the scientists, and we heard from other interested people, and 
we heard from Carol Browner, the administrator of EPA. Over an 8-hour 
hearing we heard from Miss Browner. My concern is that it appears EPA 
is moving forward not to just review particulate matter, as they have 
been told to do, but they have also coupled this with changing the 
ozone standards. They were not supposed to do that. They were not told 
to do that. So when dealing with soot, with that particulate matter 
that we ingest into our lungs which could cause physical problems, that 
is complex enough. Why are we deciding to tackle two very difficult 
issues at the same time?
  Well, I would say, Mr. Speaker, that after all of the hearings that 
we have had and after all of the questions that have been asked we 
still do not know. We have never gotten a straight answer. My fear is 
it is because that EPA understands that while there may be a stronger 
case for dealing with that soot that is in the air, there is a much 
weaker case for dealing with ozone. So they couple the two. They can 
head in the direction that they feel we need to head.
  But what would be the ramifications of that? You might say, well, if 
we tighten the standards, we are all going to breathe healthier air. 
But the fact of the matter is that simply is not true, and that is why 
I have taken to the floor today. That is why many of my colleagues on 
both the Republican side and the Democratic side have been talking 
about this issue. That is why mayors and Governors and State 
legislators and local government officials and labor unions have begun 
to talk about this, because we fear that by changing the finish line in 
the middle of the race the race will never be finished. No matter what 
happens, and Carol Browner, the Administrator of the EPA, told us in 
the hearings, she has told others, environmentalists agree, I agree, my 
Republican colleagues agree that if we do nothing, we are still going 
to continue to clean the air. The air will get cleaner. We all want 
cleaner air.

[[Page H3917]]

  But when we tighten those standards, the States that have not 
implemented their air cleaning plans are going to stop and say wait a 
minute, you cannot give us a different target. That target that we were 
working toward right now has been moved.
  And so now Federal Government, we have to go back to our industries. 
We in the States who must reach attainment for our air quality have to 
go back to our industries, we have to go back to our local government 
leaders, and we have to figure out how do we get back into attainment 
for a new standard while we were just beginning to clean the air and 
make it healthier for children, for elderly, for all of our citizens.
  This will cause confusion among industries, industries that have 
spent tens upon tens of millions of dollars to install scrubbers to 
install the latest technology so that they have cleaned that air in 
Pittsburgh, and in Detroit, and in Cleveland, OH, and in New York City, 
and in Philadelphia, PA, and in my area in Beaver County, and 
Westmoreland County, in Lawrence County, PA. They have spent all of 
that money to clean the air, we have seen the dramatic results, and now 
the EPA is about ready to say, no; we had you driving toward the wrong 
standard. It is time that we tighten that standard.
  Well, needless to say many of these industries are going to certainly 
say we are finished investing. Until we know what the rules of the game 
are, until the Federal Government can ensure us that we are working 
toward something that we know is going to be good science, that we know 
is going to be a final destination where we will in fact, have 
agreement, we are not going to do anything. And I have had industries 
that have told me they are not going to expand any more. I have had 
other industries that said we are not going to move into western 
Pennsylvania because we are afraid to make that investment.
  Mr. Speaker, why in the world are we going to spend tens of millions 
of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars building a manufacturing 
facility and then have the Federal Government say the rules have 
changed? With NAFTA we can now build that facility in Mexico, and we 
can ship all those products right into the United States, have access 
to the market with no tariffs, or we can build that facility in Canada, 
and we do not have to deal with a Jekyll and Hyde EPA that changes 
their mind as to what the specific rules of the game are going to be.

                              {time}  1700

  This is important to me, because as we cleaned the air during the 
1960's and 1970's and 1980's, and I admit, we needed to clean the air, 
people were dying. We had people with severe respiratory problems. But 
as we cleaned the air there was a price to pay, not only for installing 
the scrubbers in the smokestacks, there was a price to pay for jobs.
  Take a look at the employment in areas like southwestern Pennsylvania 
prior to the Clean Air Act. Take a look at how many steel mills were 
operating, and as we spent money to clean up the air, that was money 
that we did not spend on capital improvements in those manufacturing 
facilities.
  Now, there are many people on the other side of this argument who 
will argue to me, oh, the EPA has done studies, and their studies have 
shown that in fact not a single job was lost due to clean air. Well, 
that is like me asking the fox if the rooster and the hen both died of 
natural causes. The fox is going to say, oh, yes, they both had heart 
attacks, and I ate them because, well, they just happened to be dead.
  We cannot trust the EPA in this matter. They have a bad credibility 
problem when it comes to southwestern Pennsylvania. Because you see, 
they leaned on the State of Pennsylvania just a few years ago to tell 
us that what we really needed to do to meet our clean air standards, 
and that is not the new standards that we feel they are going to 
propose, this is the old standards, the ones that we are moving toward, 
and they told us that in order to hit that, we had to have a 
centralized emissions testing program for our automobiles and our 
trucks.
  Well, the State of Pennsylvania, under Governor Casey, decided at 
that time to go out and sign a contract with a company from Arizona 
called EnviroTest. So we built 86, they were called E test systems 
where people in many counties across Pennsylvania, we have 67 counties, 
and many of our counties were going to have to go to the centralized 
testing facility. There were only a handful of them in each county, 
maybe one or two or at most four in each county, so it was going to 
create a problem. They could no longer go to their neighborhood 
mechanic who could buy a piece of equipment to test the automobiles; 
they had to go to a specialized central test.
  Now, if there was a line, people may have to sit in that line for 
hours. That means lost work, lost time, and obviously the people of 
Pennsylvania were not real thrilled about this. So we went to war with 
the EPA and they said, you really do not have to do this. The problem 
was, by the time they give us this ``whoops, you really do not have to 
do what the Federal Government was forcing you to do,'' we already had 
a contract signed with EnviroTest. We had built 86 E test systems.
  EnviroTest was planning on making as much as $100 million a year in 
profits out of Pennsylvania. So obviously, they were not going to take 
this lying down; they were going to file a suit against the State of 
Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania had done what they felt EPA was 
forcing them to do.
  In the meantime, we got a new governor, Tom Ridge, who was our 
colleague here in the House. Governor Ridge saw this as a real problem, 
and so he sat down with EnviroTest and said, we will reach an out-of-
court settlement with you. That out-of-court settlement was $145 
million because EPA gave us that big ``whoops.''
  Now, that is $145 million, Mr. Speaker, that we are not spending in 
Pennsylvania to build new highways. It is $145 million that we are not 
spending for Medicaid, or to educate our children, or for any of the 
many other things that the taxpayers that I represent in Pennsylvania 
would like us to spend that money for. It went to pay off an agreement 
that we had with an out-of-State firm to do centralized testing because 
we thought the Environmental Protection Agency was forcing us into that 
position.
  Not one penny of that $145 million, Mr. Speaker, cleaned up the air. 
The air did not get any cleaner at all. In fact, I would think the air 
got dirtier because all of the hot air that we heard from the Federal 
Government demanding that the State of Pennsylvania do this. Other 
States have been in a similar position.
  The question is, why in the world would we now, while we are cleaning 
the air, change the target? Why would we force industry that has made 
investments in cleaning the air, that is moving toward providing more 
employment, all of a sudden force them to step back and say, I am not 
sure I want to make an investment in an area like southwestern 
Pennsylvania.
  Mr. Speaker, in our region while we were cleaning up the air we lost 
155,000 manufacturing jobs. That is just one section of the State of 
Pennsylvania. Those are not my numbers, Mr. Speaker. Those numbers come 
from a white paper done by Carnegie-Mellon University who years later 
went back and took a look at the impact of the industrial downsizing in 
the Pittsburgh region.
  So when we had a chance several months ago to have a new automobile 
plant move into western Pennsylvania, we were excited. It was a 1,000-
acre site, 2,500 jobs, very good-paying jobs in auto manufacturing, but 
when the company took a look at the fact that Pennsylvania is located 
in something called the Northeast Ozone Transport Region, meaning that 
all of the smog from the West moves toward Pennsylvania and the States 
from Maine down through Pennsylvania to Northern Virginia are in this 
ozone transport region, and the rules are different for us because we 
are in that region, they said, well, we are not going to deal there.
  We are not going to build a facility there, because first of all, it 
would cost us a minimum of $3 million to buy pollution credits. So, Mr. 
Speaker, it is not just the fact that one cannot pollute, it is the 
fact that if one is wealthy enough and if one is prone to want to 
invest, one can actually buy pollution credits. So one can still 
pollute if one wants to, if one can find those credits.

[[Page H3918]]

  Now, here is what happens with the pollution credits. Generally a 
larger firm would have the money to purchase those credits from a 
smaller firm. The smaller firm then would go out and find some 
greenfield site located somewhere else, they would build their facility 
and they would begin polluting there. So we do need to take a look at 
what kind of particulate matter, what kind of soot, is causing adverse 
health affects. We have done many studies on smog, so I think that the 
science on smog is in.
  The problem with what they are doing on smog or ozone is that they 
want to go from .12 parts per million studied over a 1-hour period to 
.08 parts per million over an 8-hour period. Now, this group of 
scientists that was studying this, I do not want to get too complex, 
but I want to explain to people that this group of scientists said, 
look, you can do anything from .508 to .08 to .09. They chose the 
number in the middle. Here is the important point about that.
  Had they chosen the higher range the scientists recommended, 400 
additional counties across this Nation would not be in noncompliance.
  Now, what does that mean, 400 counties in noncompliance? That means 
if you are located in those counties, immediately when EPA files these 
new standards, you have to buy the most sophisticated technology for 
anything that you do. It means that your building permit process 
becomes much stricter and much tougher, and quite frankly, in those 
counties you are probably not going to see much industrial expansion 
and you are going to see almost no new construction, because why would 
an industry want to move into a county that is already in 
noncompliance? So there is a stigma that occurs with noncompliance.

  Now, in a rush to get Members on both sides of the aisle to not 
believe that this was the case, EPA Administrator Browner, we believe, 
has been making some assurances to Members of Congress and to officials 
at the State, county and local level, that they are really going to 
kind of look the other way as far as enforcement goes.
  Now, the fact of the matter is, whether they look the other way or 
not, the day those regulations are in the books, things change, because 
as Ms. Browner testified before our committee, it is up to the States 
and the local government to come into compliance with the standards set 
by the Federal Government. If they do not do it, then the Federal 
Government comes in and can then insist that they do it one way or 
another. If they have been out of compliance, they have not taken 
steps, the Federal Government would at that point step in.
  We understand one Member of Congress from northeastern Ohio was 
assured that an automobile manufacturing plant and an automobile 
casting plant in his district would not have to put on additional 
controls, even if those plants were located in counties that were found 
to be in noncompliance based on the new standards.
  My question to EPA is how do you do that? How do you say, these are 
the regulations, but a wink and a nod, you do not have to listen to 
them? And if that is the case, well, Ms. Browner is the administrator, 
what happens if she is no longer the administrator? Does EPA do 
something different? Is this an assurance only for this Member of 
Congress that is receiving that assurance?
  So the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell] and myself have written 
to Administrator Browner, and we have asked how they can make these 
assurances. We also would applaud what appears to be recognition by EPA 
that there are problems these proposals will create for industry and 
for local governments, and for State governments. So we also would like 
them to talk to us about how those problems are going to be dealt with.
  The assertions that the administrator seems to be making to these 
Members of Congress and to other elected officials have raised really 
three fundamental questions. Number one, who is receiving these 
assurances? Are only certain Members of Congress being told that their 
industries will get a bye on this, or will all of our districts get a 
bye on obeying these new regulations? And what were those assurances? 
Exactly, specifically, what are you assuring us that EPA will do or 
will not do?
  Number three, how much value would those assurances have, given the 
fact in the face of contradictory statutory provisions and the 
expansion of citizens' rights found in the Clean Air Act? Because any 
citizen has the ability, under the Clean Air Act, to bring a suit and 
say, you are not adhering to this act. So once the EPA said, forget 
about these standards that were working, forget about these standards 
that we were reaching, that the States were developing State 
implementation plans to achieve that were causing the air to get 
cleaner, forget about those, we now have new standards.
  The citizen says, wait a second, you are not doing what you should be 
doing in these areas. That citizen can bring a suit, and we need to 
know what impact a possible citizen suit would have. I do not think 
that the assurances that the administrator is giving is worth the 
breath with which they are uttered, and if they are written on paper, I 
would like to see the paper, and I do not think that they are worth the 
paper that they are being written on.
  I think, Mr. Speaker, you are aware and most of my colleagues are 
aware that title I of the Clean Air Act amendments sets out the steps 
that the EPA and the States have to take once we have a new ambient air 
quality standard that is established pursuant to section 107. The EPA 
is then to promulgate area designations based on the new standards, and 
they are supposed to do it directly from the act. The quote is, ``as 
expeditiously as practicable, but in no case later than two years from 
the date of promulgation of the new or revised national ambient air 
quality standards.''
  So how can they say to my friend from Ohio, or any other Member of 
Congress or to anyone else, do not worry about the new standards, you 
are all right, trust us. We are the Federal Government. We are here to 
help you.
  I also have questions. Within three years after the promulgation of 
the national air ambient standards, the States have to submit an 
implementation plan which has to include numerous planning and control 
requirements, as well as an enforceable schedule, the timetable that 
the sources within that region that is out of compliance that is going 
to comply, and we want to know, given all of this, how can we give 
assurances to anyone that these timetables will not be adhered to?
  Now, let me go from the general discussion for a moment just to talk 
about smog, or ozone, as it is known. Here in the Washington, D.C. 
area, and in Baltimore, I mentioned a little bit earlier that by 1999, 
I think it is, they have to reach their standards. Here is where this 
actually ends up, I believe, making the air dirtier longer. As soon as 
we have new standards going from the .12 for 1 hour to .08 for 8 hours, 
these regions can say, wait a minute, time out.

                              {time}  1715

  You have just changed the end zone. As a result of that, here is what 
I am going to do. I need my 10 or 12 years additional time to meet the 
new timetables. So they can stop all the things they are doing to 
implement clean air standards.
  If you have a child who is 8 or 9 years old who has asthma and you 
are concerned, and you say, boy, this is a good thing, we are only 2 
years, this is 1997, in 2 years in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area 
they are going to take action. They are going to have the air cleaned 
as regards to smog to this standard.
  All of a sudden, EPA comes in, changes the standard, and the local 
people and the State people and the District people say, wait a second, 
we want our 10 or 12 years. So now that child will be 20 years old, 
will in fact be in college and perhaps move out of the area or be 
employed before the new standard has to be reached. So you are not 
protecting that child, who is now 8 or 9 or 10 years old. We are 
putting it off for another decade or more.
  I do not believe we should be doing that. We have worked so hard to 
clean up the air. We have given up so much for the sake of clean air. 
To now change the final stopping place in the middle of the race, as we 
are so close to reaching those standards, does not make any sense.
  The other problem with this is that there is a problem with 
transport. We have this in Pennsylvania. Our friends

[[Page H3919]]

to the west of us, States like Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and 
Illinois and Minnesota and on and on, send us their dirty air. We in 
turn send our dirty air to Delaware and New York and New Jersey. It is 
called transport. It is a problem we all have.
  There is a group now that is called OTAG, a group which is a task 
force that is supposed to study this problem of transport of smog, how 
do we deal with it. They are, as we are speaking now, supposed to file 
their final report.
  These new regulations do not make it--there are no new tools to deal 
with the problem of the air that is transported into our regions. Yet, 
it is going to stop this OTAG process, their ability to issue final 
recommendations, which in fact could cause the air to get cleaner 
because we would deal with the transport of pollution from one State to 
another.
  There is a reluctance of States to take action against each other. As 
I mentioned, my State of Pennsylvania would be reluctant to seek action 
against States to our west because we do not want the States to our 
east to come after us, so there is kind of a Mexican standoff that is 
taking place. We are all looking forward to the day when we can sit 
down through this OTAG report and say, this is how we are going to deal 
with the transport problem.
  I am particularly interested because my district happens to be right 
on the border with West Virginia and Ohio. So a business could locate 
in those States and not have the same stringent ozone requirements they 
would have in my district, because we are in that area designated the 
northeast ozone regional transport region. So we are getting that dirty 
air in from our west, we have the Allegheny mountains that act as a 
backstop, and we are done.
  In fact, if we were to evacuate southwestern Pennsylvania, take out 
all of the industry, take all of the people out of their homes, take 
all of the vehicles out of southwestern Pennsylvania, shut it down, 
give it back to the birds and the wildlife, under the new proposed 
standards there would be several days a year that we would still be in 
excess of the standard allowed for smog.
  We cannot meet the new standard. It is impossible until we deal with 
the transport issue of that dirty air that our friends and neighbors to 
the west are sending us. I think that Pennsylvania is not the only 
region that is having this problem. There are many other areas across 
the country that are having a problem with transport.
  Let me just mention that I am not asking Members to believe me just 
because I happen to be a Member of Congress, or because I happen to sit 
in on some of these hearings. I think that the scientists and the 
scientific evidence would point out that what I am saying is correct.
  The CASAC group that gave the recommendations to EPA is chaired 
currently by Dr. Joe Mauderly. He has been the Chair this year and on 
into the future, we hope. When talking about the issue of the ozone or 
smog, he said: ``While I support the proposed change as logical from a 
scientific viewpoint, I would point out that it should also be 
considered that an equal or greater overall health benefit might be 
derived by using the Nation's resources to achieve compliance with the 
present standard in presently non-compliant regions, than by enforcing 
nationwide compliance with a more restrictive standard.''
  What is he saying? The same thing I have been saying for the last 
half an hour. That is, we are better to try to meet the current 
standard, a standard that is allowing us to clean up the air, a 
standard that local government has been working toward, State 
government has been working toward, industry has been investing money 
to work toward, rather than changing the target. If we use our 
resources in that manner, to bring the areas that are still out of 
compliance into compliance, we will have more healthier kids, we will 
have a healthier industry.
  He also says, and my friends out in the west, Mr. Speaker, I would 
hope would listen to this, this is Joe Mauderly, this is not the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Ron Klink], this is someone who has 
knowledge of these matters because he has studied it and looked at it, 
and he is designated as the chairman of this group that is supposed to 
be advising EPA.
  He says: ``I am concerned that New Mexico and other arid regions with 
alkaline soils, the substantial portion of soil-derived PM that can 
exist as PM2.5,'' and we call it soot but it also could be agricultural 
dust, so you understand, if you have alkaline type soils, that that 
loose soil blowing in the wind from agricultural activities could cause 
the new PM2.5, 2.5 microns, to be out there in the air.
  Now we have a problem. What is this? What we are talking about with 
particulate matter, or as I said, it is that soot, we refer to it in 
the northeast as coming out of an industrial site, but obviously it can 
come out of an airplane exhaust, it can come out of a power plant smoke 
stack. Particulate matters are the dusts and soils that are blowing in 
the air, so it can come from different things. What they are talking 
about doing is going from PM10, 10 microns, to PM2.5. It is smaller. 
They are saying it is smaller, so when it is ingested into the lungs it 
is more dangerous, harder to get out.
  The question is, is all 2.5 microns the same? Meaning if it is of a 
certain size, is there not a different toxicity to it? Are some things 
not more toxic than others? Are they more dense than others? How about 
when you use different kinds of particulate matter in conjunction with 
each other? We do not know all the answers to this, because in this 
whole Nation there are only 50 monitors that measure particulate matter 
in the 2.5 micron range. We do not have the data. We do not know.

  How long will it take to get the data? Mr. Speaker, it is going to 
take at least 2 years to manufacture and deploy enough particulate 
matter sensors so we can get that information. Then, according to the 
law, and we are here about the law, you have to monitor that data for 
at least 3 years. That is 2 years to manufacture and get them deployed, 
3 years to study, on a minimum.
  At the end of that, that is 5 years, it is time for the EPA to 
reanalyze particulate matter. So why are we going to spend billions of 
dollars going to a new, more stringent standard that industry will not 
be able to comply with, that State and local facilities and governments 
will not be able to comply with, only to know that by the time we 
actually have that data 5 years down the road there will be another 
lawsuit forcing EPA to look at it again?
  It does not make any sense, Mr. Speaker. It absolutely does not make 
any sense. We need to do the studies first. On this issue, Democrats 
and Republicans alike agree. We are willing in this House to fund the 
studies. It is better for us to spend tens of millions of dollars 
making sure that we are headed toward good science and a good health 
impact for our citizens, rather than spending billions of dollars, only 
to find out that again, EPA has gone ``whoops,'' 5 years from now, and 
told us that back in 1997 we made a bad decision.
  Remember, they did that in Pennsylvania with centralized emissions 
testing. Do not make the same mistake in all 50 States, shutting down 
industries, stopping industrial growth, cutting down on the number of 
jobs, meaning the number of people who have paychecks and the number of 
people who have medical benefits at their jobs. There is an adverse 
health effect to not moving forward and having industry grow in this 
country.
  Why am I here on the floor today? It is because when we had the loss 
of 155,000 manufacturing jobs, and I was at that time a journalist who 
was documenting it, I am not willing to stand here in the halls of 
Congress and watch the Federal Government make the same mistake that 
will cost people their jobs, cost them the quality of their lives, and 
then have the EPA and someone else years from now say, whoops, it was a 
mistake.
  Show me that it is good science. Justify to me and the rest of this 
Congress that this is a good decision. Make sure that we are headed in 
the right direction, and you cannot do it with only 50 monitors in this 
country. You cannot force every industry to go to a new standard when 
they are already cleaning up the air, when State implementation plans 
are still being implemented, and you are putting the air quality of 
this country at risk.
  About 40-some Members of Congress from our side of the aisle have 
tried for many weeks, Mr. Speaker, and I think many of our colleagues 
on the Republican side know this, we have tried to

[[Page H3920]]

sit down with the President. We want to talk to the administration 
about this before his EPA administrator makes what we think is going to 
be, we think she is going to do it, a bad decision to change the finish 
line in the middle of this race.
  We have sent a letter. We have not even received back a note that 
said, we got your mail, we are thinking about it. That is bothersome. I 
want the President to sit down with us. Let us try to figure out how we 
can resolve this. Let us figure out how we, and those of us in Congress 
on both sides of the aisle, we want clean air. We want it to be a good 
decision. We want it to be a decision that is based on science that we 
are all comfortable with.
  With the Clean Air Act, the Clean Air Act amendments, every major 
step that we have made toward cleaning up the environment, we have done 
it with a broad, bipartisan consensus. There is no broad, bipartisan 
consensus for implementing these new standards.
  There is no reason why the EPA is doing smog at the same time they 
are doing soot, or particulate matter and ozone, if you want to be 
scientific. There is no reason they are doing both of those things 
together. I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that other Members who may be 
watching me talk back in their offices would step forward and would 
help us to get the attention of the administration, to try to stop what 
I think really would be bad policy, bad policy for this country.
  Just in case the administration does not heed us, just in case we are 
too late, tomorrow, I would hope, we are prepared to introduce a piece 
of legislation, myself, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Boucher], the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton], so it is a bipartisan bill. We 
hope many of our colleagues will join us.
  The purpose of this bill is not to open the Clean Air Act. I want to 
make that straight to my friends. We think that is a Pandora's box. The 
Clean Air Act is working. We are happy with the progress we have made. 
That is why we are here. We like the progress. We like the progress we 
are still going to make.
  We agree with Carol Browning, no matter what happens, the air is 
going to get cleaner. We do not want to stop that. But we do want to 
put a 5-year moratorium on the establishment of these new standards. 
Let us continue with industry, with the labor unions, with the support 
of local government and State governments, to move toward bringing 
those areas that are still out of compliance into compliance. Let us 
deal with the issue of transport, of pollution across State lines.
  So we are going to ask for a 5-year moratorium on the establishment 
of new ozone and fine particulate matter standards under the Clean Air 
Act. We really think that this is the direction that we want to go. We 
believe that most of the programs under the Clean Air Act and the 
amendments of 1990 are continuing or have yet to be implemented. We 
want to see them implemented. We want to see the results.
  We believe that this country has made tremendous progress on reducing 
atmospheric levels of ozone and particulate matter since the passage of 
the amendments back in 1990. We think that that progress is going to 
continue.

                              {time}  1730

  And by changing the current national ambient air quality standards 
for ozone, which we just do not think makes a great deal of sense, we 
also think that really both the Environmental Protection Agency and 
this CASAC group, the scientists that I talked about, it stands for 
Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, both of them have recommended 
that additional research should be conducted to determine the 
additional health effects of these finer particles and that this should 
include taking a look at biological mechanisms, how bad and to what 
extent combining different kinds of particles has an adverse health 
effect.
  Here is the EPA and here are these scientists, this Clean Air 
Scientific Advisory Committee, all saying we need further research but 
we think we are going to go to the new standards anyway. It does not 
make any sense.
  So given that fact and the fact that there really is a lack of 
atmospheric data because we only have about 50 of these 2.5 monitors in 
this country, it makes sense to do the studies first. It makes sense to 
go out and measure across this Nation what kind of 2.5 particles do we 
have, at what level, at what density, what are the health impacts, and 
are we sure that if we clean them up to this level that there is going 
to be a health benefit from that.
  You say, why would you say that? Would there not be a health benefit? 
We do not know.
  Let me tell my colleagues what happened in London, England back in 
the 1950s, and it is happening in southwestern Pennsylvania and it is 
happening across this country now. In London back in 1950s, they had 
all this black soot in the air. They had problems with respiratory 
illnesses, bronchial infections. They cleaned the air up. The 
incidences of asthma increased. Why? They do not know. They still do 
not know.
  That has happened in southwestern Pennsylvania and it is happening 
across this country. There are all kind of ideas, but the whole point 
is, why, when we clean up the air, is asthma increasing, not only in 
the number of cases, the percentage of people that are getting it, but 
also the violent aspect of it is also getting worse. What is going on 
here?
  There are different ideas. We need time to find out what are the 
answers to those questions. Setting the new standard right now does not 
change anything except it stops the progress that we have been making. 
It stops the benefits that we have been seeing for quite some time.
  We have watched the air slowly, slowly getting better, getting more 
clean. I can remember, and I will make an admission, Mr. Speaker, back 
in my early days in the television business, I was a television weather 
forecaster and in the Pittsburgh region, as a matter of fact. And we 
had to, back in the 1970s, every day, along with the temperature and 
the barometric pressure, the direction the winds were going, tell the 
people what days they could go outside and exercise and when they could 
not and when you kept your children in and when you keep the elderly 
people in. And we had to tell them what aspect of the air was bad, if 
it was particulate matter, if it was ozone, if it was whatever.
  Still, when I get home, I watch my friends who are still doing the 
weather forecasting. They do not do that anymore. The air has gotten 
that much cleaner. But the other aspect of that is the air has gotten 
cleaner. As I drive into Pittsburgh on the parkway east, where once 
there was a giant steel mill, there is now a high tech center. We are 
happy to have those jobs, but the steel industry is not there anymore. 
When you go to the town of Aliquippa, where once there was a 7-mile-
long steel mill, there is now a big flat spot along the Ohio River. So 
we have paid not only with our tax dollars, we have paid with corporate 
investments. We have paid with jobs.
  Do not make us pay for something that we are unsure of what the 
benefit will be. Do not make us pay for something that may in fact be 
more detrimental to our health and at the same time cause this Nation's 
wealth to go into a downward spiral where companies will not be 
investing in these regions, where jobs will not be created in these 
regions. That is what I fear is going to happen.
  We have heard from governors across this Nation who are in favor of 
the wait and see position that I have espoused here today. We have 
heard from many State legislatures, both houses of representatives of 
the States and the senates. We have heard from local governments. I 
have a list here of many pages, I will not read through them, Mr. 
Speaker, but we have heard from industry. We have heard from labor 
unions that are in favor.
  I would say to my friends who work with the labor unions, the IBEW 
opposes these standards. The IUOE opposes these standards. The 
boilermakers union opposes these standards. The bakery, tobacco and 
confectionery union opposes these standards. The labor unions oppose 
these standards. United Mine Workers union opposes these standards. All 
of those have sent letters to the White House or to the EPA.
  Other internationals who oppose but have not yet written letters, we 
hope that they will, include the Teamsters, the Oil, Chemical and 
Atomic Energy Organization, carpenters, pipe fitters, we understand 
many other labor unions are getting on board.

[[Page H3921]]

  The only labor union that we know that is in favor of these 
standards, and I cannot figure out for the life of me, the steel 
workers. I met with the steel workers this week in an effort to try to 
understand this, because my local steel workers back in Pittsburgh are 
not for this. The regional directors, who have watched the steel 
industry move offshore, are not for this.
  The Washington lobbyists for the steel workers are for this. I do not 
know if someday they want to be Secretary of Labor under somebody's 
administration. I do not know that. It is only conjecture by a cynical 
television reporter who now is standing here in Congress. I do not know 
what the reason is.
  But the point of it is this, I have been almost all of my adult life 
a union member, still carry my AFL-CIO card. In acting on behalf of the 
working people of my region, which is what I was sent here to do, I 
cannot go along with these proposed new standards. They make no sense. 
It is bad news environmentally. It is bad news from a health 
perspective. It is bad news certainly from a wealth perspective from 
the continuing prosperity of this country moving forward.
  We have loved it during the past 5 years as we have watched the stock 
market go up and industrial investments going up. It is coming into our 
area; we are starting to see growth and development. I am afraid that 
the brakes are going to go on.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my friends in this Congress, I would ask that we 
have as many Members as can sign onto the bill that the gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Boucher], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton] and I 
will be dropping tomorrow, because we think there should be a 5-year 
moratorium on any action by the EPA.
  We think there should be a moratorium until these monitors can be put 
in place, the study can be done, the material from that study can be 
fully analyzed and that we will know 5 years from now what we are 
doing. What is the cost of doing that? We are going to have to fund 
each year the study. We are going to have to fund the building of those 
monitors. That will cost far less than what it will cost if the EPA 
implements these new standards and they are wrong.
  We are willing in a bipartisan fashion to fund that study. We have 
talked about it. We think it is the right thing to do. I would urge my 
friends to join me.

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