Air pollution bill faces key
vote
Jeff Nesmith - Cox Washington Bureau
Washington --- President Bush's
plan for sweeping changes in the Clean Air Act is set to go before a deadlocked
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today, with nine members for it
and nine against.
A tie vote would kill the bill, known as the Clear Skies Act
of 2005.
The measure's two sponsors, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.),
chairman of the committee, and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), were still
lobbying late Tuesday for the one additional vote necessary for approval.
Inhofe says the Clear Skies plan, proposed by Bush in
February 2002, is the most aggressive air pollution control measure that any
president has ever asked Congress to pass.
But opponents say the air would be cleaned more quickly under
existing air pollution controls.
All seven Democrats on the committee have announced their
opposition to the bill, along with independent James Jeffords of Vermont and
Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
Inhofe, Voinovich and the remaining seven Republicans,
including freshman member Johnny Isakson of Georgia, are on record in favor of
recommending the bill for passage by the full Senate.
Without the committee's approval, it would take difficult
parliamentary maneuvering to bring the measure before the full Senate, and
members of the staffs of Jeffords and several Democrats appeared confident
Tuesday that the bill was dead.
The measure would repeal existing Clean Air Act provisions that
require owners of power plants to install the best available equipment for
removing mercury and nitrogen oxides from power plant smoke.
In their place, it would install "cap-and-trade"
systems in which operators of coal-burning power plants that meet pollution
standards would earn allowances they could sell to those that do not.
Proponents, including Bush, say such systems are more
efficient and remove more pollution faster than existing control requirements.
A 1990 cap-and-trade law for sulfur dioxide, which is
generally regarded as successful, would be broadened and extended.
The bill also contains a "transitional" provision
that would give states and metropolitan areas now under federal mandate to
reduce ozone pollution until 2018 to come into conformity with federal
standards.
Jeffords has authored his own Clean Air Act amendment, which
would set more stringent limits for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury
and create a regulatory regime for carbon dioxide, believed by most scientists
to be the major cause of global warming. A third bill was introduced by Chafee
and Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.)
Jeffords and the seven Democrats last week appealed to Inhofe
to "work with all of us to develop multipollutant legislation that will
improve our nation's air quality faster than current law."
But Inhofe says that over the past three years, the
president's Clear Skies plan "has been debated and re-debated and was the
subject of over 20 committee hearings."
And Voinovich, chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction
over Clean Air Act legislation, has said Congress must act early this year if
it is going to pass changes in the law.
Voinovich warned at a subcommittee hearing last month that
the existing law is forcing electric utilities to switch from coal to natural
gas.
That drives up the price of gas and forces jobs and air pollution to other countries, he said.