Note that the Schaeffer's resignation letter is posted at:
http://www.mapcruzin.com/news/rtk022802a.htm

Published on Thursday, February 28, 2002 by MSNBC

EPA Official Quits, Rips White House
Regulatory Chief Cites Push ‘To Weaken the Rules’
by Miguel Llanos

The head of regulatory enforcement at the Environmental Protection
Agency has stepped down, MSNBC.com has learned, claiming in
a resignation letter that the EPA is “fighting a White House that
seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce.”
An EPA spokesman denied the allegations, saying the Bush
administration was committed to enforcing the nation’s
environmental laws. IN HIS RESIGNATION letter, Eric Schaeffer
complained specifically about what he saw as attempts to weaken
Clean Air Act regulations on coal-fired power plants.

“It is hard to know which is worse,” he wrote of a review of a key
Clean Air Act provision, “the endless delay or the repeated leaks
by energy industry lobbyists of draft rule changes that would
undermine lawsuits already filed” against power plants.

Those lawsuits were filed during the Clinton administration, but a
review ordered at the start of the Bush administration has left the
status of such actions unclear.

“At their heart, these proposals would turn narrow exemptions into
larger loopholes that would allow old ‘grandfathered’ plants to be
continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase) without modern
pollution controls,” Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer told MSNBC.com that he started at the EPA 12 years
ago, hired by the first Bush administration. Then EPA chief Bill
Reilly was “great on enforcement,” he said, and that administration
actually closed loopholes in the Clean Air Act.

“It’s very ironic,” he said, that President Bush should be seen as
weakening an environmental law tightened by his father. “His dad
should talk to him.”

Schaeffer, who resigned as director of the Office of Regulatory
Enforcement Wednesday night, said he wouldn’t be surprised if
other EPA officials eventually follow him. “There’s a lot of frustration
in enforcement,” he said.

BUDGET CUTS CITED

Schaeffer also wrote that “our negotiating position is weakened
further by the administration’s budget proposal to cut the civil
enforcement program by more than 200 staff positions below the
2001 level. Already, we are unable to fill key staff positions, not
only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs, and the
proposed budget cuts would leave us desperately short of the
resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated corporate
defendants we face.”

Clean air activists said the letter as proof that the Bush
administration is saying it wants cleaner air while cutting deals with
the industry to ease up on pollution controls.

“This letter really strips away the veil and gives the lie to the Bush
administration’s claim that it’s working to clean up the air,” said
Frank O’Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and a critic of Bush’s environmental
policies, called the resignation “a wake-up call telling us that the
Bush administration is quietly eliminating clean air protections by
refusing to enforce the law against its utility industry allies.”

WHITMAN IN THE MIDDLE

The letter, written to EPA chief Christie Whitman, concluded, “I
believe you share the concerns I have expressed.”

Schaeffer told MSNBC.com that Whitman has been “doing some
pushing back” against pressure from the White House and the
Energy Department, which is pushing for greater energy
production. “How far she’ll get and whether she’ll win I don’t know,”
he said.

Whitman, when she was New Jersey’s governor, was a vocal
supporter of lawsuits against power plants whose pollutants were
ending up in other states like New Jersey.

As EPA chief, she has said the lawsuits that were settled will be
honored but has been less clear about the possibility of future
lawsuits.

Whitman praised a “Clear Skies” initiative announced earlier this
month by President Bush as “the most aggressive initiative to cut
air pollution in a generation.”

Environmentalists disagreed, saying that abiding by the Clean Air
Act would cut pollution more than the new initiative.

Democrats in the Senate have raised similar concerns and are
likely to block passage of the proposal.

EPA RESPONDS

Whitman’s spokesman, Joe Martyak, countered Schaeffer’s
criticisms by saying the Clear Skies initiative represented the best
approach to reducing power plant pollution.

He also denied the allegations of tension and an administration
divided over policy.

“I don’t characterize it as tension,” he said. “You have different
agencies with different missions” and the Energy Department, for
example, focuses on improving energy supplies.

That interagency dialog, he added, “comes up with the best policy
overall.”

“Is there tension?” he asked. “I’d say there are difficult situations
but it’s not an issue of conflict, but working through” the issues.

Martyak also said the EPA remains committed to enforcing
environmental laws, and that the measure of success should not
be in the number of EPA staff jobs but in results. Those include the
fact that the dollar amount spent by violators on cleanups has
doubled, he said.


+++++++++++++++++++++
Michael R. Meuser,
[log in to unmask]

http://www.mapcruzin.com/
Environmental & Social Cartography, WebMaps
Environmental Justice, Right-to-Know Advocacy

Maps, Data CDs, and Free Mapping Tutorial
http://www.mapcruzin.com/