Adviser Sees Hopeful Signs From Washington : Bush Urged to Seek Extension of Clean Air Deadlines

President-elect George Bush must promptly urge Congress to set new deadlines for achieving clean air, giving areas such as Los Angeles more time to comply with standards that are now impossible to meet, a former top Environmental Protection Agency official said Tuesday.

William Ruckelshaus, an adviser to Bush on the environment, said Tuesday’s election of a new Senate majority leader who favors action to control acid rain is a positive step. It signifies hope, he said, for a break in the legislative “gridlock” that has triggered threats of severe measures to reduce air pollution in the South Coast Air Basin.

Taking the Initiative

Rather than reacting to proposals generated by Congress, as has been the case in the Reagan Administration, Bush should present his own Clean Air Act revisions, said Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA under the Nixon and Ford administrations.

“I just talked to (Bush) last week and he is determined to deliver on environmental issues,” Ruckelshaus said.

Bush will move quickly to convene a global summit on environmental issues--a campaign pledge he made that was later endorsed by several world leaders, Ruckelshaus predicted.

Ruckelshaus spent two days meeting with Los Angeles city and county officials, lobbying for continued operation and eventual expansion of a Granada Hills area landfill owned by Browning Ferris Industries, the waste management firm that named Ruckelshaus as chief operating officer last month. The Sunshine Canyon landfill has been opposed by a group of residents who seek to force its closure.

Topic for Discussion

But at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon Tuesday, air pollution was the dominant topic. Ruckelshaus met a barrage of questions on the EPA’s threat this week to close industries and ban gasoline-powered vehicles from streets in five years. Congress failed to extend Clean Air Act deadlines in its last session, and the EPA has been ordered by a federal judge to come up with a clean air plan for the Los Angeles area.

To break the political deadlock, Bush may need to “take his case directly to the American people in support of (pollution) controls,” Ruckelshaus said.

In terms of air quality, the South Coast Air Basin--made up of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--is by far the most polluted in the United States. Despite controls on industrial polluters, a change to unleaded gasoline, vehicle emission standards and other measures, air quality fails to meet federal health standards for four of six major pollutants.

Ruckelshaus called it “your 15th annual squabble over air quality in the Los Angeles basin,” recalling how in 1973, as EPA administrator, he made similar threats in order to meet deadlines imposed and then later delayed by Congress.

Today, targets of 20 to 25 years for meeting air standards would be reasonable, Ruckelshaus said. He said Los Angeles mirrors the global problem of “maintaining economic growth and at the same time sustaining environmental quality.”

Acid Rain Issue

Revisions of federal deadlines have been hung up mainly by disagreement over acid rain, Ruckelshaus said. Tuesday’s election as Senate majority leader of Sen. George Mitchell (D-Me.), who favors strong controls, should help break the impasse, he said.

Ruckelshaus said he does not know whom Bush will select for two key posts--the EPA administrator and Interior secretary--but said he was not interested in another term at EPA. He said that running the agency is similar to “a self-inflicted Heimlich maneuver.”

He also joked about his two terms in the EPA. “If you leave after serving in a Republican administration before you’ve been indicted, everybody tells you what a good job you did.”