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Ozone Rules Weakened at Bush's Behest
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The EPA set the allowable amount of ozone in the air at 75 parts per billion, a level stricter than the current limit but higher than what the scientific advisers had recommended.
Carol M. Browner, who served as EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton, also encountered objections from the OMB when she established new ozone standards in 1997. In that instance, the president backed the EPA over White House budget officials.
"We did not allow OMB to push us into a decision we were quite certain was outside the boundaries of the law," Browner said in an interview. The Clean Air Act, she added, creates "a moral and ethical commitment that we're going to let the science tell us what to do."
Asked for a comment yesterday, EPA spokesman Timothy Lyons said the agency had complied with the Clean Air Act. "The secondary standard we set is fully supported by both the law and the record, and it is the most protective eight-hour standard ever for ozone."
When asked about Clement's role, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The White House sought legal advice from the Justice Department and made its decision based on that advice."
The EPA's documents suggest that senior officials and scientific advisers resisted the White House's position. Last year, the agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee wrote -- using italics for emphasis -- that it unanimously supported the EPA staff's conclusion that "protection of managed agricultural crops and natural terrestrial ecosystems requires a secondary [ozone standard] that is substantially different from the primary ozone standard. . . ."
When the OMB's Susan E. Dudley urged the EPA to consider the effects of cutting ozone further on "economic values and on personal comfort and well-being," the EPA's Marcus Peacock responded in a March 7 memo: "EPA is not aware of any information that ozone has beneficial effects on economic values or on personal comfort and well being."
Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in the Clean Air Act, said Dudley's letter to the EPA represents "a misunderstanding of the statute, a misunderstanding of Supreme Court precedent and a misunderstanding of the science as the expert agency understands it."
