Tougher Pollution Rules Issued for Ships, Locomotives

The new rules apply to ships traveling on inland waterways and between U.S. ports, not to big oceangoing vessels. (By Jeff Chiu -- Associated Press)

Johnson said he was "unaware" that the office of the U.S. solicitor general had advised administration officials that the crafting of the regulations conflicted with the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court.

But White House spokesman Tony Fratto reiterated yesterday that administration officials did consult with the solicitor general's office over the language used to describe the decision. "We sought advice from the Justice Department, as you would expect us to do, in how to carry out our decision on that," Fratto said.

The EPA administrator also defended President Bush's decision, which Johnson carried out, to make the secondary ozone standard relating to wildlife, forests and farmland identical to the primary ozone standard for protecting human health. EPA documents show that Johnson had earlier accepted the scientific reasoning of both the EPA's staff and its outside advisers for measuring ozone on a cumulative, seasonal basis for the secondary standard; the regulation published on Wednesday quotes Johnson as agreeing that "a cumulative, seasonal standard is the most biologically relevant way to relate exposure to plant growth exposure."

But, in the end, Johnson opted not to go that route. Yesterday, he said that changing how regulators measured ozone's impact on plants made no difference in the regulation. "Regardless of the form, the stringency was there," he said.

But Rich Poirot, a member of the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee who helped craft the panel's recommendations for the secondary standard, said the final regulation did not take into account the fact that trees and plants, unlike humans, are exposed to ozone 24 hours a day.

"Sensitive vegetation responds to ozone at different levels and over different averaging times differently from how people respond to ozone," said Poirot, an air-quality planner at Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation. "It's important to have a different secondary standard. Otherwise, what's the point?"

Two congressional panels -- the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- announced yesterday that they are investigating how the EPA set the ozone rules and the president's role in altering the public-welfare standard.