Volume 143, No. 10 covering the 1st Session of the 105th Congress (1997 - 1998) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“EPA PROPOSED NEW AIR QUALITY STANDARDS” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S838 on Jan. 30, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EPA PROPOSED NEW AIR QUALITY STANDARDS
Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to express my deep concerns with the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed changes to air quality standards. The EPA kicked off the last Thanksgiving weekend by announcing its intention to move their air quality goalposts yet again. It seems they change the rules more frequently than the NFL and the NBA put together. I doubt there were many State or local governments that spent Thanksgiving giving thanks for that announcement. I was the mayor of Gillette, a coal producing town on the plains of Wyoming. I know firsthand how hard many of our Nation's cities and States have been working. They have been expending a huge amount of effort and dollars just to get into compliance with the standards established in 1990.
And let there be no mistake. Compliance, for better or worse, has been costly. It has been costly to small businesses, businesses that operate on thin profit margins in the best of circumstances. It has been costly to major industries that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars retooling their plants and factories to comply with that law. It has been costly to State and local governments that have had to divert scarce dollars to mandated planning and enforcement duties. And most of all, it has been expensive for the citizens who lose jobs when industries relocate overseas or to other areas of the country that are already in compliance. This costly compliance has resulted in the higher taxes levied to compensate for a smaller tax base. And citizens notice higher costs for goods and services.
I do recognize that the EPA excludes economic concerns from the formulation of their air quality standards. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act require that oversight. The air quality standards established in 1990 have been beneficial to our Nation's environment and, by extension, our public health. Of course, the more radical environmentalists point to the absence of an economic apocalypse over the past 7 years as proof that no environmental standard is too strict and nothing is impossible. You and I know that nothing is impossible. But arm in arm with successes has come a dangerous corollary. It is also easy to believe that nothing is too outrageous.
In the name of species protection, logging in the Pacific Northwest has all but disappeared. Years of careful forest management had rendered these the most productive forest lands in the world. They are so productive that for every 100,000 acres of Pacific Northwest forest land taken out of production, we force a half-million acres of Siberian wilderness to be cut down to fill the void. Environmentalists may have saved a few spotted owls, but in the process they have probably signed the death warrant of the Siberian tiger. It is ridiculous to trade jobs for dubious environmental gain. It is ridiculous to think that we are saving the world by importing our natural resources. This is what Senator Hatfield used to refer to as ``environmental imperialism''--
imperialism inflicted on nations too desperate to ignore our resource markets yet too poor to enforce their own environmental standards.
Can the word ``ridiculous'' apply to the proposed standards themselves? The current standard for particulate matter limits particles to 10 microns or larger. The proposed standard would change that to particles larger than 2.5 microns. For comparison, a human hair is about 28 microns in width. For ozone, the current standard of .12 parts per million averaged over 1 hour would be replaced by a new standard of .08 parts per million averaged over 8 hours. In light of the fact that there are many cities across the Nation that have yet to satisfy the current standard and the fact that no one yet has justified these new standards, I think it is safe to say that the proposed standards fail the credibility test. The Congressional Research Service has stated that ``The new standards would substantially increase the number of areas not attaining the Clean Air Act's air quality standards and magnify the difficulties faced by present nonattainment areas in reaching attainment.'' And the hardship to be imposed is without reasonable evidence of any additional benefit.
Billions--billions--of dollars were sent by cities and industry 10 years ago to comply with the current standards. Yet, now the EPA intends to require billions more to comply with the new standards. The capital invested in current compliance has yet to be paid off, in many instances. Areas that are not yet in compliance with the current standards will have to strengthen their restrictions by several orders of magnitude. The possibility of mandatory car pooling and bans on backyard barbecues and lawn mowing are ridiculous, but probably will be the result.
I can assure you they will not go over well in my State. Wyoming is populated with people gifted with a basic common sense. They are aggressively independent and free thinking. I can only imagine the head scratching that will ensue when they see county tanker trucks watering the dirt roads around there. After all, Wyoming has miles and miles of miles and miles, and many of those roads are gravel.
Anyone familiar with the average Wyoming winter understands the axiom that sand is safety, yet sand applied to ice-bound roads results in a dust level, and that dust level already violates the proposed standards in many communities. The current clean air standards are already causing wrecks and injury to people.
From an economic perspective, these standards will visit tremendous hardships upon my State and upon every State that depends on land-use industries. Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the Nation. Clean, low-sulfur coal, I might add. But mining does create some dust. Not really dust, it is smaller than that. That is why we are talking about the size of these particulates. I wish each of you would have an opportunity to visit a mine in Wyoming. Many of you would see a very clean industry. But now the particulates have to be even finer. And oil refining creates gases.
The Nation simply cannot have job-producing factories or heat in their homes without those byproducts. We are led to believe these standards would eliminate billowing clouds of pollution, but the current laws already do that. These proposed standards would place enormous burdens on our mining and refining industries and would simply spell the end of many western refineries.
The Environmental Protection Agency and its handmaiden, the environmental movement, are engaging in a form of execution attributed to the ancient Chinese. It is known as death by 10,000 slices, and its current victim is the American economy. Each swipe of the knife results in wounds that are individually minor but cumulatively disastrous. With every burdensome standard, the blade flashes and another small business goes under. With every new expensive regulation, a new slice drips red and another plant or factory moves overseas. With every additional surtax, the knife whistles by, and the American family has less money to place back into the economy.
Mr. President, we must restore a semblance of balance and reason to our environmental laws. We must introduce cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment into the environmental equation. We must evaluate science above politics. We must honor the work of the last Congress in restricting unfunded Federal mandates. We must stop moving the goalposts on cities, towns, States, and businesses that are already working hard to comply. We must give business and industry incentives to work toward our spiraling environmental goals. It is a small planet. It is where you and I live. We can't keep shifting environmental problems to poorer countries who can't afford the level of clean air we enjoy. We must recognize that the worst thing in the world for the environment is not responsible logging or ranching or mining, but poverty.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). Without objection, it is so ordered.
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