Volume 143, No. 76 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.
“ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY RULES” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3559-H3564 on June 5, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY RULES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, my colleague in the chair, and to everyone else who is here, let me first of all apologize for making you stay late, but I have delayed my own departure this evening. I could be almost home with my family. I have delayed my own departure this evening by better than 3 hours, because I think what I have to talk about is very important.
And regardless of what my colleagues may think about my legislative voting record and regardless of what they think about anything else, I hope they realize that I am not one of the Members of the House who rises to speak every day; I am not up on every subject every day acting as though I am an authority on everything, but when I do know something, and when it is important to my district and when it is important to this Nation, I think I have a responsibility to speak up on it.
The matter I am going to talk about now is a matter that is of importance to everyone throughout this entire Nation. It is going to mean whether or not our economy expands, it is going to mean whether or not we have jobs or whether or not our industry moves offshore. That is what I believe. That is what many other people across this country believe. That is what many other Members in this Chamber believe.
We will get the answer to this question, I believe, by the middle of July. We do not have to wait very long. Probably, at most, about 6 weeks. Because the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of recommending new air quality standards, this at a time when we have been cleaning our air, the air quality. And, believe me, my district is around Pittsburgh, PA, once described as hell with the lid off. Back in the days when people had to sweep off their lawns because of the dust that came from the mills. Back in the days when if we hung our clothes out, they probably were dirtier when we took them off the line than when we washed them and hung them out. We had to shake off those clothes to get the dust off. People would go to work in the morning, and by the time they got to work they had black rings around their collars from the dust that would settle on their bodies.
We had tremendous problems with air quality. Towns like Donora, PA, saw people dropping dead in the street from the pollution. We know about air pollution.
A group called GASP, the Group Against Smog and Pollution, was born in Pittsburgh out of this fear for people's health. As a news reporter for 24 years, I covered our city as we were cleaning up the air. As a father of two young children, I want clean air. But I am convinced by the EPA making these standards more stringent, while we are cleaning our air, that in fact our air will remain dirtier longer, and there are scientists who agree with me on that.
We have already set the finish line in this race to clean our air. We have definitive goals that we want to reach. And once we begin this process, those goals are erased and we extend the time out 10 years, 12 years, in fact, we really do not know how long, until we will actually have to hit those very same goals or goals which may be a tiny bit more stringent.
So if we are concerned, for example, about the health of that asthmatic 8- or 9-year-old child on the playground, and we do not want that child to breathe dirty air, to have to gasp to get air in their lungs, then we should agree with what Carol Browner of the EPA is about to try to do, unless we want action now. Because what she wants to do will perhaps clean the air up, but it will do it when that 8- or 9-
year-old child is in college.
So instead of hitting ozone targets that say, for example, if we have a goal that we have to reach by 1999, well, we may not have to hit that goal until the year 2010. So we are going to wait 10 more years, 11 more years, 12 more years until we hit those goals.
There is not only the problem of making that asthmatic child wait longer for the air to be clean, there is the problem that we have with our economy. Industries across this Nation have spent tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars individually, billions of dollars untold since the 1990 clean air amendments to clean the air. And now, all of a sudden, we are saying, wait a minute, what we said to spend money on, the particulate matter, that is the soot that is in the air, the soot which rises up out of the smokestacks of this country, we are not measuring it in a small enough measure. Instead of 10 microns, we want to make it 2.5 microns.
Sounds very scientific, but what we are saying is we want to measure smaller particles, but we are not saying what those particles should be. And we do not have enough science because, understand, we only have 50 monitors in this whole Nation which can measure 2.5 microns of the soot, the particulate matter, that EPA now wants us to go to. Fifty monitors are not enough and do not supply enough data that we can be sure that we are going to take this course of action which will cost over a million jobs, I believe, and others agree with me, and will cost untold billions of dollars.
Let me tell my colleagues about my district a little bit and why I am probably a little more concerned, and other people who are from what we call Rust Belt regions, have the same concerns.
In southwestern Pennsylvania, as we cleaned up that air that I talked about a few moments ago, partly because we were cleaning that air up, partly because the companies were investing in those air pollution control devices instead of making capital improvements in the processes in which they were manufacturing the product, in other words dollars are going in to scrubbers in their smokestacks, where we needed that, we needed that to improve our health, but those dollars were not available to upgrade their manufacturing base, to buy new equipment, to invest in R&D and new technologies. And so many of our manufacturers fell behind.
{time} 2100
Over a 13-county area in southwestern Pennsylvania we lost in the 1970's and 1980's 155,000 manufacturing jobs. As I said earlier, I was a reporter back then. I stood outside many of those steel mills, many of those glass plants, car manufacturing plants, car part manufacturing plants, and watched as thousands upon thousands of workers walked out of the door for the last time.
Now, as we are trying to rebuild that economy, we had a chance, at least a shot, a few weeks ago to lure back an automobile manufacturing plant. They were looking to occupy a 1,000-acre site, provide 2,500 families in southwestern Pennsylvania with jobs. But when they took a look at Pennsylvania being part of the Northeast ozone transport region, when they took a look as what was going to happen or what was going to be proposed perhaps with these new air pollution regulations, they said, we are not going to move there, we are not going to provide that opportunity.
I am not making this story up. It was published in the Pittsburgh Business Times. The company said they would have had to purchase over
$3 million in pollution credits to locate in Pennsylvania. But if they went upwind, where much of our pollution comes from, to our sister States to the west, they would not have had to purchase those very expensive credits.
What the EPA is proposing to do in tightening the regulations does not do anything to improve those States like Pennsylvania, which are getting dirty air from other States. And we have counties across this Nation, we have cities across this Nation, if we vacated them completely, moved all the manufacturing out, took all the cars out, moved all the vehicle traffic out, moved all the people out, those regions at certain days of the year would still be out of compliance.
Much of this particulate matter is found in nature. What are we going to do about that particulate matter in the air, that dust that is found in nature? Let me tell my colleagues, I understand that the EPA has a pretty bad track record in my State of Pennsylvania. It is a real credibility problem. So when they say, trust us, we are going to improve air quality by tightening these regulations in the midst of the air getting cleaner, so they are going to tell us, first of all, stop doing what is working, stop doing what we told you to do before, do something new.
I am saying to them in Pennsylvania, your word is not very good. Because you see, you told us in Pennsylvania that we needed to go to a centralized emissions testing and then Gov. Robert Casey began to implement that system. He moved the necessary legislation. And we even had a contract with a company called Envirotest Systems. It was a company out of Arizona. They were hired to run this testing system. It was a 7-year contract that could have given this Envirotest Systems company profits of over $100 million a year.
Many of us knew that this was a bad idea. The people of Pennsylvania did not want it. We fought it. We gathered over 100,000 signatures on petitions and we opposed the testing system. As it turned out, EPA had misled Pennsylvania, we did not have to go to that centralized system.
This was not necessary for Pennsylvania to comply with the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. But by this point, we had the contract. By this point, we were stuck with 86 E-check centers built around the State's 67 counties. In late 1995, Envirotest threatened to sue Pennsylvania on that contract. They wanted more than $350 million for expenses and for loss of profits.
But then we had a new Governor, Tom Rich. His administration decided it was better to deal with them, to strike an agreement. So he reached a settlement calling for the State of Pennsylvania, the citizens of Pennsylvania, to pay $145 million to Envirotest. We settled it. Of that
$145 million, that big whoops by the EPA that they misled Pennsylvania, not one penny of that $145 million cleaned up one speck of air.
I believe that these EPA proposed revisions to the national ambient air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter are really going to be costly to us as a Nation. It will, in fact, keep the air dirtier longer, as I said. It will cost industry. It will cost jobs. We really have to take time to think about what we are doing.
First of all, there is a question as to why we are moving ozone standards, which is, in effect, smog, at the same time we are moving the particulate matter standard, which of course particulate matter, as I said, is soot. We have to do something in regard to particulate matter, but all we have to do is review it.
Why do we have to review it? Well, the American Lung Association filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency because every 5 years they are to review these standards. They had not done that since 1987. In 1992, 5 years later, they were to review these standards, but they had not. They do not have to tighten, they do not have to make it harder for Americans to clean up the air. All they have to do is stick with what is working still, stick with good science, stick with what is improving the health of this Nation. But they have decided, I think, that they are going to take another course of action.
We have a problem with the fact that they have put ozone in with us because there was no lawsuit involving ozone. But they have thrown ozone in. What is the reason that they have decided to include ozone with the particulate matter? We do not know exactly what that reason is.
We had Ms. Browner in front of the Committee on Commerce, two of our subcommittees, for over 8 years. I am still not sure why it is that she has decided to blend those two issues together. But for sure, they would not have to do anything regarding the smog issue or ozone until next year. But for some reason, we are moving these two very complex issues together. The present standard for ozone is 0.12 parts per million averaged over a 1-hour period. The Scientific Advisory Board said that they thought it would be better to reduce that to a range from 0.12 parts per million to somewhere between 0.07 and 0.09 and do it over an 8-hour period.
I have no problem with going to an 8-hour period. But also we heard from one scientist after another is that there is no bright line where there are health benefits derived by the public within this range. So they have chosen somewhere in the middle that have range 0.08, which will in fact throw 400 counties, distribute counties across this Nation out of compliance.
What happens when you are out of compliance? Well, businesses in your region, businesses in the noncompliance area will not expand. They are not going to invest more money, and certainly other companies like that automobile plant that I mentioned are not going to move into your region. So economically you are strangled, you are hung up, you are not going to grow, jobs will not occur. And when you do not have jobs, people do not have health benefits, cannot afford to go to the doctors and they derive bad health benefits from that, just as if they were breathing the dirty air.
Let me take time right now to recognize my dear friend from Michigan
[Mr. Dingell], the ranking member of the Committee on Commerce and the Dean of the House of Representatives. He has been here continuously longer than any other Member of the House. And I think, beyond a shadow of a doubt, everyone recognizes that he knows more about the Clean Air Act, the clean air, and the amendments and this issue than anyone else in the House of Representatives. It has been my pleasure to work with my colleague and to learn from him as we have moved through with this issue.
I recognize now the gentleman from Michigan, [Mr. John Dingell].
Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my dear friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink], who has provided such valuable leadership in addressing the important issue that he now raises in the House. I want to commend him for his distinguished and able service here on behalf of the people that he serves and on behalf of the people of the United States. I also want to thank my colleague for his kind remarks towards me
Mr. Speaker, the situation here is a serious one. It is interesting to note that we are making, according to Administrator Browner, significant progress in cleaning up the air and that that progress will continue for at least 5 years and that no change in the Clean Air Act is necessary to continue significant progress in terms of evading pollution. It is interesting that in the same appearance before the Committee on Commerce, in which she said those things, she had to admit that much of what are the supporting facts or science with regard to the changes that EPA proposes with regard to particulates and ozone, she does not know the answer and she does not have the science upon which she can base the judgments that she needs to.
Certain facts are very clear. The air is getting better, the air is getting cleaner. Significant progress will be made. One of the admissions made by Ms. Browner before the Committee on Energy and Commerce was that the changes she is suggesting will not significantly result in major improvement in air quality between now and the year 2002.
In addition to this, it is plain that the economic consequences of the rulemaking now proposed by EPA will be very, very significant in terms of jobs, opportunity for our people, and competitiveness. It is very plain that the jobs in industrialized America will move to unindustrialized areas and that new brownfields will be created and new greenfields will be torn up for industrial change.
It is also very plain that significant loss of economic opportunity and economic impetus for this country impends and that the consequences of these rules being adopted will be that the United States will see significant jobs lost to Mexico, Canada, and other places around the world as American industry moves out.
One might ask why that situation will obtain. The answer is very simple. What is going to transpire is that the rules suggested by EPA will create no less than 400 nonattainment areas in the United States and those areas, while getting cleaner, will be legislated into nonattainment by the rules that are being suggested by EPA.
The consequences of this are that those areas will become subject to sanctions, will become subject to transportation limitations, will become subject to losses of jobs stemming from losses of building permits, and to changes which will be imposed on industry with regard to the fashion in which business is conducted.
More importantly, business will be faced with the significant problems of achieving building permits. Ordinary citizens will face significant risk to lifestyle; and while those lifestyle changes are impossible to predict at this time, the rules which could be imposed on those areas could include things like controls on barbecuing, house painting, on running of power mowers, operation of motor boats, and other things in the areas which are nonattainment.
The consequences in terms of lost jobs, lost opportunity, loss of quality of life by Americans is indeed significant. While it is impossible to predict exactly what the consequences of this will be, they will be extremely onerous and need not be imposed upon American industry and upon American citizens.
The cost to the American people of the changes that this is going to impose will be enormous. One of the interesting things is that if we had, for example, a fourth grader playing in a grade school playground here in Washington, DC, under existing rules and regulations, that child is going to live in an area that meets existing standards by 1999, a mere 2 years from today. If EPA adopts the new standard, EPA hopes to force continued progress. But this attainment deadline will not be enforced, at least according to the transitional guidance issued by EPA with the proposed rules.
Instead, EPA will provide a new attainment date with the new standard. That allows States to take up to 12 years to bring an area into attainment. So in point of fact, what will transpire to this child is that 12 years after today he will live in an area which has reached attainment if all goes well.
If the past is prologue for the future, we know that EPA and the States will use the maximum amount of time allowed. So in point of fact, that child, instead of seeing the cleanup of his area or her area in 2 years, will observe it in a period of 12 years.
The number of counties that are going to be put into nonattainment area is significant, as I mentioned, better than 400 in the United States. It is interesting to note that amongst that number will be a significant number of counties in the State that I have the privilege and the pleasure to represent. Some 26 counties in Michigan will be legislated from attainment into nonattainment. Some 26 counties in Ohio will find same situations.
EPA's standards may result in cleaner air, but they may also result in significant hardship which will be imposed because of the requirements for sanctions and other things to be imposed.
{time} 2115
It should be noted that of the 50 States, all 50 will see questions raised about the validity and the propriety of their State implementation plans. The consequence of this is again to subject every county within those States to the possibility of sanctions, penalties and other things. And failure to comply with these will subject the cities, the counties and the States to the strong possibility of citizen suits which will take control away from the local units of government, away from the States and put them into the courts. The consequences of this, I reiterate to my colleagues, are indeed serious. I commend again the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership. One of the questions I did not mention that is going to confront us is the Clean Air Act as now constituted requires all Federal highway funds to be withheld by EPA as an automatic sanction for nonattainment areas, whether they be counties, whether they be cities or whether they be States. As a result, industrial and transportation projects can be delayed years and decades by the Clean Air Act requirements in nonattainment areas where good faith effort is now being made by the citizens and by their governments to comply with the law. These changes suggested by EPA are extremely destructive, hazardous of economic growth, unneeded and will result in serious hardship not only for American industry and competitiveness but also for the people of the United States. I would hope that those who are within reach of my voice or are observing what I am saying will take to heart what I have said and communicate with the administration about their concerns of the unwisdom of this kind of unnecessary step.
Mr. KLINK. I thank the gentleman for his input again and just laud him for everything that he has done to help us on this issue. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell] was the author and worked with us all on a letter to the administration where we as Democrats sought to sit down with our President to talk about the seriousness of this matter. We have been relatively quiet up until now, working very hard behind the scenes, trying to get through to the administration, trying to talk to Administrator Browner. The administration has dragged their feet. They do not want to seem to want to sit down and talk to us. We have issued letters, we have made phone calls. Many of us have buttonholed people who work at the White House who we think are close to the President trying to impress upon them how serious we are. I will not stand idly by and watch the same kind of degradation to our industrial base that I watched during the 1970's and 1980's. I know that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell] likewise will not watch that in his State of Michigan or anywhere else in this country. Yet we have not heard from the administration. So now we have prepared a piece of legislation. I am hoping, and we have gotten a great start, it is going to be a bipartisan bill. We are working with our friends on the Republican side to say, ``Don't change the standards. We're cleaning the air. The economy is moving forward.'' This is not something where we want to have EPA say 5 years from now, billions of dollars later, millions of jobs lost later, ``Whoops, we made a mistake.''
We know that it will take at least 2 years, Mr. Speaker, for the only 2 companies that manufacture these PM-2.5 monitors to make enough to get them distributed around this Nation. Then according to the law, it has to be monitored for at least 3 years to have the data. Two years to manufacture and distribute, 3 years to collect the data, adds up to 5 years. At the end of that 5 years, by law, this matter will have to be reviewed again or there will be another group suing the EPA. We are saying, take that 5 years, make sure that the science is right and as Carol Browner said herself, as other people in the administration have said, as scientists have said, during that 5 years nothing is lost because we are cleaning the air. We are moving forward with improving the breathability and the healthiness of the air across this country.
I would mention one other thing that really bothers me. Industry is on our side on this issue. Labor is on our side on this issue. In southwestern Pennsylvania, the American Lung Association of western Pennsylvania is on our side on this issue. Also on our side are the State legislatures of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina and South Dakota, along with Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. All of these legislatures and many of them, both the State House as well as the State Senate have passed resolutions or concurrent resolutions saying,
``Don't do this. You're throwing it back on us, Federal Government. It is up to us, the State, to do the State implementation plan. We've begun our State implementation plan. We're cleaning the air. Now you're moving the finish line farther down the road, making it more expensive, making it more difficult and in fact stopping us from cleaning the air.''
Who else is on our side? The Governor of Arizona, two Governors of Arkansas, both of which followed the current President into the governor's mansion. The Governor of Delaware has written a letter. The Governor of Florida, the Governor of Georgia, the Governor of Illinois, the Governor of Indiana, the Governor of Kansas, the Governor of Kentucky, the Governor of Louisiana, the Governor of Michigan, the Governor of Mississippi, the Governor of Missouri, the Governor of Montana, the Governor of North Carolina, the Governor of Ohio, the Governor of Pennsylvania, the Governor of South Carolina, the Governor of Tennessee, the Governor of Texas, the Governor of Utah, the Governor of Virginia is with us as is the Governor of Wisconsin, the Governor of Wyoming, and then we have had many governors join together and sign letters together. We have had letters from people within the Clinton administration, including Jerry Glover of the Small Business Administration, the Department of Air Force at Wright Patterson because you understand, Mr. Speaker, that the Defense Department may not be able to have aircraft flying in certain areas at certain times of the day because of the particulate matter given off by the exhaust of those aircraft. The same goes for commercial aircraft. I do not know what we would do, and we would really be in a pickle, it would seem to me, if our Nation would be attacked during a bad pollution day. I do not know if EPA would try to stop us from defending ourselves with these aircraft taking off or not.
That is almost how stupid all of this sounds. But we have a stack of resolutions, and I would tell my colleagues they are better than a foot high. These are letters, they are resolutions from industries and from State legislatures and governors across this Nation, telling us, this will impact their area negatively. It will inhibit their ability to clean the air. We talk about particulate matters. As I said this is something, the smaller particulate matter which is soot is composed of sulfates and nitrates and acids and ammoniums and elemental carbon and organic compounds, but a lot of this particulate matter also can be derived through industrial activities, through farming, mining, through driving down a dirt road. Because the particulate matter is 2.5 microns, which again I hate to get technical, but because it is of a certain size, does not necessarily mean it is as toxic as some other substance of that size. It does not mean it is as dense as another substance of that same size. Do toxicity and density and other kinds of things like this cause one particular PM-2.5 particle to cause you worse health effects than others? Is it when you have a blend of various substances that are taken into your lungs that you have a worse health matter? We do not have the answer, but yet it appears that the EPA and Director Browner are on their way down this pathway to hell for this country economically by rushing us into this before we know that we have all the scientific facts.
Again I would not ask my colleagues to depend on me because I am not a scientist, I am a lowly former news reporter, who has now been elected to Congress, who studied this issue. Let me call on those who I do know and I want to give Members some quotes.
Dr. Joe Mauderly is the current chairman of the scientific panel who has made their recommendations. As he appeared before the Committee on Commerce, he said, ``While I support the proposed change for ozone as logical from a scientific viewpoint, I have to point out that it should also be considered that an equal or greater overall health benefit might be derived by using the Nation's resources to achieve compliance with the present standard in presently noncompliant regions, than by enforcing nationwide compliance with a more restrictive standard.''
In other words, what he is saying is we might be better off to make sure that we continue to clean the air to the specifications that we must adhere to now in areas that are in noncompliance rather than put everybody else to new levels of compliance and just start throwing money at that before we have all of the science.
He also points out that he is concerned about New Mexico and other arid regions with alkaline soil. He says, ``The substantial portion of soil derived PM, particulate matter, that can exist as PM-2.5 may cause noncompliance with a standard aimed at controlling a different class of PM.'' In other words, what we are saying is you can have no industrial activity, none. But if you live in an arid region with alkaline soils, such as New Mexico, in nature, you might find yourself out of compliance. Yet we will be forcing industries across this Nation into trying to attain goals that are not attainable.
Let me just again go to Dr. Joe Mauderly, present chairman again of CASAC. He said, ``I do not believe, however, that our present understanding of the relationship between PM and health provides a confident basis for implementing a standard that necessitates crippling expenditures or extreme changes in life-style or technology.'' That is exactly what this would do. First of all, we are going to have a crippling change in technology because we have got to get those PM-2.5 monitors manufactured. We have to get them out there. We have to get the readings and we have to make a determination as to exactly what is the impact of that.
It is going to cause crippling expenditures for industry. They know that. I have a little company that is in my district that was formerly owned by Arco, it is now owned by a company from Canada and we are happy to have Canadian companies come here and provide jobs for Americans. It is always good when that can occur. It is called Nova Chemical. They make styrofoam like you would find on the underside of the dashboard of your car or sometimes in the roof and the other components of the automobiles.
This is a small company, a small chemical company down in Beaver County, PA. But since the 1990 standards went into effect, this small company has spent $40 million cleaning up the air. Just down the Ohio River a little bit farther in Midland, J & L Specialty Steel, they make stainless steel. We are proud because they are expanding right now, they are putting in a new specialty steel line. I do not know if they would or would not have done this if they when they began the process had been threatened with these new pollution regulations, because they have spent about $160 million cleaning the air. And they have given us great benefits. They are not complaining about that because they live in the community, just like the folks at Nova Chemical and Zinc Corp. of America, and USX and Allegheny Teledyne. They live in our community, they want the air to be clean, they have made the expenditure, but now we are moving the finish line farther away from them. That is a problem which all of this country will have to deal with. We have just reached for better or for worse, we will see how it goes, a balanced budget agreement, very historic, the first time since 1969. It was derived as the President sat down with the majority in the House of Representatives. But the basis for that agreement, as I understand, not having been in the room, were some very rosy economic assumptions. Those economic assumptions that we have made would go right out the door if all of a sudden our industry across this Nation were crippled by these new proposed standards. You can forget about it. People will not be taxpayers, they will be tax recipients because the jobs will not be created and in many regions they will lose the jobs. I know that the President, I know the administration, I know that Ms. Browner is hearing from the same mayors that we are hearing from, from the same county commissioners, and other local officials that we are hearing from. They are concerned about the impact that these kinds of changes at the midpoint of this race would have on their ability not only to clean up the air but their ability likewise to have a vibrant economy. Eventually it is up to them, it is up to the States to reach attainment, it is up to the locale to reach the attainment.
{time} 2130
Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who is on the board of commissioners of Clark County, NV; that is where Las Vegas is, and everybody knows Clark County. It is booming, they are building homes, they got tremendous amounts of economic growth. But she told our committee this:
Since the economy of Clark County is almost entirely based upon tourism, EPA's designation of our county as nonattainment will do damage to our ability to market our community as safe and clean.
When you are in nonattainment, and as the gentleman from Michigan
[Mr. Dingell] said, 400 counties like this would be out of attainment; when you are out of attainment, there is a stigma that is involved. If you want to apply to expand your plant or to put a new plant in, you are in nonattainment, you have got problems. It is going to cost a lot more. You probably will not even attempt to do it. If people are seeking building permits as they are in Clark County to build those thousands upon thousands of homes each month as that area booms and grows, they will not be able to have building permits.
Now a lot has been said about the change of lifestyle, would people be able to burn their wood burning stoves, would they be able in rural areas to burn brush and leaves and trash as they have in the past? That is going to be up to the local communities to have to make that decision as to how they comply. They may feel and they may indeed not have any alternative but to say to the citizens of this country you are going to have to change your lifestyle, you are going to have to have a new vehicle that burns reformulated gas whether you like it or not. You might have to have a car that is the California style car with the air pollution control, and the cost, 1,500 or $2,000 more. What will that do for your ability to be able to afford to buy new cars? What will that do to the automobile industry in this country? What will that do for the auto parts industry of this country?
Let me jump just across the border. Let us go to San Jose, CA. Trixie Johnson, vice chair of the National League of Cities, told the Committee on Commerce about this proposed change of air pollution standards. Many of the State implementation plans developed as a result of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments are just now being implemented. The implementation strategies incorporated in these plans have not been in effect long enough to determine their impact. And now we are saying to the States with that plan you have been working on, that plan that you have had in mind to clean up the air in your state so that you can comply with the federal law, forget about it. Start over again. The target used to be here. Now we are moving it way over there. See if you can hit that. And it is up to you and your industries and your citizens to figure out how to do it. We are out of it, we are the EPA. We are bigger than you. We could change the rules as we move along.
That is exactly what we are being told.
Dr. Barbara Beck I thought was very good when she was in front of the committee. She was from Gradient Corporation. About the ozone standard she said again remember we do not have to move on ozone now. We have to take a look at PM. We do not have to change it; we just have to review it according to the courts. But ozone could wait a year. But about this she said although the approach used by EPA in support of its recommendations is conceptually sound, multiple biases in the analysis result in an overall over estimate of the risk and hence an over estimate of the potential benefits.
Well, if their science is so good, let us take time while we are still cleaning the air, and I remind you again I cannot say it enough that the folks at EPA, including Miss Browner, agree with me, we are still cleaning the air. No matter what we do, the air is going to get cleaner. So let us make sure we are doing it right. Let us make sure that something good is happening.
And I would say to the administration sit down and talk with us. Do not meander into this. You are taking on this Nation. You are taking on these State legislators, these Governors, these industries, these labor unions. This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We want clean air, we are getting clean air. You are ignoring us. You are saying you do not have to sit down and talk to us.
And I am saying we have waited patiently long enough. Now it is time for us to take matters into our hands so that we have a fallback position. We cannot depend on the fact that you are going to talk to us. We cannot depend on the fact that you are going to say to us the industries in your state will be fine because we are going to be realistic about dealing with this. We have to go back to that centralized emission system that you forced Pennsylvania to go to that cost us $145 million to settle with that Envirotest company from Arizona that did not clean up any of the air.
Now that $145 million, they will take it kind of personally because that money came out of the pockets of the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It was money we could of used to educate our children. We could have used it for mass transit improvements that would have certainly cleaned up the air. We could have used it for so many things, for Medicare or Medicaid payments to take care of the needs of our citizens. But we had to use it because EPA said, whoops. Now I am afraid what they did to Pennsylvania they may be on the brink of doing to the entire United States of America.
And there are other complications. You see, a corporation could take this as an excuse and say you know we really got this agreement called NAFTA which gives us an ability to move south of the border or north of the border and sell our goods in the United States just as if we were located there and we do not have pollution standards like we have in the United States, but of course that air is going to blow across the border to Texas and across the border to the northern States from Canada, but companies would be able to do that. They would have that option.
This issue does not stand unto itself. There are other issues that come into play as to whether or not these jobs will still be American jobs, these plants will still be American plants.
So we are concerned. We have some very grave concerns about whether or not we are headed in the correct direction.
I want to just mention again something that I think is extremely important, and that is this issue of the slower cleanup, and I mentioned this before, and I know that Mr. Dingell talked about it. This, I think, and the reason I repeat it is because it is probably the most important issue; we are, Mr. Speaker, going to continue to make progress in seeing the air get cleaner. Regardless of whether we have a new ozone standard or new particulate standard, we are cleaning up our air as it pertains directly to ozone though. For the next 5 years we know that the air is going to continue to get cleaner through the continued implementation of the existing ozone provisions of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. However EPA has stated now that the existing attainment deadlines for ozone are not going to be enforced.
You understand this; we have got a rule right now that says this is the standard, .12 parts per million over a 1-hour period. They want to go to .08 parts per million over an 8-hour period, and I will admit an 8-hour period makes sense, but why from .12 to .08 throwing hundreds of counties out of attainment because when you do that the EPA said that they will not enforce the deadline at which those standards must be reached.
So now you have said, as I said in the very beginning, as Mr. Dingell reiterated, to that child who is 8 or 9 years old who is on the playground having problems breathing, you said to the location where they are located if 1999 is the deadline that you have to reach .12 parts per million, forget about it, we have got a new standard, and we are going to give you 10 or 12 years longer to reach that deadline.
In addition, the States that have implementation plans are going to stop right now. They are going to quit because now we have moved the target. This is bad policy. We need to know more about the science. We have to do more studying. The ramifications are hard for all of us to grasp, but we know they will not be good. This new standard is going to disrupt the clean air progress that we could make under existing ozone standards, and we do not have to do it. There is no reason that we should be taking this on.
Let me reiterate again about these PM-2.5 monitors, 50 of them exist. We have to manufacture more, we have to get them implemented, get them located, rather, around this country, gather the information. That also is going to cause a long delay in knowing where we stand with PM-2.5.
Is there a combination of PM-2.5 molecules that is worse than others?
We have other questions. Why in the Pittsburgh region and other regions across this country as we clean up the air have we seen increased incidences of asthma?
There are more asthma cases as the air has gotten cleaner. Why is that? Well, there is speculation it may have to do in poorer areas with the fact that we have insect infestations in homes. There is speculation it could have to do with the fact at one time we had hardwood floors and now we have gone to wall to wall carpeting and there is dust mites and all kinds of particles like this in carpeting. But we do not have the answer. Without having that answer, without understanding why we are seeing more asthma as the air is cleaned up, we have got this rush to judgment on behalf of the EPA.
It is a bad policy. It is going to hurt the country, and it is not going to benefit the children and other asthmatics across this country. That is the problem that we have. The EPA is charging forward without the ability to implement the new PM standard. They are charging forward on ozone without really having to do that, without really having the answers to many of these questions.
Again, I know the White House has heard from us, the White House has heard from local officials, from State officials, from State legislators. They have heard from people in the administration that have the same concerns that Ron Klink has, that the gentleman from Michigan, [Mr. Dingell] has, and thus far the silence from the White House has been deafening.
I will say one more time we have lost enough jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania and other industrial regions of this country. We have felt the implications of those job losses. Families have been ruined, lives have been ruined, individuals have been ruined, communities have been ruined. We now have one of the largest populations percentagewise of senior citizens in the entire Nation because many of our youngest and best and brightest had to move away. We are finally getting to the point where we are regrowing our industries and what we are saying to our children and grandchildren: Come back to Pennsylvania. Jobs exist again. And now the EPA wants to bring all of that crashing down around our ears.
If we must go to war on this issue, then, Mr. Speaker, we will go to war on this issue. We have done it before. I have been involved in some battles that I have lost, but I have been involved in some that I have won. I hope that we still have time to sit down and to work this matter out and that cooler heads and calmer minds and good science and the best interests of the people, the workers across this country, will prevail.
But I am preparing a piece of legislation that will keep the standards as they are, maintain the status quo and continue to clean the air at the rate we are cleaning it, and we are ready to move that. We have got Republicans working with us, Democrats working with us, and we will move that legislation, and I think that we can get it moved through the House. I think there is enough interest in it.
Let us make those on the other side tell us why they want to delay cleaning up the air, why they want children to be gasping longer, why they want to cost people their jobs, why they want to shut down industries in this Nation.
As for me, let us continue the progress that we have made in rebuilding the industrial base of this Nation, the industrial might of this Nation, and let us keep making the progress that we have done on cleaning the air and seeing the health improvements that we have seen across this country.
____________________
Alerts Sign-up