Hill Researchers Say Agency Fixed Pollution Study to Favor Bush’s ‘Clear Skies’

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Oct. 27 analysis of its plan — along with those of Sens. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) and James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) — exaggerated the costs and underestimated the benefits of imposing more stringent pollution curbs, the independent, nonpartisan congressional researchers wrote in a Nov. 23 report. The EPA issued its analysis — which Carper had demanded this spring, threatening to hold up the nomination of EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson — in part to revive its proposal, which is stalled in the Senate.

The administration’s “Clear Skies” legislation aims to achieve a 70 percent cut in emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide after 2018, while Carper’s and Jeffords’s bills demand steeper and faster cuts and would also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which are linked to global warming. The Bush plan would also cut emissions of neurotoxic mercury by 70 percent, while Jeffords’s bill reduces them by 90 percent.
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The congressional report, which was not commissioned by a lawmaker as is customary, said the EPA analysis boosted its own proposal by overestimating the cost of controlling mercury and playing down the economic benefits of reducing premature deaths and illnesses linked to air pollution.

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