EPA seen lax on pollution enforcement

WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has dragged its feet and failed to enact dozens of requirements mandated by the Clean Air Act of 1990, including some that would have improved poor air quality around Boston, according to a scathing government report released Wednesday.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, asserts that the EPA missed its deadlines -- by more than a decade in at least one instance -- for issuing restrictions on 89 sources of air pollution that were supposed to have been regulated under the landmark law.

``There should be no doubt that reducing toxic air pollutants is not a priority at the EPA," said Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, one of 15 members of Congress to request the investigation.

The pollutants covered in the report include chemicals such as benzene and chlorine emitted by vehicles and factories that can cause a variety of ailments including reproductive problems, asthma, and cancer. EPA statistics from 1999, the last year for which they were available, estimated that the cancer risk caused by the chemicals in the Boston area was 60 times higher than in some rural parts of Vermont and Maine.

In all, according to the EPA, about 95 percent of Americans breathe unsafe levels of the deadly chemicals, known collectively as air toxics.

Most air toxics, according to the EPA, come from car and truck exhaust and from small-scale polluters like gas stations. The Clean Air Act directed the EPA to reduce air toxics, but critics charge that the Clinton and Bush administrations lagged behind the timetable that was envisioned in 1990 when the act became law .

``If you know that 90 percent of Americans are at risk but you're dragging your feet and not meeting deadlines, that's a pretty bad place to be," said Alice McKeown, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in Washington. ``It shows that the EPA really needs to buckle down."

The lawmakers who wrote the act in 1990 ``really thought that in 10 years, in November of 2000, that the US would be a completely different place, where the air was a lot cleaner," she said.

Senator James Jeffords, a Vermont independent who is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, said the EPA has ``abdicated its responsibility to protect our citizens" and that Congress needed to force the agency to fulfill its commitments.

In a statement released yesterday, EPA spokeswoman Jessica Emond said the agency is committed to improving air quality, but didn't specifically address the conclusions in the GAO report.

In its comments to the GAO during the investigation, the EPA said it lacks the funding to meet the remaining Clean Air Act mandates on time. The Bush administration cut the budget for the air toxics program by 21 percent last year.

The act also instructed the EPA to update the list of air toxics on a regular basis, but the GAO report said the agency has not added any new chemicals to the list since 1990, despite the hundreds of new industrial chemicals that have hit the market since then.

``They're pulling back on this fundamental research, and it makes us very nervous," said David Wright, section chief for the air toxics program at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Wright said that states often rely on the EPA for guidance on complicated scientific issues.

Hoping to spur the EPA , environmental groups have filed lawsuits against the agency over the Clean Air Act. The GAO report suggested legal maneuvering was a big reason the EPA had made any progress in implementing the law .

``The program's agenda is largely set by external stakeholders who file litigation when the agency misses deadlines," the report said.

However, according to EPA data, the clean air rules are beginning to have an effect. In 2002, agency statistics included in the GAO report show, a total of 4.6 million tons of air toxics were released into the atmosphere, down from 7.1 million tons in 1993.

Emond said the Bush administration has finished writing the rules for 174 types of ``major stationary sources" of air pollution, such as large factories and power plants, but environment groups say those sources account for only about 20 percent of air toxic pollution. Cars and trucks are by far the largest source of air toxics, followed by small producers like gas stations and dry cleaners.

Some states have stepped up efforts to regulate air toxics on their own, but Wright said that's difficult because pollution crosses state borders -- a problem that requires the EPA to play more of a leadership role. For example, Wright said, scientists believe the smog in Acadia National Park in Maine, rated as one of the five most polluted national parks, comes mostly from car exhaust emitted in Boston.

``Part of the solution for Maine to get air as clean as it should be is to work on our local services, but we also have to take a regional and national approach," Wright said. ``The impact of the delay is that these hazardous air pollutants have not been reduced to levels that we think are necessary to protect public health."