Environmentalists, GOP Headed for Showdown

WASHINGTON — Environmentalists are bracing for a fierce end-of-session battle with congressional Republicans over a spate of GOP proposals aimed at limiting enforcement of some environmental regulations, including several affecting California.

The measures seek to block or limit federal action on a raft of environmental matters, from growing pollution by gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles to increased timber cutting in national forests, without thorough review.

Critics said one provision would impede restoration of damaged wetlands in California’s Central Valley. And they warned that another could pave the way for operation of a large open-pit mine in the Imperial Valley.

Environmental groups said about 40 such provisions are attached to appropriations bills moving through Congress, and they predicted that as many as eight more may be added before the session ends.

Moreover, because the bulk of the proposals are riders--slipped into the bills quietly at the request of individual legislators--they have avoided the kind of public spotlight that ordinary legislation gets when it moves through the appropriations process.

Lexi Shultz, attorney for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a Washington-based watchdog organization, called such tactics a sneak attack by special-interest lobbies.

Gregory S. Wetstone, Washington lobbyist for the National Resources Defense Council, agreed. “Under this kind of procedure, there’s no chance for public scrutiny,” he said. “In fact, some of these provisions don’t actually come to light until they go to the president’s desk.”

Conservatives, however, are unabashed in defending the GOP’s strategy on environmental issues--and the Republicans’ tactic of relying on riders in hopes of accomplishing their goals.

John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said most of the controversial provisions are designed to curb what he called federal agencies’ abuses of business and get some common sense into environmental regulation.

He defended the use of riders as historically just as much a part of the legislative process as other parliamentary procedures. “I suspect they’re making much ado about nothing,” he said of the environmental groups.

This year’s batch of riders marks the fifth year that Republicans have used the tactic to restrict enforcement of environmental regulations. Before that, GOP legislators had launched direct efforts to try to alter laws such as the Clean Air Act--usually without success.

They have been far more effective at curbing environmental laws using riders. Though President Clinton managed to eliminate about 20 GOP environmental riders last fall, an additional 35 or so got through--mostly during eleventh-hour bargaining over an omnibus spending resolution to finance basic government services.

Among them were provisions that delayed the phase-out of methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting chemical; removed several East Coast barrier islands from federal environmental protection; and allowed construction of a highway through New Mexico’s Petroglyph National Monument.

The riders this year include measures that would prohibit federal agencies from proposing regulations that would help carry out the 1997 Kyoto global warming accord, delay a proposed tightening of rules for developing wetlands, and bar stricter auto fuel economy standards that would reduce pollution from sport utility vehicles.

They also would enable federal agencies to permit more logging, mining and road building in national forests without first conducting wildlife surveys and would block proposed restrictions on grazing in national parks.

The wetlands controversy in the Central Valley involves a joint federal-state program to restore some of the estuary in the San Francisco Bay delta, which has been largely converted to agricultural land.

To repair the damage, authorities want to take some of the farmland out of production to create a barrier, but there is virtually no land available to give farmers as compensation. House language essentially would block wetlands restoration on that basis.

The proposal involving the Imperial Valley would overturn an Interior Department rule limiting the dumping of toxic wastes at mining sites--a step that critics say would enable Glamis Imperial Corp. to operate a huge open-pit mine in a critical wildlife habitat there.

Mike Tracy, spokesman for Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), the rider’s sponsor, contended that, although the rider would reverse the department’s ruling, it would not change the law--or make it easier to dump waste. “A company would still have to follow what’s on the books right now,” he said.

Preliminary skirmishes will be waged this month in a series of votes on key appropriations bills.

But environmentalists said the real showdown will come in October or November, in marathon negotiations between Congress and the White House on a stopgap omnibus spending bill. Then many of the riders are apt to be lost in the shuffle--and enacted into law.

The threat that environmentalists see may not be quite as severe this time as it was a year ago. Clinton, no longer preoccupied with an impeachment threat, will probably be in a stronger position to insist that the riders be stricken in any deal he signs with Congress.

Also, the Senate adopted a new parliamentary rule in July that enables a single senator to block any rider that would use an appropriations bill to alter basic government policies by withholding money needed to carry them out.

But Daniel J. Weiss, political director of the Sierra Club, is not sanguine about these developments--particularly because most of the horse trading probably will end up in negotiations over the omnibus spending bill.

“The bigger the omnibus spending bill, the more opportunity there’ll be to add riders,” Weiss said. “What we’re facing now is only the beginning.”