Editorial: Polluters dealt loss; public wins

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 9:13 a.m.

Polluting industries had hoped that a case before the U.S. Supreme Court would result in the defanging of the Environmental Protection Agency. But the Supreme Court upheld Tuesday how the federal government establishes clean-air standards, shooting down arguments offered by the American Trucking Association and other business groups that contended the regulations were unreasonable. But the Supreme Court held that the EPA, when setting air-quality standards, doesn't have to consider the financial costs that may arise from businesses having to reduce harmful emissions to the environment.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer noted Congress' intention in passing the Clean Air Act in 1970. Sen. Edward Muskie, the primary sponsor of the legislation, said the act's purpose was to establish what the public interest requires to protect the health of the people, not "to be limited by what is or appears to be technologically or economically feasible."

While this decision doesn't have a direct bearing on other environmental laws or regulations, it is interesting to note that some of the same arguments made by businesses in the case the Supreme Court decided this week also have been made by the nuclear power industry in trying to jettison EPA rules for a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada. During President Clinton's term, a nuclear power industry lobbying arm tried to get the administration to weaken the EPA's radiation standards, arguing that it would be so costly to meet them that it could make a repository cost-prohibitive.

With respect to Yucca Mountain, the federal government so far has done a lousy job in trying to protect the people's safety. The EPA actually has been the only agency that has expressed some interest in establishing regulations to protect the public health. Even the radiation standards the EPA has proposed are modest, and they actually should have been tougher. It was encouraging that Gov. Kenny Guinn met this week with new EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. Guinn said Whitman told him that she believed the EPA should set the standards, not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which wants its own incredibly lax proposals to be adopted. The key now is to see how the Bush administration's commitment to enforce environmental regulations -- including for a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain -- stands up to expected pressure from polluters to we aken the enforcement of these important regulations that are there to protect our health and safety.