
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 2, 1990                   TAG: 9003023220
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

BUSH, SENATE LEADERS AGREE ON CLEAN AIR BILL

In a compromise hailed by the White House but sharply criticized by environmentalists, Bush administration and Senate negotiators reached agreement Thursday on a sweeping package of regulations aimed at cleaning up the nation's polluted air.

The bipartisan accord, the result of more than 250 hours of closed negotiations, breaks a decade-long deadlock in the struggle to enact new air pollution controls and paves the way for the first revision in 13 years of the 1970 Clean Air Act.

"This is a truly historic moment for the environment," said William Reilly, director of the Environmental Protection Agency. "The long stalemate that has characterized the clean air debate over most of the past decade has been broken."

President Bush hailed the agreement as "a very big step forward" in protecting the environment without threatening the competitiveness of U.S. industry.

But leading environmental organizations, joined by dissenting lawmakers, criticized the compromise as too weak to help severely polluted states attain their goals.

"This bill needs major surgery because it allows the Bush administration to shirk its responsibilities to require polluted cities to clean up and because it leaves millions of Americans exposed to cancer-causing toxic chemicals," said Daniel Weiss, a Sierra Club spokesman.

Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., said the bill "does not go nearly far enough in reducing tailpipe pollution."

But Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, defended the agreement, noting that it strengthens current law by tightening curbs on car emissions, encourages the use of cleaner-burning fuels and imposes controls to combat acid rain and on a broad range of toxic chemicals.

Mitchell, who agreed to the closed talks with the administration after determining that the original bill did not have enough supporters to thwart a threatened filibuster, said he would introduce the legislation on the Senate floor Monday.

Floor debate is expected to last from several days to several weeks. With a strong bipartisan coalition supporting the agreement, passage of its key provisions appears likely.

Under the bill, an initial round of controls would go into effect nationwide between 1993 and 1995. The administration, however, had opposed the second round of even tougher controls as too costly.

by CNB