States vie with US over emissions rules

Led by California, 11 states are pushing hard to get permission to set stricter standards than federal law requires.

from the May 29, 2007 edition

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"Federal regulations say we need to make sure that implementing California's tailpipe emission standards would not be arbitrary and capricious," says EPA spokesman John Millett. The EPA could take from two months to two years to make its decision, he says. The EPA can deny the waiver only if the agency finds 1) that California does not need its standards "to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions" or 2) that the standards are inconsistent with other measures of the Clean Air Act.

Governor Schwarzenegger, state Attorney General Edmund "Jerry" Brown Jr., and other state attorneys general want the EPA to pick up its pace. Led by California, they vow to take legal action by October if the EPA has not acted. Their hope is that a US court would force the agency to make a decision, if it were to find the EPA timetable to be unreasonable.

The EPA's Mr. Millett says such suits are common, and he notes that the agency is equally vulnerable to lawsuits if it does not meet its mandate for holding proper and fair hearings.

The waiver process raises complicated questions of states' rights and federal prerogatives amid a political backdrop that has twisted the usual Republican-Democrat dynamic, say some observers.

"Traditionally, Democrats are stronger federalists at the expense of states, and conservatives and Republicans espouse stronger states' rights," says James Winebrake, chairman of the public policy department at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "In this case, the White House is dragging its feet and you have to ask why.... That is what the governors of these states are pressing for answers about."

Federal justifications for denying a waiver, say Winebrake and others, are twofold. One is concern that state-by-state emissions standards could force automakers to make different models, increasing costs and creating production problems. The other is concern that a waiver might break legal precedents that define the jurisdictional line between Congress and the states over power to regulate commerce.

In the hearing Wednesday, environmental groups such as Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as California's state EPA, are expected to testify that cars create about 40 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions in the state and need to be reduced 30 percent by 2013.

"If we do nothing, temperatures could rise up to 10-1/2 degrees by the end of the century, impacting water supplies, harming our world-class agriculture industry, and increasing heat-related deaths," according to written testimony from Linda Adams, California's secretary for environmental protection, which she is expected to repeat at the hearing.

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