Bush Makes Plans to Show Green Side of White House

WASHINGTON —  The Bush administration, stung by the furious reaction to its early decisions on the environment, is planning efforts to assert its pro-conservation policies that have been obscured in the controversy.

Bush aides have held meetings in recent days to plot a strategy to burnish his environmentalism, and they expect President Bush to make his case more vigorously in the coming weeks, leading up to an event to commemorate Earth Day in late April.

“This is part of his agenda and he will give it attention,” said John Bridgeland, director of Bush’s Domestic Policy Council. Added another Bush aide: “What hurts the most is we get slammed when we’re trying to be engaged and thoughtful.”

Environmentalists in the United States have been outraged over Bush’s decisions to reverse a campaign pledge to limit carbon dioxide emissions and to suspend new arsenic restrictions for drinking water and new cleanup requirements for mining companies.

Overseas, allies have reacted with alarm to Bush’s decision to abandon the Kyoto, Japan, accord on global warming; in Europe, Green Party members of governments are calling for a boycott of U.S. energy companies.

Although Bush has a lot of support in Congress for his decision to abandon the Kyoto treaty, House Republican leaders are uneasy about the uproar over his decisions on arsenic, carbon dioxide and mining standards.

“You need an environmental message that sells in the House because it’s a green House,” a senior House GOP aide said. “At some point, Bush’s positions are going to cause some problems over here.”

Bush advisors argue that the president has been given a bad rap for his environmental decisions. They say that virtually every regulatory change they made was in reaction to tightened standards made by President Clinton in the final days of his administration. In no case, they say, has Bush rolled back environmental standards that had been in place earlier.

But White House officials acknowledge they have not made their case strongly as the batch of regulatory changes have come out.

“Trying to coordinate it all proved difficult,” a senior official said. “We’ll do a better job in the future.”

The president began to make his case in his news conference Thursday, when he vowed on the subject of drinking water: “There will be a reduction in the acceptable amount of arsenic per billion.”

The administration had been pummeled for abandoning a last-minute Clinton regulation reducing the 50-year standard of 50 parts per billion of arsenic in water to 10 parts per billion. Bush officials argued that the 10 parts per billion was so strict that it would have been ignored by small water utilities, and they said the Environmental Protection Agency will come up with a new standard less than 50 parts per billion.

Part of Bush’s strategy is to put off decisions on the fate of other environmental regulations left over from the Clinton administration--including a ban on snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park and tougher lead pollution reporting requirements for industry--to avoid generating more bad publicity.

In the case of the snowmobile rule, which has drawn the wrath of many Westerners and prompted a lawsuit by snowmobile manufacturers, the Interior Department is considering a quiet court settlement that would dilute the effect of the rule, rather than making a frontal attack.

Bush officials note that his fiscal 2002 budget calls for full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The $900-million expenditure would be an increase of $540 million in state and federal funds from the current fiscal year. The Sierra Club said it is pleased with the increase, if it turns out to be real.

The Bush officials note that, while public attention has been drawn to Bush’s reversal of a campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, he is moving ahead with legislation to reduce nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury from older utility plants that had been exempted from the Clean Air Act.

In three cases, the administration has accepted the last-minute regulatory tightening done by Clinton. Bush accepted a rule requiring manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks and buses to reduce diesel emissions by more than 90% and requiring refiners to reduce sulfur in diesel fuel by 97%, to 15 parts per million. The Sierra Club called this “a bold step toward making the air cleaner for all American families.”

The administration also accepted 18 national monuments designated by Clinton under the Antiquities Act, 17 of them in the late days of his presidency.

Environmentalists fear that Bush, because he has asked for state and local response to the designations, will tamper with their status. But Bridgeland said any changes would likely involve activities surrounding the monuments. “We’re going to keep these monuments in place,” he said.

Another Clinton decision Bush let stand is a pesticide reduction plan reached in a consent decree between the EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Under that agreement, which the Bush administration could have disavowed, the EPA will take comprehensive steps to limit pesticides in food.

Environmental groups say they’re not impressed.

“The public is judging their actions on the merits,” said Alyssondra Campaigne, NRDC legislative director. Though pleased with White House decisions on diesel fuel and pesticides, she said “there have been at least a dozen instances already where the administration has threatened safeguards for land, air and water.”

The criticism has apparently affected public opinion. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll found that, by 61% to 31%, Americans thought Bush cared more about the interests of large corporations than ordinary people. While Republicans usually have a 20-percentage-point gap on such questions, White House advisors said they were disturbed by the increase.