|
Critics of President Bush's environmental policies gave Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt, Bush's nominee to head the EPA, a blistering welcome to Washington last month.
“Governor, the record of the Environmental Protection Agency under the president is abysmal,” said Sen. James M. Jeffords, I-Vt., during Senate committee hearings on Leavitt's nomination. “We have watched the administration roll back environmental laws and regulations day after day, week after week, month after month.”
After 10 years as governor, Leavitt left a mixed environmental record. Widely admired as an effective administrator, he had convinced fellow Western governors to join Utah in a plan to reduce regional haze. But because Leavitt, a Republican, also had a record of advancing industry interests — including a controversial plan to open millions of protected acres to development — environmental advocates greeted his nomination with skepticism.
Leavitt defended his environmental record during the heated committee meeting. “I passionately believe that this nation deserves to have a clean and safe and healthy environment,” Leavitt told the panel. “I also believe that the United States can increase the velocity of our environmental progress, and that we can do it without compromising our competitive position economically in the world.”
“With confidence, I would hold up Utah's environmental record to that of any other state in the Union,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah. “Michael Leavitt has brought about a 41 percent increase in spending on environmental protection. And that's after adjusting for inflation.”
New EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt (Getty Images/Mark Wilson)
|
But Leavitt's nomination in August was widely seen as the latest indication of a two-year shift in Bush's environmental policy. When he appointed moderate Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, R-N.J., to head the EPA in 2001, environmentalists hoped the appointment signaled the new president would continue some of the Clinton administration's policies.
As governor, Whitman had advanced a mix of market-based incentives and enforcement of regulations to improve environmental quality in her heavily industrialized state. But as EPA administrator she oversaw several policy shifts that were at odds with her earlier support of clean-air measures. On her watch, the administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol and earlier promises to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases implicated in global warming; devised an energy policy that relies heavily on accelerated use of polluting fossil fuels; and weakened a program aimed at reducing emissions from old, coal-fired power plants.
Whitman remained a team player to the last. When the administration released a controversial status report on the environment that ignored the threat of global warming, she defended the document, calling it a “baseline” of data for future reference. “This is about what we know today and what that tells us,” she said. “We didn't want to project” what might happen in the future
But on June 27, 2003, just four days after the report's release, Whitman resigned amid rumors of her growing frustration with the administration's refusal to regulate greenhouse gases and enforce the Clean Air Act.
Bush's choice of Leavitt to head EPA prompted six Democratic lawmakers, including three presidential candidates and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to threaten to block Senate confirmation of the nomination to protest administration policies. At issue were the administration's efforts to relax key provisions of the Clean Air Act and its failure to warn the public about dangerous air pollution caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the threatened challenge to Leavitt's nomination collapsed after the administration promised lawmakers that it would step up its investigation into the Trade Center findings. On Oct. 28, after two months of debate, the Senate confirmed Leavitt as EPA administrator, 88-8. He was sworn in Nov. 6.
Even Jeffords emphasized that the vote demonstrated support for the person, not the policies. “This vote,” he said, “should not be seen as an endorsement of the Bush administration's environmental policies but a vote in support of a fine and honorable man who has an extremely difficult job ahead.”
|
Read the Full Report (Subscription Required)
