After grappling with the issue for 2 months, the Senate is scheduled to cut off debate on Clean Air Act legislation this week and vote on a bill.
Some critical amendments to the compromise legislation must be resolved (OGJ, Mar. 12, p. 23).
Senators recently rejected two major challenges to that compromise. Environmentalists and state officials pushed the amendments. The administration and industry fought them.
AMENDMENT ATTEMPTS
An amendment by Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) and Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) to toughen the bill's motor vehicle standards and alternative fuels requirements was voted down 52-46.
Wirth-Wilson would have required 30% of vehicles sold in the nine cities with the most severe air quality problems to use fuels other than gasoline. Its defeat signaled that the Senate thinks reformulated gasoline should be allowed to play a major role in achieving air quality improvements.
Then the Senate rejected 53-46 an amendment by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to require more progress in dirty air areas.
The Senate also voted 50-47 against an amendment by Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) that would have replaced the enforcement and permitting sections of the compromise bill with a more "realistic" approach.
Nickles explained, "The people who would have to administer permitting and enforcement say the programs will not work."
Among other things, his proposal would expedite permitting, especially for new construction.
Opponents said the amendment would dull the effectiveness of the bill and allow polluters to delay improvements.
Nickles said last week he hopes to get the Senate to reconsider that vote.
Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute lashed out at an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to require use of cleaner burning gasoline.
Daschle's plan would require use of the improved gasoline beginning in 1994 in the 40 cities with the worst air pollution problems. Observers said the proposal might be modified to only nine cities.
It stipulates the gasoline must be at least 25% aromatics, 2.7% oxygen, and 0.8% benzene and must reduce ozone forming emissions by at least 15%.
DASCHLE ISSUES
Charles DiBona, API president, said the Daschle amendment has a $100 billion price tag and would raise the public's gasoline costs about 25 cents/gal.
"Even if we can make all the changes to our refineries the amendment requires, we won't know what impact this fuel will have on air quality once people start using it," he said.
Daschle responded, "Several oil companies, including Marathon and ARCO, are doing what my amendment calls for right now.
"Obviously, industry opposition to my amendment is generated solely by its desire to maintain its profitable monopoly on the gasoline market, even at the expense of the health of the American public.
"Industry's own research has shown that 'clean gasoline' works, yet when they are challenged to use it, they claim it won't work."
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