http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20030927/ts_washpost/a7586_2003sep26
Study
Finds Net Gain From Pollution Rules
Sat Sep 27, 2003, 1:00 AM ET
By Eric Pianin, Washington
Post Staff Writer
A new White House study
concludes that environmental regulations
are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers,
resulting in significant public health improvements and other
benefits
to society. The findings overturn a previous report that officials
now say was defective.
The report, issued
this month by the Office of Management and Budget,
concludes that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough
new
clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven
times
greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with
the
rules. The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency
room
visits, premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved
air quality were estimated between $120 billion and $193 billion
from
October 1992 to September 2002.
By comparison, industry,
states and municipalities spent an estimated
$23 billion to $26 billion to retrofit plants and facilities and
make
other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are
designed
to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and
other
health-threatening pollutants.
The report provides
the most comprehensive federal study ever of the
cost and benefits of regulatory decision-making. It has pleasantly
surprised some environmentalists who doubted the Bush administration
would champion the benefits of government regulations, and fueled
arguments that the White House should continue pushing clean-air
standards rather than trying to weaken some.
"I'm sure the
true believers in the Bush administration will brand
this report as true heresy because it defies the stereotype of
burdensome, worthless regulations," Sen. Richard J. Durbin
(D-Ill.)
said yesterday. "They clearly don't understand that the government
regulations are there to protect you -- and they work."
John D. Graham, director
of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, which produced the study, said: "Our role at OMB
is to report
the best available estimates of benefits and costs, regardless
of
whether the information favors one advocacy group or another.
In this case the data show that the Environmental Protection Agency's
clean-air office has issued some highly beneficial rules."
But an industry official
said the report may have greatly understated
the costs associated with environmental regulations. Jeffrey Marks,
a clean-air policy expert with the National Association of Manufacturers,
said EPA "has traditionally underestimated the costs of regulations
on
industry. . . . The tendency to choose benefit numbers to correspond
to favorable policy choices is strong within the agency."
The findings are more
startling because a similar OMB report last year
concluded that the cost of compliance with a given set of regulations
was roughly comparable to the public benefits. OMB now says it
had erred
last year by vastly understating the benefits of EPA's rules establishing
national ambient air quality standards for ozone and for particulate
matter -- a major factor in upper respiratory, heart and lung
disorders.
Also, last year's report covered the previous six years and did
not
account for the beneficial effects of the 1990 amendments to the
Clean Air Act that sharply reduced the problem of acid rain.
Many environmentalists
had initially expressed fears that Graham,
founder of a Harvard University-based risk analysis institute,
would lead a Bush administration assault on regulatory safeguards.
But Graham has sided with environmentalists on several key issues,
including new rules to sharply reduce diesel engine emissions
and
the fine airborne particles that contribute to asthma and other
serious respiratory ailments. The activists were quick to embrace
this month's report.
"The bottom line
is that the benefits from major environmental rules
over the past 10 years were [five to seven] times greater than
the
costs," said Kevin Curtis of the National Environmental Trust.
"And that's a number that can't be ignored, even by an administration
that has blamed 'excessive' environmental regulations for everything
from the California energy crisis to last month's blackout to
job
losses to the failing economy."
Environmental groups
and some lawmakers assert that the administration
has begun to chip away at clean-air regulations and safeguards
just
when the country is beginning to see the fruits of decades of
tough
enforcement efforts. Earlier this month, the EPA issued its annual
air trends report showing that, since 1970, emissions of the six
principal air pollutants have declined by 48 percent. At the same
time, EPA officials put the finishing touches on a "New Source
Review"
rule change that will enable utilities to extend the lifespan
of older,
dirtier power plants without installing new anti-air pollution
equipment.
But White House officials
and Republicans say the administration
deserves credit for some of the improvement. They noted that the
EPA has approved the new diesel emission standards affecting trucks,
buses and off-road machinery in the coming years.
The OMB is required
to report annually to Congress on the costs
and benefits of federal regulations and unfunded mandates on states
and American Indian tribes. This year's report provided cost-benefit
analysis on 107 major federal rules approved during the past decade
dealing with agriculture, education, energy, health and human
services,
housing, labor, transportation and the environment. In all cases,
the
benefits far exceeded the costs of implementing the rule. But
the
most dramatic showing involved environmental protection.
Previous reports have
been controversial because of the unavoidably
imprecise methodology used to assess the costs and benefits of
a
variety of government regulations. In the absence of solid data
or
documentation, analysts often must rely on educated guesses or
long-term impact projections that were prepared when the rules
were put into effect.
"The data is prospective
rather than retrospective," said Gary Bass
of OMB Watch, a watchdog organization. "We don't have an
adequate
data set. My guess is that if we did, the benefits would exceed
the
cost in a wider spread than the OMB report shows."
###
