Bush to Adopt Clinton's Lead Disclosure Rules

Mike Allen / Washington Post 17apr01

The Bush administration said today that it will uphold a Clinton administration regulation to widen the reporting requirement for the use of lead in manufacturing, a requirement that small businesses consider onerous.

The decision is to be announced at the White House this afternoon by Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, after a brief meeting with President Bush.

"Communities will know which companies use lead, for whatever purpose, and can be more observant," an administration official said. "Lead is highly toxic and can be damaging to humans and aquatic organisms."

The decision marked the second day in a row that Bush had upheld a regulation by his predecessor that is considered environmentally friendly. On Monday, Whitman announced that she would leave in place a Clinton regulation broadening the range of dredging activities that will require a permit under the Clean Water Act.

Last week, the Bush administration accepted Clinton regulations designed to save energy with new standards for clothes washers and water heaters. But officials also bowed to industry concerns and modified a controversial rule that Clinton had approved to mandate energy savings on air conditioners and heat pumps.

Today's regulation will lower the requirement for reporting the use of lead or lead compounds from 10,000 pounds a year to 100 pounds a year. EPA officials expect that will add close to 10,000 industrial plants to the agency's Toxics Release Inventory.

Mark Van Putten, president of the National Wildlife Federation, issued a statement calling Whitman's decision "a welcome and surprising departure from recent administration environmental actions."

"It's a ray of hope amid a threatening sky of gloomy disappointments," Van Putten said.

Bush has been criticized around the world for his decisions to block implementation of a Clinton administration regulation to reduce the amount of arsenic in drinking water and to renounce a campaign promise to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush's policy on the environment "is marked by a balanced approach – an approach that is based on science and creating a balance among a variety of points of view."

"That's why the president has taken a series of actions that he's taken, whether it was protecting the wetlands, keeping the national monument designations in place, adopting a new, unprecedented multipollutant strategy to reduce emissions, continuing with the tougher emissions [requirements] on diesel-powered buses and trucks," Fleischer said.