"I am the decision maker," Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters two weeks ago when asked whether his actions were dictated by the White House.
But in refusing to let California waive federal auto emission standards and set stricter ones of its own, opening the way for Massachusetts and other states to follow its example, Johnson appears to have capitulated to the wishes of the Bush administration.
Legal and technical experts at the EPA had advised him to grant the waiver, and last fall he had intended to do it, but changed his position after putting the issue to the White House. That's according to recent findings by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Henry Waxman, in an investigation of the denial of the waiver.
Interestingly, it was Jason Burnett, a 31-year-old deputy EPA administrator hardly known as a champion of the environment, who told Waxman's committee that Johnson had changed his position on the waiver after talking to the White House.
Remember the contretemps about arsenic in drinking water? Burnett helped hammer out the basis for the Bush administration's claim that arsenic in water wouldn't hurt anybody; he also advocated industry-friendly regulations on soot and mercury. He was appointed by the administration to his EPA post but resigned it May 6, then reappeared to tell Waxman and his colleages on May 19 that Johnson appeared to have gone against his own former position in denying California the waiver after talking with White House officials.
The California measure would have required that cars sold in that state have 30 percent lower emissions by 2016, with an incremental lowering beginning with the 2009 model year. California officials said that by 2016, their measure would have cut emissions three times as much as new federal emissions rules favored by the Bush administration (and cited as justification for invalidating California's).
EPA staff had urged Johnson to grant the federal waiver so California could institute its own standards; they pointed out that California already has the "greatest climatic variation in the U.S.," the most threatened and endangered species of any state in the continental U.S., and severe and increasing yearly damage from forest fires.
