The House approved the first overhaul of federal clean air laws in 13 years Friday night, requiring new pollution controls to sharply reduce urban smog, acid rain and industrial release of toxic chemicals. The 1,100-page bill passed by a vote of 401-25 and immediately was sent to the Senate. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, scheduled a vote Saturday. The cost for meeting the new requirements eventually are expected to exceed $22 billion a year and affect virtually every segment of society. Many of the handful of congressmen who opposed the measure did so because of the burden imposed on Midwest utilities that will have to undertake expensive measures to curb pollutants that cause acid rain. But supporters hailed the legislation as the most far-reaching piece of environmental legislation to be considered by Congress in years. ``This bill will be the standard by which we will judge environmental legislation in the '90s,'' declared Rep. Mike Synar, D-Okla. Despite its lopsided approval, the bill was the product of months of intense bargaining by House members among themselves behind closed doors. The highly technical and far-reaching bill requires tighter emission controls on cars, cleaner-burning gasoline blends and pollution controls on businesses to combat urban smog. Smog-producing emissions from automobiles must be cut by 30 percent to 60 percent and gasoline sold in areas with smog problems must be 15 percent cleaner toward the end of the decade. More than 100 cities that are failing to meet federal air-quality standards will have to impose pollution-control plans to bring their air into compliance over the next five to 17 years, depending on the severity of the problem. The Los Angeles area is given 20 years. At the same time, the measure directs industry to cut toxic air pollution by 90 percent over the next eight years by installing new pollution-control equipment to capture 189 hazardous chemicals and requires coal-burning electric power plants to reduce chemical releases that cause acid rain by more than 10 million tons. The industrial Midwest will be hit hardest because plants in such states as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois rely heavily on high-sulfur coal and will carry the greatest burden of reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, which cause acid rain. Failure to meet the new federal requirements could open polluters to civil penalties of up to $25,000 a day. Criminal penalties may be sought against corporate executives for willful release of hazardous air pollutants that pose a serious health threat. Most of the new pollution requirements would be phased in over 10 to 15 years. The requirements for cleaner burning motor fuels and reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants take effect by 1995. The clean-air requirements are expected to have widespread effects on society. Consumers are likely to pay slightly more for automobiles as well as gasoline and, in many of the Midwestern states, more for electricity. Small businesses and huge petrochemical plants alike will have to invest in pollution-control equipment and improve the monitoring of chemical releases. Cost estimates for the new controls have varied widely. The bill's supporters have said the legislation will cost the economy about $10 billion a year beginning in 1995 and about $22 billion by the year 2005, when most of the requirements will be in effect. Industry estimates have been much higher, with some studies predicting annual costs from the legislation by 2005 of more than $60 billion. Environmentalists have criticized the industry figures as being based on ``inflated estimates and extreme or false assumptions.'' The latest push for overhauling the 1970 Clean Air Act, which was last changed in 1977, began nearly 17 months ago when President Bush unveiled his proposal for cleaning up the nation's air, noting that for nearly a decade ``political paralysis has plagued ... progress against air pollution.'' But the task proved to be far from simple. It took three weeks of intense closed-door negotiations between Senate leaders and the White House to craft legislation that would satisfy divergent regional and economy interests affected by the bill. Finally the Senate passed a bill April 3 by a vote of 89-11. Six weeks later, the House approved its version 401-21 after also after working out scores of tradeoffs and compromises. But negotiations bogged down as the House and Senate tried to resolve differences in the two bills, each of which ran to nearly 700 pages. Facing increasing time pressures, negotiators for the two houses finally agreed on a compromise bill Monday, barely in time for final floor action before Congress adjourns.
