|
In referring to the scope of the changes, the career E.P.A. enforcement lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "I don't know of anything like this in 30 years." He also questioned whether the administration had followed appropriate procedures in making the change.
"If you say, `I'm not going to enforce the law at all,' that is doing rule-making without a rule-making process," he said.
The change was announced in an internal meeting of E.P.A. enforcement officials late on Tuesday in Seattle. The decision came as Michael O. Leavitt, the former Republican governor of Utah, was preparing to begin his new job as E.P.A. administrator on Thursday. His predecessor, Christie Whitman, who had resisted some proposals considered by Mr. Cheney's energy task force, resigned last summer.
The revised New Source Review rules were initially released in late August, while the agency was being run by the acting E.P.A. administrator, Marianne Horinko.
Those rules will take effect in December in 12 states that do not administer these rules themselves. The 38 other states will have up to three years to decide whether to adopt the new rules.
Last week, about a dozen states and cities filed suit in federal court to overturn the changes to the New Source Review program that the agency seeks to enact.
One E.P.A. official said that about half of the 50 power plants under investigation had already received notices of violations, meaning the agency believed that an environmental violation had occurred.
Under this week's change, the E.P.A. lawyers said they also would review investigations involving 30 to 40 oil refineries, though they said some of those investigations were still likely to proceed.
Officials said that the Justice Department would have to decide whether to file lawsuits in several other cases the E.P.A. has referred to it. Under the Clinton administration, filing these types of lawsuits had been a priority within the E.P.A. Lawsuits filed against six companies during the Clinton years are still pending.
Critics of the new policy are concerned it will undercut all those actions. "Those cases will still bumble along, seriously crippled by the administration's legal reversals," said John Walke, the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Air Program.
Industry officials have argued in some of those cases that it would be unfair for the government to continue to enforce violations under standards that are now being revised. But judges have had mixed reactions to that argument.
|
|
