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when the health risks are speculative, it is OMB's job to ask whether the regulation will be good for consumers, workers and businesses. Consumers pay for burdensome regulations in the form of higher prices for homes and products while American jobs are placed at risk."
Some agency veterans say the EPA's approach departs from past practices under both political parties.
"EPA decisions now have a consistent pattern: disregard for inconvenient facts, a tilt toward industry, and a penchant for secrecy," said Eric Schaeffer, a longtime EPA enforcement official who resigned in protest in 2002 and now heads the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group.
The Proposal
In early 2002, the EPA was under court order to write regulations governing formaldehyde emissions at wood products facilities. The deadline was Feb. 27, 2004.
Formaldehyde is a naturally occurring chemical released when wood, tobacco and other organic substances burn. It is best known as the key ingredient in embalming fluid; its foul smell is familiar to anyone who dissected frogs in biology class. It is used most frequently as a binding agent in pressed-wood products, furniture, flooring and chemical and household manufacturing.
Although it is classified as a probable human carcinogen, the lack of crystal-clear links between exposure and increased cancer rates has long made regulation controversial.
On Jan. 14, 2002, EPA staffers joined Holmstead in his fifth-floor conference room to meet with a lobbyist for the American Forest & Paper Assn. and the group's Washington lawyer to discuss the upcoming rule-making. Such sessions are routine at the EPA, where regulators and industry experts exchange scientific data and legal theories.
But some staffers found this gathering remarkable.
The forest products lobbyist, Timothy Hunt, was an old acquaintance of Holmstead's. William Wehrum, the air office's general counsel, had represented timber interests as well. The forest association's lawyer, Claudia M. O'Brien, had been a law partner of Holmstead's and Wehrum's at Latham & Watkins.
Hunt and O'Brien were representing a politically well-connected industry. During the 2000 election cycle, timber company employees and their families donated $8.3 million to federal candidates and committees, 83% of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization.
O'Brien presented proposals to spare low-risk plywood, particleboard and other plants from strict emission controls. She noted that such facilities were often situated in isolated areas, any harm from their emissions was debatable and, in some cases, the risk to the public appeared low. In addition, the expense of adding new controls to the plants, which the industry said could reach $1 billion, might make them vulnerable to foreign competition.
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Reopening the Debate
To some EPA staffers, this seemed like reopening a debate Congress had tried to resolve in 1990. In the 20 years after the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA had been able to regulate only a handful of toxic substances because the agency became bogged down in disputes over how to measure health risks. As a result, Congress amended the act in 1990 to require that all large industrial plants reduce emissions of 189 substances using the best available technology as their standard.
But Holmstead was enthusiastic. Before reviewing the proposal with his own legal and technical staff, he declared, "We're going to do this," recalled one staffer who was there.
In a recent interview, Holmstead said he didn't remember the meeting, but added, "I'm sure I would have expressed interest in pursuing that."
He added: "Different people around town had been thinking for a while that it would be good if individual fa
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