NYT: How Industry Won the Battle of Pollution Control at E.P.A.

[Dover]

NYT: How Industry Won the Battle of Pollution Control at E.P.A.


Just six weeks into the Bush administration, Haley Barbour, a former Republican party chairman who was a lobbyist for electric power companies, sent a memorandum to Vice President Dick Cheney laying down a challenge.

"The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore," Mr. Barbour wrote, and called for measures to show that environmental concerns would no longer "trump good energy policy."

Mr. Barbour's memo was an opening shot in a two-year fight inside the Bush administration for dominance between environmental protection and energy production on clean air policy. One camp included officials, like Mr. Cheney, who came from the energy industry. In another were enforcers of environmental policy, led by Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey.

The battle engaged some of the nation's largest power companies, which were also among the largest donors to President Bush and other Republicans. They were represented by Mr. Barbour and another influential lobbyist, Marc Racicot, who also would later become chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In an administration that puts a premium on keeping its internal disputes private, this struggle went on well out of the public's view. But interviews and documents trace the decisions in which the Bush administration changed the nation's approach to environmental controls, ultimately shifting the balance to the side of energy policy. Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, including Mrs. Whitman, became isolated, former aides said, and several resigned.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/03/06/politics/06LOBB.html?hp

[ramapo]

1. Did money have anything to do with it?

There's really nothing else that matters to these people.