REGULATORY FOCUS 1984 legislative calendar
Richard M. Dowd During the next session of Congress, it is expected that very little of the pending environmental legislation will be enacted. Because there will be only 80 to 90 legislative days in the next session, there will be some hearings but limited final action. Congress's plate is full of proposals to consider. These include reauthorization of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ( R C R A ) , the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Clean Water Act ( C W A ) , Superfund ( C E R C L A ) , and the new Victims Compensation proposals. Most of the substantive changes under consideration in these laws are major; issues range from how to determine the health effects associated with the management of hazardous waste facilities to the debate over emission reductions to control acid rain. These substantive issues are difficult and consensus is hard to achieve. Major differences exist in the interpretation of facts and the assessment of politically acceptable solutions. Although scientific and technical questions are important, they may not be determining factors in the eventual decisions. Clean Air Act debate For example, the Clean Air Act has been under discussion in three previous sessions. The Senate Environment Committee sent one bill to the floor; 0013-936X/84/0916-0047A$01.50/0
the House has never done so. Regional differences of opinion on other options for controlling acid rain appear to have impeded the resolution of the clean air issues, such as toxic air pollutants. Nearly a dozen options for acid fain have been proposed. They include: no reduction in emissions (with an accelerated research program and liming of lakes to mitigate damages); an 8- or 12-million-ton reduction in sulfur oxide emissions (to be achieved over varying schedules up to 1995); and various funding mechanisms for control technology and administration of the program. F I F R A amendments have been of particular interest, partly because of the difficulty in assessing the quality of the data that have been submitted by certain testing labs. Some members of Congress want a simple one-year reauthorization so that considerable reforms may be added later. Other members would like to postpone it until more information is available. Clean Water Act The Clean Water Act reauthorization has also been under discussion for three sessions now, and the issues previously surrounding Best Available Treatment (BAT) have subsided as Congress shows little interest in reducing BAT requirements governing the discharge of toxic chemicals into the nation's waterways. Some proposed amendments would impose post-BAT requirements where BAT is not sufficient to meet stream water quality standards. Earlier debate focused on the requirement for pretreatment of industrial wastes that are discharged into municipal sewers. Some proposals would have allowed local communities more say about whether pretreatment was necessary. However, that possibility evaporated when Administrator Ruckelshaus said local municipal "opt-out" waivers would be too difficult to administer. Another major clean water issue will
© 1984 American Chemical Society
be nonpoint sources. For a long time, it has been clear that such sources may contribute at least as much pollution as point sources to surface waters. New RCRA bill ahead Of all the laws, RCRA is the most likely to pass this session. It will probably include major changes in hazardous waste landfill requirements, in the exemptions for small generators, and in provisions concerning underground injection wells and their effects on drinking water. Hearings have been held on the Victims Compensation proposals, but it is hard to predict where they will lead. Regarding Superfund, Senator Stafford's committee is likely to add a supplementary waste disposal tax. as a compromise in the debate on eliminating the existing feedstock tax. Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act would prohibit underground injection of hazardous wastes near drinking water aquifers and provide funding for state groundwater protection programs. The thread running through many of these legislative issues is "toxic" chemicals in any of the media: air, water, or land. Congress wants to legislate a program that takes into account long-term health effects while applying conservatism in its interpretation of information that is often scanty or uncertain. Little information is available on any of the environmental media regarding levels and concentrations of trace quantities of chemicals. It should be clear to all who watch these issues that without a major effort to improve the nation's network for measuring toxics, we will continue to make judgments without being fully informed. Richard M. Dowd, PhD, is a consultant to Environmental Research and Technology, Inc. Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 18, No. 2, 1984
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