Bush And Environmentalists Clash Over His Record

Reuters News Service
Friday December 3, 1999
By Thomas Ferraro

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush and conservation critics stepped up a debate of their own on Friday on Bush's environmental record as governor of Texas.

The Sierra Club, one of the nation's leading environmental groups, accused Bush of playing fast and loose with the facts when he defended his record in the Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire on Thursday night.

``You can't spin yourself into clean air,'' Dan Weiss, the Sierra Club's political director, said. He charged that Bush had let industrial polluters, many of them campaign donors, give Texas the nation's dirtiest air.

Bush, in the debate with Republican presidential rivals, took a shot at the radio and television ads the Sierra Club began airing this week in New Hampshire, which blast his record.

In the spots, the Sierra Club notes that this year Houston replaced Los Angeles as the U.S. city with the worst smog and that ``Texas leads the nation in air and toxic pollution,'' endangering the lives of young and old.

``Call George W. Bush,'' the ad urges listeners. ``Tell him it's time to clean up the air.''

``Polluting My Record''

Bush fired back in the debate, saying: ``They are polluting my record. I have a good record as governor. We have reduced toxic emissions overwhelmingly. Industrial emissions are down by 11 percent.''

``I signed two really good pieces of legislation that are going to remove 250,000 tons of stuff being spewed in the air, which is the equivalent of removing 5.5 million automobiles off our roads,'' Bush said.

Environmentalist complain that one of those pieces of legislation, signed this year and designed to get antiquated industrial facilities to cut emissions, is voluntary rather than mandatory.

The other measure, to deregulate the Texas electric industry, contains a mandatory emission-reduction provision for older utilities.

Scott McClellan, a Bush campaign spokesman, said Friday the provision had been hailed by the Environmental Defense Fund as ''the strongest'' of its kind in the nation.

That provision, however, was drafted and pushed largely by state legislators who were upset with Bush's voluntary program, which was written with the help of the industry.

Regardless, McClellan said, ``environmentalists should be praising Governor Bush for being the first Texas governor in history to call in owners of grandfathered plants (built before the 1970 Clean Air Act) and tell them it is time to clean up.''

Comparison With National Rate

While Bush says he helped reduce industrial emissions 11 percent since taking office, Weiss noted that, nationwide, industrial emissions have come down 14 percent.

``His state has been reducing toxic emissions but less than everyone else and has more toxic emissions than anywhere else in the country,'' Weiss said in a telephone interview.

Bush says that in actual volume, Texas manufacturers cut toxic emissions by 43 million pounds from 1995 to 1997, more than the 49 other states combined. Yet Texas also produced far more emissions than any other state.

Environmentalists say most of the reduction by Texas can be traced to emission-control measures enacted before Bush took office.

Todd Main, head of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said, ``Bush continues to respond with half-truths and tries to put out a smoke screen to hide the fact Texas is now more polluted than when he took office in 1995.''

Main noted that Texas ranked near or at the top among the 50 states in most air pollution categories and that as of last month, the 25 worst ozone level readings in the nation this year were all recorded in Texas.

Pollution and environmental concerns have re-emerged as a political issue and were at the forefront of protesters' concerns this week in Seattle, where demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting turned violent.

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