Forecast: Clearer Skies

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

No sensible American wants to breathe pollution, but that has not made it easy to figure out how to pay to clear the nation's air. It took more than a decade of often bitter debate among environmentalists, industry representatives, scientists and economists before House and Senate conferees finally agreed last week on sweeping changes in the Clean Air Act, the first major revision in the landmark law since 1977. After all the lobbying and deal making, the bill that emerged is surprisingly strong. Expected to be approved by President Bush early in November, it offers no quick fix for the nation's filthy air, but it does promise real progress in the years ahead.

While recognizing the legislation's imperfections, environmentalists feel triumphant. Says Daniel Weiss, director of the environmental-quality program for the Sierra Club: "There is no question that 10 years from now our air will be significantly cleaner. Our work isn't finished, but this is a bill of historical proportions." It also carries a price tag of historical heft: as much as $25 billion to $35 billion a year when the law goes fully into effect. Complains William Fay, administrator of the Clean Air Working Group, an industrial lobby: "Americans will pay the price through job losses and dislocations, higher consumer-product prices, increased electricity bills, reduced competitiveness, changed life-styles and slower economic growth."

The revised law will limit the output of industrial pollutants that cause acid rain and will eliminate chemicals that threaten the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. It aims for a major reduction in the release of toxic and cancer-causing chemicals from businesses and factories. In addition, emissions from motor vehicles will have to be reduced and cleaner-burning gasoline sold in the nine smoggiest U.S. cities.* In a pilot program in Southern California that could eventually be expanded, automobile manufacturers will have to build thousands of cars that operate on alternative fuels such as electricity, natural gas or methanol.

To protect industries and especially jobs, many of the antipollution rules will be phased in over 15 years. Among the companies most affected by the legislation are utilities that burn high-sulfur coal, which are concentrated in the Midwest. These utilities are by far the worst emitters of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, the prime causes of the acid rain that has harmed forests, lakes and streams in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. To meet the law's emission limits, power plants will have to either switch to more expensive low-sulfur coal or install costly scrubbers to clean the smoke chemically as it goes up from chimneys.

Giant corporations will not be the only ones bearing the burden of the cleanup. For the first time small businesses, from dry cleaners to auto-repair shops, will be required to invest in pollution-control equipment. Much of the impact will work its way through to consumers. Higher utility costs will boost household electricity bills, antipollution devices could add hundreds of dollars to the price of a new car, and cleaner-burning gasolines and alternative fuels could end up being more expensive than conventional gas.

The environmentalists did not win every battle. By pleading financial hardship, steelmakers got until the year 2020 to eliminate cancer-causing emissions from their coke ovens, as long as they take interim steps to reduce that pollution. Electric utilities in the Great Lakes region -- many of them affected by the new acid-rain rules -- fought off a proposal to require them to reduce their release of mercury and other toxic chemicals from coal-burning plants.

The added clean-air costs of $25 billion a year or more may be hard to swallow at a time when politicians are proposing higher taxes and cutbacks in social services. Environmentalists point out that the cost of doing nothing could have been higher, perhaps $50 billion a year. It is not clear, though, exactly how one calculates the price of forests ruined by acid rain or the suffering caused by pollution-related lung diseases and birth defects.

In the end, Congress decided that money is a secondary consideration. The fact that legislators found their political courage when it came to human health, even as they have avoided making hard choices on the country's financial health, underscores just how dangerous America's dirty air has become.

FOOTNOTE: * Baltimore, Chicago, Hartford, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia and San Diego.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Steve Hart

CAPTION: A CHANGE OF ATMOSPHERE

Major provisions of the Clean Air Act

Where the burdens fall

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington