Nixon's Third Round

In a burst of enthusiasm for the salvation of the American environment, President Nixon urged Congress last year to enact a 14-point program of reforms. Members of Congress introduced a score of bills of their own to regulate everything from strip mining to the location of power plants. Yet not a single major piece of environmental legislation passed both houses. While everybody wanted a cleaner America, it appeared, not everybody was ready to pay for it, at least not when the economy was lagging.

Last week Nixon began his third environmental message by excusing Congress's sorry record. He said that

1971 was "quite properly a year of consideration," but he went on to urge that

1972 be "a year of action." To that end, he proposed a total of 19 new measures and announced two executive orders, saying, "We must not slacken our pace but accelerate it."

Sulfur Tax. The most controversial of Nixon's proposals was to levy the U.S.'s first pollution tax on the harmful sulfur oxides that spew from electric power plants, smelters and refineries. The tax, starting in 1976, would apply only to industries in areas that already have high air-pollution levels, but it would establish what Nixon called "the principle that the costs of pollution should be included in the price of the product."

Sensible as the tax sounds, few people outside the Administration like it. Industrialists claim that there is no way to curb emissions of sulfur oxides at a reasonable cost. Conservation groups, on the other hand, argue that the proposed tax is too low to force industry to develop improved "scrubbers" to remove sulfur from chimney gases. By their reckoning, it costs 190 for present devices to remove a pound of sulfur from fumes, while the proposed tax is only 100 to 150 per pound. As a result, they fear that industry would pay the tax rather than clean the fumes, and that it would build new plants only in areas where the air is still clean. In any case, the added costs would ultimately be passed along to the consumer.

Nixon's program also includes:

-- A ban on the use of poisons to kill predators--coyotes, wolves, eagles --on public lands.

^ Controls on the use of snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles on federal properties.

-- Creation of 21 new parks, including the spectacular Pacific coastline around San Francisco.

-- A limit to tax benefits like fast depreciation for any developers who build on wetlands judged to be "critical environmental areas."

-- Legislation to permit the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor the disposal of such toxic wastes as mercury, cadmium and arsenic on land or underground.

Environmentalists generally applauded the message. Indeed, their objections focused on Nixon's omissions rather than his proposals. He neglected to attack overpopulation as a factor in pollution; he did not announce an expected ban on clear-cutting of timber on public lands, and he failed to bar the Corps of Engineers from issuing permits to fill in wetlands, the nursery for most marine life.

"The important question about the President's message," says Senator Gaylord Nelson, "is whether the Administration will in fact support its rhetoric with concrete action." In this election year, the answer clearly lies with the voters. Environmental groups are planning to make Congressmen's records on ecological issues available to the public right up to Election Day. Unlike 1971, this might actually be a year of accomplishment--if the public is willing to pay for the great cleanup.

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