Risky business

EPA should control pollution standards

Imagine yourself in this situation: You are the Chief Executive Officer of a company in a large, profitable industry. What do you do when the Environmental Protection Agency creates a new emissions standard that might reduce the growth of your company's profit margin in the name of promoting public health? Would you accept your moral obligation to conform to the new standards? If you are anything like industry leaders today, you might decide to initiate a legal battle to prove that the Environmental Protection Agency's power to set standards is unconstitutional. Putting profits ahead of people and the environment, this is just the battle that many collusive business interests have chosen to pursue.

In 1997, the EPA established new standards for smog and soot emissions, citing that 125 million Americans would benefit and that thousands of lives would be saved annually. It then set up a reasonable strategy for the implementation of these standards on a state by state basis.

Some industries, not wanting to pay for cleaner fuel and more environmentally friendly equipment, challenged the agency over the constitutionality of its standard-setting power. The industries' representatives won a victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals last year. The ruling states that the EPA's broad powers over public health and safety are unconstitutional. It explains that the 1970 bill that gave the agency power to set standards violates the nondelegation principle established through Articles I to III of the Constitution. The legal battle continues in the Supreme Court, which will soon decide whether to force Congress to assume the power over setting standards that it granted the EPA.

Ruling that only Congress can set emissions standards would be counter productive, especially when the body has such a great number of issues to debate and a difficult time considering issues independently of other issues. Congress can hardly be expected to make emissions standards into anything more than a political football or a bargaining chip.

These industries are also voicing their concerns under the use of the term "public health." The Supreme Court should not create a more rigorous definition of public health - there can be no price set for human life. Emissions standards must be established to preserve human life and cost-benefit analysis should only cover the timetable in which the standards are implemented. The EPA has acted on this principle admirably.

The industry representatives also argue that the EPA has no right to set standards for public health. They further argue that when the EPA makes its decisions, it does not use proper cost-benefit analysis to balance health with monetary loss. They believe the EPA is causing affected industries to pay more money than necessary to preserve the lives and health of the American people. For the complaining industries, the thousands of premature deaths that the new standards will prevent are not worth financial risk.

The industries involved in the suit are asking that human life be weighed against monetary losses.

Industries have seen the results of the health studies the EPA considered when it set emissions standards and know that current emissions levels cause thousands of otherwise avoidable deaths annually. Even if the Court accepts industries' argument that only Congress can establish emissions standards, Congress can and should hold them accountable for the health risks that they create by retaining the guidelines established by the EPA.

The independence of the EPA allows it to consider and implement necessary standards in an efficient manner. Congress delegates power to other agencies so that decisions are made efficiently. It would be shameful for thousands to die and more than 100 million to suffer because industries do not want to cut into their profit margin to buy cleaner fuels and more environmentally friendly equipment.