By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush said yesterday he will pursue some reduction in the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water, but not before more scientific studies on where the level should be set.
Bush defended his decision to withdraw new arsenic regulations issued by President Clinton in the final days of his administration.
"We pulled back his decision so that we can make a decision based on sound science," said Bush. He promised that after the science review "there will be a reduction in arsenic" in drinking water.
The current standards, set in 1942, allow a maximum of 50 parts per billion arsenic in drinking water. Clinton's Environmental Protection Agency directed the standards be lowered to 10 parts per billion.
The decision, although announced three days before Clinton left office, had been in the works for several years, prompted in part by a lawsuit by environmentalists.
On Wednesday, two senior House Democrats questioned the legality of Bush's action.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Frank Pallone of New Jersey noted that Congress last year ordered the EPA to have the standards in place by June 22.
"Serious questions have been raised about the legality of your recent announcement, including its effect on the intent of Congress to have a new protective drinking water standard for arsenic," Dingell and Pallone wrote.
The new Clinton standards were to have taken effect March 23.
Whitman, however, announced three days earlier that she was withdrawing them, saying there was not enough scientific evidence to justify the $200 million annual cost to municipalities, states and industry of meeting the new standards by 2006.
She said in an interview later that the administration will ask Congress to extend "until the end of the calendar year" the deadline for coming up with a new standard.
Dingell and Pallone, respectively the top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its environment subcommittee, asked Whitman for a detailed legal analysis of the decision.
"Our intention is to be sure that we have a good understanding of their legal analysis," said the committee's Democratic staff spokeswoman, Laura Sheehan. "We see it as a very clear line in the sand. Do they see it that way?"
Whitman on Tuesday also claimed a shortage of scientific support for the new standard.
"I wish I could point to a definitive study that said this is the level at which arsenic poses no threat to humans or this is the level above which arsenic starts to accumulate and pose a problem," she said.
Health and environmental groups have been campaigning since 1996 to reduce the standards. The EPA acted as part of a court settlement after the National Academy of Sciences found in 1999 that arsenic in drinking water can cause bladder, lung and skin cancer, and might cause liver and kidney cancer.
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, citing the study's finding that the current arsenic standards could result in a 1-in-100 risk of cancer, has said the Bush administration's claim that those standards are not supported by the best available science simply is not true.
"The president is simply choosing to ignore that warning and embrace a standard for drinking water that creates a cancer risk 10,000 times higher than EPA allows for food," Daschle said last week. "It is an outrageous and indefensible decision and we are exploring every possible option to reverse it."
Meanwhile, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the senior Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday he was "fully prepared" to seek subpoena power as a last resort in his inquiry into Bush's decision-making on the arsenic standards.
Environmentalists have complained the decision was a favor to the mining industry, a charge Whitman denied.
"I never even considered the mining industry in the arsenic decision," she said. "It may sound very naive, but I didn't even know they were one of the biggest producers."
