Bush rejected EPA advice on California air-quality waiver, whistle-blower says

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency told the Bush administration that by law California should be able to set air-quality standards tougher than federal law, but President Bush rejected the advice and made clear he wanted a single national standard, a former EPA official said Tuesday.

The testimony from whistle-blower Jason Burnett came as the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, is investigating what the California Democrat charges is an effort by the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office to cover up the threat from global warming.

Burnett told the committee that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson went to the White House last year with a plan to grant California a waiver that would allow it to set tougher standards, at least for several years.

Bush made it clear he preferred a single national standard, Burnett said, and in the end Johnson denied California's request. Johnson has said that there was nothing unique in California's situation that supported granting the waiver and he made the decision independently.

The administration has denied Boxer's requests for e-mails and other documents. She plans to hold a vote Thursday in her committee to subpoena the documents but needs at least two Republican members to attend for a quorum.

A key e-mail that Boxer wants disclosed is an EPA document that describes how global warming endangers public health and welfare. Burnett sent the e-mail to the White House in December. He said Tuesday he sent it only after making last-minute checks that the agency was ready to release it and the White House Office of Management and Budget was ready to receive it.

The White House asked Burnett to withdraw the e-mail, but he refused. The OMB declined to open it. By not officially receiving the e-mail, the OMB ensured that it couldn't be made public.

The finding Burnett helped draft and sent the OMB was the agency's response to a Supreme Court ruling in April 2007.

"This president, I believe, made a decision that flies in the face of a Supreme Court case, and so I believe it is clearly unlawful," Boxer said.

Burnett described for the committee how the EPA produced a report based on the findings of thousands of scientists whose peer-reviewed work on how emissions of heat-trapping gases were causing the Earth to warm was produced or endorsed by the government.

Burnett said that officials from the White House, the vice president's office, the Department of Energy and other agencies agreed at a Cabinet-level meeting in November that greenhouse gases endangered the public and regulation was needed.

But soon afterward, the administration decided to get public comment instead of proceeding with EPA regulation of vehicles under the Clean Air Act. On Dec. 19, the White House announced it was denying California's request.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday that Johnson had taken the views of administration officials into account but made his own decision.

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• Call Renee Schoof, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-6004.