EPA Failed to Curb Diesel Pollution Promptly, Congressman Charges

April 5, 2000 10:44 AM, EDT

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency was criticized last week by a powerful House committee chairman for not calling diesel engine manufacturers on the carpet soon enough to prevent millions of tons of excess pollution from entering the atmosphere.

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“EPA has failed to enforce the law, as well as its own regulations, and the American people paid the price in the form of 12 million tons of excess pollution,” Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.) said March 30 in remarks distributed at a joint hearing of two subcommittees.

Bliley did not attend the hearing, which involved the Health and Environment as well as Finance and Hazardous Materials subcommittees, where House members also discussed the EPA’s fiscal 2001 budget of $9.5 billion, the Superfund program and reformulated gasoline.

However, it was the agency’s failure to hold heavy-duty diesel engine manufacturers responsible for emission levels in excess of federal standards – until an October 1998 consent degree – that has carried the most serious public health implications.

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