Environmentalists See Attacks by Foes Easing

WASHINGTON — When environmentalists looked west across the continent from Capitol Hill two years ago, they saw chain saws on the march. They were haunted by the specter of species of feathered, finned and furry creatures left to fall inexorably toward extinction by an assault on the Endangered Species Act. There too in the distance were acres of toxic waste dumps left untended.

Such were their fears at the start of what became known as the Republican revolution.

Now, with a new Congress about to take office and with its GOP majority trimmed and, critics say, chastised in November’s election for attacks on the environment, the picture has changed dramatically--in tint, if not in topic.

The last Congress did open up some of the nation’s oldest stands of timber for harvesting. But the Endangered Species Act went untouched; so too did the Superfund, a massive, complicated and litigation-beleaguered program guiding the cleanup of the nation’s most hazardous dumps.

Now, according to lawmakers and others paying heed to the likely course of legislation, the recent direct attacks on the environmental programs developed over the last two decades are unlikely to continue in the coming two years.

“The House floor is clearly a more friendly place than during the last Congress, by seven or eight votes at least,” said Greg Wetstone, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But those who would protect the forests--and the skies, streams and rivers, for that matter--are not out of the woods yet.

For one thing, the chairmanships of the major committees that handle environmental legislation appear unlikely to change.

And for another, the issues that drew the fire of such senior Republicans as Tom DeLay of Texas (the majority whip) and Don Young of Alaska (chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee) remain key targets for legislative modification in 1997.

A core group of 25 to 40 Republican moderates should be key to the course followed by the House, which has been much more aggressive than the Senate in recent years when dealing with environmental legislation.

The moderates “now have the balance of power, so the stampede [of the last two years] is going to be severely tempered,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a close observer of Congress who was President Reagan’s final White House chief of staff.

Two factors lead Duberstein and others to this conclusion: a renewed focus on the environment during the congressional campaign, in which many Republicans allied with Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) found themselves under attack for the performance of the just-concluded 104th Congress, and the greater governmental background among the new crop of rookie House members, compared with those first elected in 1994.

“If the last two years’ freshmen were revolutionaries, this year’s are a group of deal-makers,” Duberstein said, predicting the new freshmen will tend more toward compromise than the second-termers.

With Republicans holding only a 227-207 margin in the House and with one independent voting consistently with the Democrats, “the moderate Republicans have that much more leverage,” Duberstein said.

Among the environmental issues on the horizon:

* Superfund: Within the Clinton administration, there appears to be a split over whether to press for significant legislative changes in the 16-year-old program for cleaning up toxic waste sites. Hands-on managers at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department are more reluctant than the White House to seek such adjustments, for which many Republicans have been pressing.

EPA officials argue that after lengthy delays throughout the 1980s, the program is working aggressively to weed out the lesser sites while cleaning up the worst offenders. Critics say it is a program that is rife with abuse, has prompted massive lawsuits and has unfairly assessed responsibility for pollution created many years in the past.

* Endangered Species Act: Critics say the measure unfairly ties the hands of property owners whose land is home to endangered creatures and plants, but their efforts to roll back its provisions made little progress last year. It is up for reauthorization. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, a Republican proponent of the measure whose district encompasses the rural eastern shore of Maryland between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, is holding out hope that it can be rewritten “to protect the entire ecological system,” rather than operating on a species-by-species basis. He will face a head-on clash with property-rights advocates, led by, among others, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy).

* Natural resources: Some members of Congress are pushing for a renewed focus on tax breaks and other assistance given to the logging, timber and mining industries, which depend heavily on access to federal land. The administration and congressional allies failed last year in their efforts to increase fees to corporate holders of logging, mining and grazing rights. “We give away to special interests the resources that belong to the American people. That’s corporate welfare,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

* Clean air: Toughened standards proposed by the EPA in November, to take effect at midyear, are likely to prompt complaint--and review--by Congress. Industry representatives argued as soon as the new rules were revealed that they were too expensive to carry out, and talked about shifting the basis of the standards from health concerns to one tied more closely to measuring the likely benefits against the anticipated costs. But, warns Waxman: “If we end up in a clean-air fight, it will be the mother of all environmental fights.”