WASHINGTON — Some officials at the Environmental Protection Agency were so worried their boss would deny California permission to implement its own global-warming law that they worked with a former EPA chief to try to persuade the current administrator to grant the state's request.
That unusual effort was revealed by documents released Tuesday by congressional investigators probing whether EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson was swayed by political pressure when he decided not to allow California to enact vehicle emission standards stricter than the federal government's.
The documents were released as a battle escalated between a key California Democrat, Sen. Barbara Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and the Bush administration over her efforts to get correspondence between the White House and the EPA leading up to Johnson's decision in December.
One of the newly released documents features "talking points" prepared by an agency staff member for former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly to help him build the case for granting California's request. In the October 2007 memo, the staffer said there was "no legal or technical justification" for the EPA to deny the request. If the agency refused California permission to implement its tailpipe law, the document said, "the credibility of the agency . . . will be irreparably damaged."
Reilly, who served in the administration of the first President Bush, said Tuesday that he had asked staff who worked under him and were still at the agency to prepare the memo. "I'm a busybody," he joked. Then, he added, "I really believe in the urgency of addressing climate change. . . . It is the foremost environmental threat to this planet at this time. California was attempting to lead on the premier environmental issue of the day."
In an e-mail also released by Boxer, William L. Wehrum, a former lawyer for the chemical, utility and auto industries who recently left his EPA job after serving as acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, argued against granting the waiver as far back as 2006.
Wehrum said Tuesday that he didn't recall the specific e-mail. But he said he had argued against granting California's request because he did not think the state could show it was suffering uniquely from global warming, a condition required by the federal Clean Air Act.
