U.S. Environmental Protection Administrator Mike Leavitt came to Pittsburgh yesterday on a public relations tour to roll out parts of the agency's 2005 budget in election battleground states. He defended the Bush administration's market-based approach to environmental regulation.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt, center, greets arriving students at North Allegheny's McKnight Elementary School. Leavitt defended the administration's market-based philosophy in speaking on numerous topics, including mercury emissions and climate change. Click photo for larger image.

The former Utah governor, who replaced embattled EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman in August, said the administration is finding the "productive center" between environmental and industry extremes.

He rejected long-standing complaints by environmental groups, municipal air quality enforcement officials and many Eastern states, including Pennsylvania, that the administration is weakening some environmental laws to accommodate the president's political supporters and not enforcing others.

"The objective of the administration is to have cleaner air and water and purify the land in brownfield sites, but not compromise us economically," Leavitt said. "Some have suggested we are stepping back, but this is the political season."

Leavitt began the day at North Allegheny School District's McKnight Elementary School in McCandless to announce that the administration is asking for $60 million to reduce unhealthy school bus exhaust in 220 school districts nationwide.

North Allegheny, which transports more than 9,000 students to schools each day, received $125,000 in October to install exhaust reduction devices on all 100 of its full-sized buses.

It is one of 17 districts across the country to participate in the program's pilot year projects.

Earlier this week, Leavitt was in Maryland and Michigan to announce Chesapeake Bay and Great Lakes cleanup projects.

Environmental groups criticized the announcements as too little from the administration of a president who failed to mention the environment in his State of the Union address.

"Everyone supports efforts to clean up school bus pollution, but this announcement should be seen within a bigger picture," said Arthur Stamoulis, policy analyst for Clean Air Council, a Philadelphia-based environmental organization. "The Bush administration is funding environmental programs in swing states as part of a cynical attempt to deflect attention away from its abysmal environmental record nationwide."

Leavitt told the Post-Gazette editorial board that the administration's new rule for reducing mercury emissions from power plants will achieve the best reductions possible with present technology. The rule, published in the Federal Register yesterday, requires the nation's 1,100 coal- and oil-fired electric power plants to reduce mercury emissions by 70 percent by 2018.

Although Leavitt said the mercury reduction goal is "an aggressive target," the administration's proposal falls short of the 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2008 proposed by the Clinton administration and endorsed in December 2001 by Whitman.

Environmental groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Environmental Integrity Project and the Sierra Club, yesterday were quick to criticize the rule, which allows utilities to use a cap-and-trade system that will allow some power plants to make larger emissions reductions while others reduce mercury emissions by lesser amounts or not at all.

Angela Ledford, director of Clear the Air, an environmental lobbying organization, cited a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found mercury emissions could be endangering the learning ability of 322,000 children every year.

"That is an extraordinary public health threat, but it is not being taken seriously in Washington," Ledford said.

Leavitt, who repeatedly said he is "in the enforcement business," dismissed recent published reports that show the agency's law enforcement rate is 58 percent lower than during the Clinton administration. He said his first obligation is achieving compliance with environmental laws, not "running up the score on fines."

"We use enforcement to achieve the desired environmental outcomes," he said, noting that the EPA has nine air pollution cases pending against utilities. "I use the term 'smart enforcement.' We make decisions on which cases to pursue and we choose them very carefully."

On climate change and the Kyoto Protocol that the United States has refused to sign, Leavitt said it is clear that the surface temperature of the Earth is rising and that human activity has contributed substantially to that rise, but it is unclear what the country's policy response should be.