Bush to leave Clinton lead standards in place

From CNN Senior White House Correspondent John King

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration will leave in place standards set in the final days of the Clinton administration that require more businesses to report releases of lead into the environment, government sources tell CNN.

The announcement was to be made at the White House as part of an administration effort to counter recent criticism from environmental groups that President Bush has been anti-environment in the early weeks of his presidency.

The regulations require any facility that releases at least 100 pounds of lead or lead compounds a year to report its releases to the government. It is a dramatic change from standards requiring reports only if the facility uses 10,000 pounds of lead or processes 25,000 pounds of lead compounds annually.

Industry groups opposed the standards and had lobbied for the Bush administration to scuttle them.

But EPA Administrator Christie Whitman was to announce Tuesday that the administration will leave the Clinton rules in place, according to three administration officials.

The announcements come one day after Whitman announced late Clinton administration rules designed to protect wetlands also were being kept in place by the new Republican administration.

The administration has been sharply criticized for scuttling or scaling back Clinton administration steps to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water and impose new pollution standards on miners, and for abandoning a Bush campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Senior administration officials say they stand by those decisions but many conceded the announcements could have been handled with more political care -- offset at the time by steps that would be viewed more favorably by environmental groups.

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