Nation & world briefing
JBush plans to ease smog control
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Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON— The Bush ad
ministration said Wednesday that
it plans to ease and delay pollu
tion-control standards for dozens
of urban areas whose smog levels
would violate tough new smog
rules if they were put into effect
without change.
The Environmental Protection
Agency’s 368-page proposal would
lessen smog-control requirements
for about 35 metropolitan areas
where 47 million people live in
moderate air pollution. So long as
smog remains undiminished in
those areas, people there who suf
fer from asthma or other respirato
ry problems would be at risk.
The metro areas affected are
mostly in the Southeast, especially
in the Carolinas, Georgia and Ten
nessee, but they also include De
troit; Fort Wayne, Ind,; Gleveland
Akron; San Diego and Phoenix.
These areas have excessive smog
under rules proposed in 1997 that
have been tied up in court ever
since. They are not too smoggy un
der the rules that currently are in
effect, which date to 1979.
Under the EPA’s proposed ac
tion, industries and governments
in the affected areas could have an
extra year or more to adopt pollu
tion-control technologies to meet
the tough new standard, and might
not have to employ the toughest
controls now required of the smog
giest cities. Standards that could
be eased include requiring older
polluting plants to get new emis
sion controls, cars to be inspected
and vehicles to use clean gasoline.
The standard deals only with
ozone, which is commonly called
smog, and not soot or acid rain. Smog
results when industrial and auto pol
lutants are warmed in the sun.
The EPA proposes to put the
1997 smog standard — 33 percent
tougher than the 1979 one — into
effect in 2004.
The U.S. Supreme Court has or
dered the EPA to come up with a
better plan for moving from the
1979 standard to the 1997 one,
but upheld the later one’s legality.
The 1997 standard measures
smaller amounts of smog over eight
hours; the 1979 standard measured
intense smog over only a one-hour
period. Scientific studies show that
smog is a big health problem when
it’s at low levels for long periods, said
Doug Dockery, a Harvard School of
Public Health epidemiologist.
If the EPA didn’t ease the 1997
standards, metro areas exceeding
smog standards would be told in
April 2004 that they are violating
tie law. They would then have five
years to come up with plans meet
ing specific requirements to clean
their air. Under the new EPA pro
posal, they could have at least six
years, and maybe more.
Cities that are so smoggy that
they violate both the 1979 and
1997 standards —- such as Houston,
Philadelphia and Los Angeles —
wouldn’t be affected by this EPA
proposal. They already are required
to take steps to reduce smog.
Environmentalists criticized the
Lignteen illegal aliens die m truck trailer
David McLemore
The Dallas Morning News (KRT)
VICTORIA, Texas — The bodies
of 18 undocumented immigrants,
including a 5-year-old boy, were
found near a truck stop early
Wednesday, a few hours after au
thorities got a desperate, untrace
able 911 call for help from inside a
locked, unventilated cargo trailer.
The immigrants apparently died
after they and dozens of others
traveled for hours in the trailer.
Victoria County Sheriffs De
partment officials, answering a dis
turbance call at the Speedy Spot
truck stop at about 2:15 a.m. CDT
on Wednesday, discovered the
trailer nearby on a county road. It
had been parked there for about
an hour and someone had opened
the trailer doors, officials said. Es
timates of the number of immi
grants — from Mexico, El Salvador
and Honduras — who had been
locked inside the truck ranged
from 60 to 100. Thirty people who
ran from the truck after the doors
were opened later were detained
by authorities.
Officials found 13 bodies inside
the trailer and four bodies on the
ground. Another person died later
in a local hospital.
U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby in
Houston said one man had been
arrested, and authorities were
looking for two other people. Shel
by said Tyrone Williams of Sch
enectady, N.Y., was arrested at an
undisclosed location in Bellaire,
Texas, after “some pretty good de
tective work.”
Williams, a legal U.S. resident
from Jamaica, was being held at
the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement in north
Houston and could face charges of
smuggling of illegal immigrants re
sulting in deaths, which can carry
the death penalty.
A woman who answered the
telephone at Williams’ house in
southeast Schenectady identified
herself as his wife, Karen. She said
Williams hauls produce and that
most of his runs are in Texas. She
said her husband is innocent. “He
was victimized,” she said.
As investigators combed the ru
ral area where the trailer and bod
ies were found, local, state, federal
and Mexican officials interviewed
the survivors, who were either in
area hospitals or the Victoria
Community Center. The Red
Cross provided beds, food and wa
Russia remains unmoved on Iraq sanctions
Alex Rodriguez
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
MOSCOW — The first signs of a
thaw in the icy dialogue between
Washington and Moscow over the
war to oust Saddam Hussein sur
faced Wednesday, but that failed to
help U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell in his bid to win Russia's
support for the lifting of U.N. sanc
tions on Iraq.
Russia's lower house of parlia
ment ratified a landmark treaty
that slashes the strategic nuclear
arsenals of Russia and the United
States by two-thirds over the next
10 years, a vote clearly timed to co
incide with Powell's visit to Moscow
on Wednesday.
However, after talks with Russian
President Vladimir Putin and Russ
ian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov,
Powell failed to convince the Krem
lin that sanctions imposed on
Baghdad 12 years ago after its inva
sion of Kuwait are no longer needed
now that Hussein's regime has
been removed from power.
Russia has yet to back away from
its insistence that United Nations
weapons inspectors be returned to
Iraq to assure the world that the
threat of nuclear, biological or
chemical weapons no longer exists
in the country.
“With respect to Iraq, there are
some outstanding issues, and we
will be working these issues in a
spirit of partnership and trying to
come to a solution,” Powell told re
porters at a Kremlin news confer
ence with Ivanov at his side.
Though the issue of sanctions re
mained unresolved, Powell's visit to
Moscow was also meant to ease
tensions between both countries
and set the right tone for the up
coming summit between Putin and
President Bush in St. Petersburg
later this month.
Relations between Washington
and Moscow hit a low point at the
war's outset, when Putin accused
the Bush administration of replacing
international law with “the law of
the fist.” On Wednesday, Putin said
disagreements between the two
countries over how the war was
handled were finally behind them.
“We have talked a lot, and dis
v English as usua7
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EPAs proposal as watering down
the pending standard.
David Hawkins, a former Garter
administration air-quality chief
who’s now a top official at the Nat
ural Resources Defense Council,
an environmental group, called the
EPA’s proposal “bad policy and il
legal” because it would take away
requirements that Congress put in
the 1990 Clean Air Act.
Industry and business officials
praised the plan.
“EPA is doing a very reasonable
job,” said Bob Bessette, the presi
dent of the Council of Industrial
Boiler Owners. “It’s going to give
some flexibility that could very
much help move things forward
much faster and help us.”
The proposal will become final
at the end of the year after three
public hearings in June, in Dallas,
San Francisco and Washington.
€> 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune
information Services.
ter, and authorities said federal of
ficials would take custody of the
immigrants on Thursday.
“They’re giving their locations,
their addresses and their residences
and we’re compiling all of that data
right now,” Sheriff Michael Ratcliff
said. “It’s a slow process, and these
people have been traumatized.
They’re not moving with information
very quickly.”
Officials said 15 people were
treated at local hospitals and
eight, two in critical condition, re
mained hospitalized on Wednes
day evening.
© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services. Dallas Morning
News correspondents David Sedeno,
Bruce Nichols and Michelle Mittelstadt
contributed to this report.
agreed a lot, over the Iraq prob
lem,” Putin said. “But I think we
have managed to safeguard the fun
damental basis of our relationship,
and I am hopeful that the upcom
ing meeting with President Bush
will give a further impetus to suc
cessful development in all areas of
our cooperation.”
© 2003, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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