I'm not talking about some dim bulb of a boss who unwittingly gums up the works (because, after all, what's unusual about that?). I'm talking about Very Important People who are undermining the efforts of our nation's top environmental cops to enforce the Clean Air Act. In the process, these same powerful folks are exhibiting a callous disregard for our health.

The saboteur in this case, broadly speaking, is the White House. According to the resignation letter of whistle-blower Eric Schaeffer, who was the chief of the EPA's civil-enforcement office until he quit late last month, the White House "seems determined to weaken the rules we [EPA] are trying to enforce."

The rules Schaeffer refers to are known as "new source review." These provisions of the Clean Air Act require older coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities to upgrade pollution controls when they undergo major renovations or expansions that result in higher emissions.

A couple of years ago, the EPA started filing lawsuits against power companies that the agency alleged were skirting new-source-review rules. The companies named in the suits, Schaeffer said in his resignation letter, emit 7 million tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide annually. A substantial portion of this soot- and acid rain-causing pollution would be cut if the companies were forced to follow new-source-review regulations.

That, Schaeffer says, would prevent thousands of premature deaths each year, as well as thousands of incidents of chronic bronchitis, thousands of emergency-room visits, and hundreds of thousands of lost work days. Further, it would diminish acid-rain attacks and lessen nitrogen deposits in bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay.

It's important for Virginians that utilities--which are responsible for more pollution in our state than any other industry--stop spewing so much crud into the air we breathe. According to the EPA, pollutants from power plants contribute to the deaths of hundreds of Virginians each year. A study published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that soot from power plants and other sources increases some Virginians' risk of lung cancer as much as living with a smoker.

In July 2000, the state of New York-- unhappy recipient of air pollution from power plants in the Southeast and Midwest--sued Virginia Power for violating new-source-review rules. With backing from the U.S. Justice Department and EPA, New York got Virginia Power to agree in principle to significantly reduce air pollution from the company's eight old coal-fired power plants (including the Possum Point Power Station in Dumfries).

But Virginia Power has refused to sign the consent decree it agreed to in 2000, hedging its bets, as Schaeffer put it, while waiting for the Bush administration's proposals to revise new-source-review rules. Other air polluters with which EPA was close to settlement "have walked away from the table," Schaeffer writes in his letter, adding that "the momentum we obtained with agreements announced earlier has stopped."

Despite mutterings from conservative quarters about Schaeffer's motives for quitting EPA, the former enforcement official, who received an award from Attorney General John Ashcroft just last August for exemplary public service, does not fit the profile of a partisan. Schaeffer was hired by the first Bush administration and has said that Bush I was great on enforcement and on closing loopholes in the Clean Air Act.

Noting the sad irony of the second Bush administration's desire to expand those loopholes, Schaeffer told MSNBC that Dubya's "dad should talk to him."

The Bush II line is that the administration seeks to balance environmental concerns against the demands of the energy industry--whose high-powered lobbyists include former Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour and erstwhile Republican White House counsel C. Boyden Gray.

But you have to wonder about the Bushies' concept of balance. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., says that Energy Department officials met with 64 energy-industry representatives to discuss revisions to the Clean Air Act--but only one environmental group. Is it any surprise, then, that Bush's recently unveiled "Clear Skies" initiative has been derided as a smoke screen (pun intended) that's meant to obscure the administration's gutting of the Clean Air Act?

The Bushies' mockery of the notion of even-handedness is very bad news for people in Virginia and other parts of the country who breathe dangerously dirty air. Until the White House reverses its extremist course on clean air, many Americans will be living with--and sometimes dying because of--the frightful consequences of decisions that have been overly determined by polluters who get preferential treatment from this administration.

RICK MERCIER is a copy editor and columnist for The Free Lance-Star.

Copyright 2002, The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co

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