Target: Stonewalling EPA.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Nearly two years have passed since California asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver allowing the state to impose new limits on vehicle emissions as part of its landmark initiative to combat global warming.

Last Thursday, California, Oregon and 13 other states took the Bush administration to federal court, demanding that the EPA stop stonewalling the waiver request, which clearly should be approved under the federal Clean Air Act.

Government agencies should sue each other only as a last resort. That's a fitting description for the situation faced by California, as well as the 14 other states that have adopted the same tailpipe standards but can't put them in place until the EPA grants California's waiver request.

Under the Clean Air Act, only California is allowed to regulate air pollution more strictly than the federal government. But it must first obtain a waiver from the EPA based on evidence that the state has shown "extraordinary and compelling conditions" justifying stricter standards. The law gives other states, such as Oregon, the right to adopt California's regulations - but they, too, must wait for an EPA waiver.

EPA officials insist the agency is moving as fast as it can to resolve the waiver request and say they need additional time to review the more than 100,000 written responses it received during a public comment period on the new rules.

Yet the EPA has granted every one of California's previous 40 waiver requests over the past three decades without undue delay. As for public comment, it has run almost unanimously in favor the new regulations. As Dan Galpern, a Eugene attorney representing environmental groups in the case, notes, "There's not a lot of weighing to be done."

A two-year EPA delay is unconscionable - and it reflects an obstructionist strategy by a Bush White House that has no intention of allowing individual states to fill the appalling void in federal action to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

President Bush already has made it clear he intends to run out the clock on his second term. For evidence, one need look no further than his recent order to federal agencies to develop proposals for regulating vehicle emissions by the time he leaves office in January 2009.

The EPA appears intent on doing the president's obstructionist bidding. But the agency has run out of legal excuses to delay or deny the waiver request.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the EPA has both the authority and responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases in auto emissions. In September, a federal judge rejected the auto industry's efforts to block Vermont's proposed tailpipe rules, which are based on the California model.

The consequences of delay are significant. Vehicles generate a third of greenhouse emissions in the 15 states that have adopted or plan to adopt the new tailpipe standards, and the new rules eventually would cut those emissions by a full 30 percent. At a time when the physical, economic and social effects of global warming are increasingly clear, the EPA must stop stonewalling.

The federal government still has time to do the right thing and immediately grant California's waiver request. Or, at the very least, the EPA should deny it so the states can appeal in time to start implementing the new rules in 2009, as planned.

The Bush administration's record of foot-dragging on global warming suggests an expedited ruling of any kind is unlikely - which is why California, Oregon and 13 other states are suing the federal government.