| Epa administrator resigns air standards Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0503/22whitman.htmlhttp://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0503/22whitman.html
Resigning Whitman denies strife with Bush
By JEFF NESMITH Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, whose tenure was marked by policy differences with the White House, announced her resignation Wednesday.
Whitman was known to have advocated policies on climate change, arsenic in drinking water and other issues that eventually were overruled by White House officials.
But she denied Wednesday that her decision to leave the Bush administration had anything to do with the disagreements.
"I'm not leaving because of clashes with the White House," she said in an interview on CNN. "In fact, I haven't had any."
Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, said she was tired of commuting between her home there and Washington, and wanted to spend more time with her husband.
She noted that White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who announced his own resignation earlier this week, had said that administration officials who wish to leave should do so now, rather than after the 2004 election campaign gets under way.
One former EPA official said Wednesday that Whitman had been unhappy in recent weeks about White House pressure to relax air pollution enforcement rules at electric power plants.
Former EPA enforcement director Eric Schaeffer said career officials at EPA told him Whitman had resisted a rule change pushed by the White House Office of Management and Budget that would let the electric power industry take greater advantage of Clean Air Act exemptions from air pollution standards.
EPA spokesman Joe Martyak did not respond to a request for comment on Schaeffer's statement.
Whitman's resignation, which she announced in a short e-mail to EPA employees, set off immediate speculation about her likely successor.
Her deputy, Linda Fisher, was mentioned by members of Congress and their staffs. So were Mary Gade, who headed the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency under former Gov. Jim Edgar, and David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Environmental groups and their supporters in Congress generally reacted to Whitman's announcement by expressing regret about much of what has happened during her tenure at EPA.
"Governor Whitman leaves a legacy of lost opportunities and lost ground, which is due primarily to the environmentally hostile, special interest-driven administration that employed and often frustrated her," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.).
Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director, said Whitman "did the best she could at the EPA, but the Bush administration simply wouldn't allow her to do the job."
But Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an organization made up of the utilities most eagerly seeking changes in New Source Review, said Whitman had "been a voice of reason" at EPA.
"While ERCC has not agreed with every Whitman priority, we have respected her sense of mission and professionalism," Segal said.
Whitman's tenure at EPA has been tumultuous, and she has borne the brunt of environmentalists' anger over administration policies.
She and EPA threw the community of environmental groups into disarray last month when she proposed a rule imposing strict pollution controls on non-road diesel machinery, such as tractors, tugboats and bulldozers.
The rule, if finalized, could eliminate enough pollution to save as many as 9,000 lives a year , the EPA estimated.
"We wish she would stick around to see that [the diesel rule] through," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. "Who knows what might happen before that rule becomes final next spring?"
O'Donnell said that, aside from the non-road diesel machinery rule, Whitman's tenure at EPA "has been a disaster for clean air."
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