WEEKLY MEDIA BRIEFING WITH ATTORNEY
GENERAL JANET RENO ALSO SPEAKING: CAROL BROWNER ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WASHINGTON, D.C. THURSDAY, JULY 20, 2000 9:30 A.M. EDT
ATTY GEN. RENO: Clean air is one of our most precious possessions, and we cannot take it for granted. Dirty air is just plain unhealthy.
It's uncomfortable, especially for our elderly, our children, and others who are most vulnerable among us.
We risk breathing it not only in our cities, plagued by smog, but in places such as our wonderful national parks, including the Great Smokies and Shenandoah.
It is for this reason that the Justice Department has joined with the EPA over these years to focus on what can be done to improve air quality in this country. And for that reason, I'm particularly glad once again to welcome the administrator of EPA, Carol Browner, to announce a landmark settlement with Willamette Industries that will help reduce emissions and protect our air quality.
The settlement requires the wood products company to pay an $11.2 million penalty, the largest penalty ever assessed for factory emissions of air pollution.
It requires the company to install $74 million worth of pollution control equipment at its factors across the United States. The consent decree that will be filed today in Portland, Oregon, covers 13 factories in four states: Oregon, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
The Clean Air Act required Willamette to install pollution- control equipment each time it expanded its factories, which produce plywood and other building products.
But we believe that Willamette did not follow the law, and as a result, thousands of tons of pollution were illegally released into the air.
Today's settlement is the third and the largest in our ongoing effort to make sure that the entire wood products industry complies with the Clean Air Act. In 1993 I joined Administrator Browner in announcing a similar settlement with Louisiana Pacific, and in 1996 we reached an agreement with Georgia Pacific.
It is only through these broad national enforcement efforts that we can fully address such air pollution in this country.
But it requires continued efforts. And again, I just want to acknowledge the great work that you and EPA have done.
And we appreciate it and appreciate having you here this morning.
MS. BROWNER: Well, thank you, Attorney General Reno.
And let me begin by joining you in thanking our colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency and here at the Justice Department for all of the work they do on these cases.
These are not easy cases.
They take a lot of time, a lot of energy, but they produce very, very dramatic results for people across the country.
Today we are announcing the largest enforcement penalty ever taken against a smokestack company under the Clean Air Act.
When a company chooses to pollute the air, it is not just breaking the law, it is placing the health of our families at risk.
The Clinton-Gore administration has fought, and will continue to fight, to protect the health of our families, especially our children, from air pollution.
Today the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department are announcing actions against Willamette Industries, based in Portland. This action totals $93 million.
That total includes the largest civil penalty, $11.2 million, ever levied against a single smokestack company for violations of the Clean Air Act.
We estimate that cleaning up the emissions from these plants will keep an average of 27,000 tons of pollution out of the air.
That is the equivalent of taking 287,000 cars off the road.
Two hundred eighty-seven thousand cars is approximately the number of cars in the city the size of Portland.
I want to thank all of the state officials who were a part of this effort, were partners with us in reaching these settlements.
I also want to note that the actions we take today and announce today are very similar to the cases that we have filed against the coal-fired utilities earlier this year. The rule of law is very straightforward.
Under the amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990, if you upgrade your facility, if you change your facility, if you increase your air pollution, you are required to come in and get a permit.
You are required to meet modern, current air pollution standards. It is that simple.
The terms of this settlement show once again that we are committed to an aggressive protection of our people, to an aggressive enforcement of the Clean Air Act; and if a company chooses to ignore the law, to pollute the air we breathe, they will pay a price.
Thank you.
Q Ms. Reno, Ms. Browner, is the settlement really that tough? The $74 million they would have had to pay anyway to upgrade their facilities; $11.2 million or even $19 million for a company this size is probably not that much.
Does it really discourage a company executive somewhere saying, "Now, look, we put this off for 10 years or so; it may cost us $20 million, but in the meantime we'll save $100 million or $150 million"?
MS. BROWNER: Well, I think it's a very, very aggressive settlement.
One, it is the largest penalty ever levied against a smokestack company for a Clean Air Act violation.
And I am sure, if you were to ask the company, they would not suggest that $11.2 million is nothing.
And there are other components to this beyond the financial.
For example, we are getting a multimedia assessment of their facility.
What that means is they are required to go out and do an assessment, not just of air pollution, but also water pollution, toxic waste, to really give us the full picture of what is going on at these facilities, information we cannot always get under the law.
They would also be required to develop an environmental management system. Again, that gives us an opportunity to focus on, not just air pollution issues, but to focus on other pollution that may be associated with these companies or with this company.
Q To follow up on his question, do you think that the law has enough teeth, in terms of the civil penalties that you could seek, to have provided the -- (turn ?) -- against companies from doing what you suggest is a cost-benefit analysis that they'll
MS. BROWNER: Well, we are allowed to recoup. Where there is a demonstrated financial benefit to the company, we can in fact recoup that benefit. And that is certainly taken into account when we reach these settlements with these companies for a violation of the Clean Air Act.
An example would be, in this particular instance, normally if they had come in through a permitting process, they would have had more than the two and a half years to install the equipment.
So we can move more expeditiously through a settlement to get the equipment installed. We can require, as I said before, a level of monitoring and reporting that we're not able to require under the law.
I would say that probably the question I would pose is not, "Are the penalties within the law enough?"; the question is, "When is Congress going to work with the administration to modernize environmental standards, to modernize environmental statutes?"
The vast majority of the environmental statutes in this country have not been updated to meet the kind of problems that we are dealing with today in the field, whether it be the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund Cleanup Program.
And the real question is, "When are they going to work with us to strengthen and modernize those statutes?"
Q Do you think there should be tougher financial penalties in the law?
That's --
MS. BROWNER: I think in some instances, yes, Congress should strengthen the penalty provisions where you have blatant disregard of environmental requirements. Absolutely.
Q Does a case like this fall in that category? Are there things you would have liked to have to have done if there were tougher --
MS. BROWNER: No, I think we're very pleased with this settlement.
I think it's important -- and the attorney general did say this -- one of the things that this administration has done and we've done at EPA, in cooperation with the Justice Department, is to move away from sort of the little enforcement cases and to move to sector-by- sector approaches. So, for example, we have been working across the wood product sector, beginning back in 1993, when we reached our first settlement.
What we have tended to find -- it's not always the case, but we've certainly tended to find that within an industry, if you find a violation in one place, you'll tend to find a similar violation across the industry.
And it allows us to reach -- to, one, get greater pollution reductions for the American people, and two, to reach much tougher agreements as we work across the sector.
Now in some sectors, what happens is once we file the first couple of cases, other people willingly come in and look at how to resolve their problems. Unfortunately, in the wood products industry, we have not seen that kind of cooperation, and so we've remained aggressive in reaching these cases. I mean, they're -- where people drag their feet, where people don't want to sit down with us and resolve the fact that they're in violation of the Clean Air Act, it takes a little bit longer.
Where they're willing to come in, then we can get this done more quickly.
Uh-huh?
Q Ms. Browner, the communities that these facilities were located in are pretty small towns.
MS. BROWNER: Yes.
Q And you would think that the addition of facilities would be noticed -- enough to produce all this additional pollution.
Who was asleep at the switch and failed to see that these facilities were being expanded, and failed to inquire about whether they needed new pollution control?
MS. BROWNER: First of all, it's not as if the footprint of the facility actually gets expanded. What happens is you go into the facility, and you make upgrades in your boiler capacity, so you're able to generate more energy, so you can make more pressed board.
You know, the example we've used before if you had an engine -- you know, you have a car, you have an engine in it, you put in a better engine, you know, it still looks like a car to your neighbors; they don't know that what you did is you just got a souped-up engine.
And so you can drive faster, you can drive with more power.
And that's what was happening at these facilities. It was not something you could see from outside, but the fact of the matter is, when you made these upgrades, when you changed the capacity of the facility to generate a product, you were required, when you made those upgrades, to meet new, modern pollution-control -- to install new, modern pollution-control devices.
And that's what they were not doing.
One of the reasons this is very, very hard to see -- and this is true in all of the pollution laws that we deal with -- is there is an element of -- what's -- companies are supposed to come forward and self-disclose.
They are under an obligation to notify the government, state or federal government, when they are making changes that require permits.
This company simply didn't do it, and so it was up to us to conduct investigations, which are not easy investigations to conduct, to prove that in fact these upgrades had been made and they were upgrades that fell within the requirement of a permit.
Part of the agreement will require these facilities to get permits and to operate within those permit limits into the future.
Q In cases of the states where these facilities are located, I assume they also have state clean air laws?
MS. BROWNER: No. Most states don't. Most states use the federal Clean Air Act. And they are using our standards, they are really quite dependant on the work that the EPA does.
Q There's no state regulatory mechanism that missed these additions in those states?
MS. BROWNER: What is happening is that as states are capable, they take over the day-to-day responsibility for implementing the federal Clean Air Act. We give them that responsibility and we sort of step aside and we backstop them if they feel they are unable to do something.
Several of the states in this particular case did participate quite eagerly in these cases, but increasingly, states will be handling the day-to-day permitting of these types of facilities, pursuant to the federal law. Most states have not adopted their own clean air act.
A few have, but to deal with particular problems. The vast majority of clean air protections in this country flow from the federal statutes, which may be managed by the states.
Q As enforcement, though, has gone back to the states, as you -- (inaudible) -- during the 1990s, EPA --
MS. BROWNER: No, no, no, no, no. Enforcement has not gone back to the state. This is a lawsuit that was filed with the Justice Department by the Environment Protection Agency. We do bring the state in because of their -- they can do some work in the field that, quite frankly, it's more cost effective to have them do than to have us do.
But when it comes to these large enforcement cases that have really been sort of -- where this administration has tried to move, those are being handled by the Environmental Protection Agency for the states, in most instances.
Q But in terms of routine enforcement, I mean, has not more of that sort of sort of devolved back to the states?
MS. BROWNER: There's two types of enforcement that go on in the environmental arena. One are these very big cases; for example, what we filed against the coal-fired power plants, what we filed against the diesel engine manufacturers, what we announce here today.
Those we handle. That is the best use of our resources. When you have an individual facility in an individual community where something is noticed during an annual inspection, that will be handled by the state.
But where you have practices that may reach across an entire sector, an entire industry sector, that is the best use of our resources.
These cases are very expensive to investigate.
They are very expensive to prove.
And you get the greatest pollution reduction in these cases.
And so we did make a decision in this administration that we would focus our energies, our enforcement dollars on these largest cases.
And we have been incredibly successful. I mean, virtually every statute now, we have set the record for the penalties paid because we are going out and applying what we learn perhaps from one large company across an industry sector.
We've also been incredibly successful in getting very, very large pollution reductions through these enforcement programs, and then we leave to the states the smaller, individual facility cases.
Q How widespread have you seen these practices?
MS. BROWNER: Excuse me?
Q How widespread have these practices been?
MS. BROWNER: Well, within this particular sector, this is the third large case that we announced. Wood products, just so you know, these are people that are making pressboard, or what you might refer to as particle board. And the first one the attorney general and I announced was in 1993. It was really the beginning of EPA's sector- based work, where we were moving away, sort of, from individual facilities, you know. There are 13 facilities here. Imagine if we had done them sort of individually.
Instead, what we were able to do is look across this sector, look at this particular company and move forward aggressively.
Unfortunately, what we do find is, within highly competitive industry sectors, if there is -- you know, if one company is doing it sort of a lot, there's a good chance that you're going to see it in other companies. That's certainly been our experience.
The example would be the diesel engine case, where it was every single diesel engine manufacturer was doing the same thing, essentially shutting off the pollution-control devices when the trucks got out on the road so that it could -- they weren't meeting pollution control requirements on the road.
They had met them in our labs, but they wouldn't meet them out on the road.
Very, very clever thing.
But they were all doing it.
Similarly here, this now -- with this case, this is the third one -- I think -- represents 50 percent of the wood products industry, where we have found this kind of problem.
Similarly, we are alleging in the coal-fired utilities we have now filed against -- I want to say two dozen companies and some number of facilities in that case, making the same allegation, which is that they were required, when they upgraded their capacity, they upgraded their facilities, to come in and get permits, and they simply didn't do it. And, therefore, they weren't installing the kind of modern control technology.
So I think, unfortunately, you do see too much of it within individual sectors. But the good news is, because we have changed our focus to a sector-based focus, that we are able to find them and to benefit from the prior work that we do.
Q Do you anticipate more big cases out there in the wood- product industry, or do you think you have cleaned house?
MS. BROWNER: We are not done with our work -- (chuckles) -- in the wood-products industry. Let me put it that way.
Q How many pending investigations?
MS. BROWNER: It's -- (consults with staff).
STAFF (?): The EPA issued a National Notice Violation to Boise Cascade in March of this year.
STAFF (?): That's another one.
Q If I could change the subject?
Ms. Reno, the -- (inaudible) -- has ridiculed the administration for its claims that it needs more time to work out clemency guidelines.
He says: "The death penalty has been back on the books since 1988. Mr. Garza was sentenced seven years ago.
Why is this suddenly taking you by surprise? Why did you not have these guidelines in place long hence?"
ATTY GEN. RENO: We have been working on them for some time, and we'd like to make sure that they are done in an orderly way.
I don't think anybody wants to rush, in a nondeliberative way, to carry out the death penalty.
We want to do it in a careful dignified, thoughtful manner.
Q But why has it taken seven years to get to this place?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I think I mentioned last time that sometimes things don't move as fast as I would like them to.
But where the implementation of the death penalty is at issue, I think we must be very careful.
Q Ms. Reno, Notra Trulock III is telling people that he is the victim of harassment by the administration because of his whistle- blowing activities at the Department of Energy. The FBI has seized Mr. Trulock's computer.
Can you tell us anything about how this investigation began?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment. If the FBI can make any comment, I would refer you to them.
Q Ms. Reno, the head of your Campaign Finance Task Force heads up to the Hill today, Dan Burton's committee.
Has there been any movement on his recommendation for a special counsel? Have you received the input that you said that you'd be receiving last week -- other people in the department? What's the status of that?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I'm expecting it shortly.
Q And also, if I could, the congressman was also asking for the Justice Department to investigate Vice President Al Gore's comments on a videotaped White House fundraiser regarding James Riady. Is that also an aspect of investigation that you're looking at at this moment?
ATTY GEN. RENO: We're always glad to receive any new information and pursue it.
Q I think there's a Justice Department policy that -- I understand this -- you don't bring big cases that might impact on the election during the election season.
Would -- assuming that's right, would you apply that principle to the Gore decision?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I don't think that there is a policy per se, but I think that you have look at each situation and make the best judgment you can.
Q And can you give us your assessment as to whether this situation falls in that category?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I don't know what situation you're referring to.
Q A decision on a special counsel for the vice president.
ATTY GEN. RENO: A decision on a special counsel would not be a part of a decision to charge or not to charge in some situations, and I don't think there's any policy with respect to a special counsel.
Q Ms. Reno, there's a new book out -- it's called "Rats in the Grain" -- about the criminal prosecution of ADM, and it makes some disturbing allegations about the Justice Department's criminal case.
Primarily, it says that the two top officers of the company, Dwayne Andreas and James Randall (sp), were never even interviewed, even though the FBI took statements from, for example, Howard Buffett (sp), who was a member of the board, saying that there was a tub of shredded documents outside of Dwayne's office, that Dwayne and Randall (sp) knew about this -- the whistle-blower's off-the-books compensation.
But these people were never interviewed. And he makes the case that he thought that the ADM lawyers at Williams & Connolly were in charge of what was going on, and that's why this happened.
Do you have any idea why Dwayne Andreas, the CEO of the company, and James Randall (sp), the president, were never interviewed?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I've not read the book, so I couldn't comment.
Q But you were in charge of the investigation. Do you have any idea?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I won't comment in the context of the book, since you're asking questions in the context of the book.
I've discovered when questions are asked in a specific context, they are often taken out of context.
Q Madame Attorney General, a couple of days ago you reversed a decision of the implementing the clause of the 1996 Immigration Reform Act of retroactivity in some minor criminal cases.
Can you comment on that, one? And two --
ATTY GEN. RENO: Can --
Q The 1996 Immigration Reform Act --
ATTY GEN. RENO: But what was your --
Q The retroactivity of the --
ATTY GEN. RENO: Yes --
Q -- clause that allows people to have committed crimes before, minor crimes before, the --
ATTY. GEN. RENO: Could you speak just a little bit louder?
Q Sure. The -- this activity of the 1996 Immigration Reform Act which allowed some people who have been in the States less than 30 years and have committed a minor crime to be deported retroactively. You have made a decision not to reverse that decision to apply retroactivity.
Would you comment why? And would it mean that some of the people that were deported on those bases could come back -- could reapply?
ATTY. GEN. RENO: The purpose of the proposed rule is to restore uniformity between the different circuits nationwide in the administration of the waiver.
Right now, there are a variety of different and contradictory rules, depending on the judicial circuit in which the deportation proceeding arose.
If the person is still in the country, they could be eligible.
If they have been deported, they would not be eligible.
Q So -- I'm sorry, could I follow up? That means that this section has a unconstitutional aspect of it that might be shot down by either federal courts or the Supreme Court?
ATTY. GEN. RENO: Which section hasn't?
Q The retroactivity aspect of the law, on deportation.
ATTY. GEN. RENO: I don't know what the Supreme Court would do with respect to the issue, but what we are trying to do is to provide for uniformity between the circuits by the proposed rule.
Q So -- can I just ask you about that particular question? So, do you have a policy now that you're not going to apply the --
what do they call it, the "violent criminal offender" -- aspect of the 1996 IRA law to misdemeanor offenses that were done before the law was passed? Have you eliminated retroactive enforcement of that from before?
ATTY. GEN. RENO: What we're trying to do is reinstate a discretionary form of relief for certain lawful permanent residents whose criminal convictions subjected them to deportation.
But lawful permanent -- the criteria are: lawful permanent residence; seven years of lawful, unrelinquished domicile; and less than five years served for an aggravated felony or felonies.
Q Attorney General --
Q Charles Bakaly's request for a trial had the effect of unsealing all the court documents in his case, so we learned about that case that we didn't know about. Setting that aside, are there still departmental investigations pending into other aspects of the independent counsel, or is that all now done?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I would not comment one way or the other.
Q Ms. Reno, did you have a choice about whether to pursue the Bakaly prosecution?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I think in these situations in which the court has referred the matter to us for prosecution, if we determine that there was not any basis for it, we would be obligated and it would be our duty to advise the court.
Q Ms. Reno, how involved were you in the Justice Department's decision not to support the nomination of Jay Carver (sp) to head the offender supervision agency?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I am expecting further reports, so at this point I could not comment.
Q Ms. Reno, you have expressed in the past that one of the most moving things in your tenure here was your meeting with the parents of Matthew Shepard.
Today the parents of another killing victim are here, claiming that there may also have been some bias, similar bias.
Do you plan to personally sit in on that meeting, and, whether or not you do personally, why did the Justice Department decide to meet the parents today?
ATTY GEN. RENO: The request was made to Mr. Holder, and he is meeting with them.
Q You're not going to be able to do so?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I expect a full report from him.
Q Is there any potential federal jurisdiction here?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I could not comment. I don't want to prematurely judge whatever the family might want to make available to Mr. Holder.
Q Ms. Reno, have you had opportunity to meet Vicente Fox, the president-elect of Mexico?
ATTY GEN. RENO: No, I have not.
Q You do not know him? He has made statements that go to the core of corruption, saying he will clean up the government ier">of Mexico and clean up Mexico generally.
And he said something about the rule of law will be very important to him so far as Mexico is concerned, and you said something about the rule of law last week.
And I just wondered if that resonates with you.
ATTY GEN. RENO: Well, I've been saying a lot about the rule of law for most of my adult life. (Laughter.)
Just as an aside, I had a chance to be at Runnymede this past Saturday.
That's where the barons met King John and where the rule of law as we know it in our Constitution, in our Bill of Rights, where much of the foundation of those principles of the rule of law were applied.
It was a wonderful afternoon. And there was a young man out in the meadow below us, who was exercising his free speech.
(Laughter.) I think he was more gracious than the barons had been. But it reminded you of just how important it is to enforce the rule of law.
It was also very moving to remember that, 60 years before beginning in August, the RAF pilots fought the Battle of Britain.
And then you remembered the people who took small boats over to Dunkirk to evacuate British forces fleeing the continent.
And then you just looked at what it must have been like. I visited the war rooms where the cabinet had met during bombing raids.
And you realized the valiant courage of the people of the city of London, where 29,000 people were killed during the war from bombs.
And it makes you realize that the rule of law requires all of us to participate and to be involved and to never, ever relax our vigilance.
Q Ms. Reno, the 10th anniversary of ADA is coming up next week.
Could you talk for a minute about what the types of cases the Justice Department has brought, in recent years, has shown about the need for the law?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I can remember as state attorney in Miami when the act was passed, we had tried to make sure that we had done everything within our local laws to address these issues. And the passage of the act began to open doors.
When I came to Washington, it was one of the first issues that confronted me: How do we explain to people that the act is reasonable, that it's not unduly burdensome, and that it can open opportunities for so many Americans?Yesterday, at Warm Springs, I had the chance to see so many different people who had disabilities but you would never know it, if you just thought about how productive they were, how they were contributing, and what a difference they could make.
I think the act has opened doors. It's given people an opportunity to have employment, to have recreational opportunities, to engage in activities that they never dreamed of before.
It was particularly poignant, in the context of Franklin Roosevelt, to remember that some people said, when he got polio in the 1920s, that his political career was finished, that he could never go on, and that he should just retire to Hyde Park and enjoy life there.
He went on to become governor of New York and president, elected for four terms, faced the Depression and one of the worst wars in the history of the world.
It is the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt and the spirit of the ADA and the spirit of the wonderful people I met yesterday that I think have given the act great force in this country and made America far more productive and given people far more opportunity.
Q And Ms. Reno, I just had one question on the Waco verdict last Friday.
The lead attorney for the Davidians said after the jury came back that he thought, unfortunately, that this will probably be the final word on Waco in the eyes of many Americans I'm just wondering, do you think that after this trial and perhaps even after the Danforth report comes out, that there still will be doubts among Americans about how the Justice Department handled this? Or do you think that this will put things to rest finally?
ATTY GEN. RENO: Well, I don't want to prejudge anything that the special counsel might say. And I think we should wait and let Senator Danforth's report speak for itself, whatever it says.
Q Is he working on a final report? Has he finished the investigative work?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I don't know.
Q Thank you very much.
Q Thank you.
Q It appears that the plea bargaining talks in the Olympic investigation have broken down. First, do you have any comment on that?
And second, do you plan to move forward with the charges in that?
ATTY GEN. RENO: I don't have any comment on either number one nor number two, one way or the other.
MS. BROWNER: Thank you all.
ATTY GEN. RENO: Thank you.
Q Thank you.
MS. BROWNER: Let me -- before -- we just want to make sure -- I think I reversed two numbers in something I said.
It is seven utilities that we have filed similar cases against, 24 facilities owned by the seven utilities.
I may have gotten the number wrong.
The other thing is -- I just want to be clear -- the economic benefit has been captured in the penalty and some in addition to the economic benefit.
So the 11.2 million does include the money the company made by avoiding the law.
Q (Off mike) -- additional -- the EPA has a big Supreme Court case pending --
MS. BROWNER: Oh, yeah.
Q -- with the American Trucking Association.
MS. BROWNER: Two.
Q Is -- both of those cases -- is this sort of action that you took today in jeopardy in those Supreme Court cases?
Is your authority to carry out these sorts of enforcement actions in jeopardy in the Supreme Court cases?
MS. BROWNER: I think far more important in the Supreme Court cases is our ability to set any public health standard.
The provision that has been challenged in the Supreme Court now is a simple provision that says -- it's been in the Clean Air Act for 30 years -- says, "EPA shall set public health air pollution standards with a margin of safety based on best available science.
" And essentially, what you have is industry arguing that that is an unconstitutional delegation of authority by Congress to the EPA.
If we can't set standards, whether it be water pollution standards, air pollution standards, then we can't even begin to provide a level of protection.
And these enforcement cases work against, in many instances, a backdrop of the kind of standards that we set, the kind of ambient air pollution standards that we set.
So it throws -- to lose that case is to throw into complete turmoil the underpinnings of almost every single environmental and public health statute in the country.
Thank you.
Q Thank you.
Q What is -- in the Willamette case, what will be saved, insofar as pollution is concerned, when the equipment is up and --
MS. BROWNER: It's about 27,000 tons of pollution. And the pollution is -- the most prevalent is VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are what cause smog.
Q Okay.
END.