Environmental groups like him better than most GOP senators but chide him when he votes with his party on measures they oppose.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 28, 2006

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Outside a quiet Senate committee room Tuesday morning, a lobbyist for Greenpeace confronted U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee to protest his role in killing a Democratic bill meant to protect sewage plants from terrorists.

Rick Hind told Chafee: You cast the deciding vote to shield the chemical industry's "bad legislation" from Democratic amendments. You are part of "the dishonesty in Washington" that denies the threat of volatile waste treatment gases in 100 cities, he said. The man from Greenpeace spoke in low, angry tones partly to tell "hard truths" to a Republican who usually hears praise from environmentalists, he said, and partly to be quoted in Chafee's home state newspaper.

Compared with President Bush's push for oil drilling in the Arctic wilderness, say, or the power industry's campaign to ease restrictions on smokestack emissions, Chafee's stance on the sewage matter was not the most urgent question on a lot of environmental policy lists.

Still, the scene outside the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee was a glimpse at the unstable chemistry between Chafee and some liberal constituencies that are crucial to his prospects for reelection this year in Democratic Rhode Island.

On the one hand, many environmentalists revere Chafee as the lone Republican willing and able to block legislation they view as attacking the nation's air and water quality laws. Not even the "greenest" Democrat wields such power in a Senate ruled by the GOP.

"Senator Chafee keeps all kinds of bad things from happening," said David Willett, of the Sierra Club, the granddaddy of U.S. conservation groups, which recently gave Chafee its only endorsement of a Senate Republican.

On the other hand, even Chafee's friends in the environmental movement chide him when he votes with his party on measures they oppose. The latest examples were his votes last week to help push the Republican wastewater plant security bill through the environment panel on a straight party-line vote -- and to table a Democratic version that would have required more spending and speedier action to address the issue.

"We're disappointed, of course," said Tony Massaro, a top lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, which has also endorsed Chafee. "We'd like everybody we support -- and everybody in the Congress -- to be 100-percenters" on environmental issues, Massaro said.

Some people take a harder line against Chafee; often, they are Democrats opposed to the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, not only on environmental questions but across the board.

Their argument includes environmental issues but transcends them as well. If the Democrats were to seize back control of the Senate from the GOP -- which holds 55 of 100 seats today -- there would be no need of a Chafee to stand in the way of the Bush administration's most objectionable initiatives on the environment or on other fronts. Nor would there be much worry in a Democratic Senate, by this reasoning, that a Chafee would sometimes help his party on controversial nominations or key procedural gambits.

That partisan logic would suggest a vote against Chafee, even if he scored 100 percent on every environmental scorecard, because his defeat would represent a step toward a Democratic Senate majority.

That, of course, "is the whole premise of the Democratic campaign against me," said Chafee, "but it hinges on a lot happening around the country." Chafee was hinting, not in so many words, at the rationale that some environmentalists give for backing Chafee: He is an invaluable hedge against the possibility that the Republicans will remain in power.

A Republican Senate without Chafee would be far more likely to weaken environmental law, according to Massaro of the League of Conservation Voters. And whatever the difficulties in the current Congress, he added, it is against the long-term interest of the environmental community to shun friendly Republicans.

Alex Swartsel, spokeswoman for Democratic Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse, countered that Democratic control of the Senate is the only satisfactory "check" against Mr. Bush, whom she called "the worst president in history" on environmental issues.

"The Republican Party knows that when they really need him, Senator Chafee will be there for them," said Swartsel. Among other issues, she cited last week's wastewater votes in the environment committee and Chafee's recent support for a top appointee to the Environmental Protection Administration whom environmentalists generally opposed.

Chafee and his supporters among the environmentalists disagree.

For example, Chafee said that "as a test of my mettle," Republican leadership has called votes on such measures as President Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative -- which environmentalists considered a weakening of clean air protections.

Republican Chafee killed the Senate version of the Clear Skies bill by bucking his leadership and voting with the Democrats to force a 9-to-9 vote on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

"It's not easy sitting there as they call the roll to be the one vote against your party," Chafee said. The result, according to Chafee, is that leadership does not call for votes on such measures as a Republican bill to change the Endangered Species Act because it knows he will fight the changes on environmental grounds.

"He is with us on the major issues," said Massaro.

Chafee's votes on the wastewater treatment plant security issue was "disappointing," Massaro allowed, because the League of Conservation Voters, like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, wants mandatory action to do away with chlorine gas treatment of sewage. Supporters of the Democratic version of the bill raised the fear that the volatile gas is often stored in large vessels that are ready targets for terrorists.

When Rick Hind, of Greenpeace, confronted him on the issue Tuesday, Chafee flushed red and grew terse. "Do the best we can," he replied.

Later, he came up with a defense of the Republican waste-plant security bill: It would study the chemical risks as a reasonable first step, whereas the Democratic version would impose immediate and onerous federal mandates on local governments.

As longtime mayor of Warwick, Chafee said, he oversaw the operation of the city's sewage treatment plant in the days when it used chlorine gas. When he was mayor, he was mindful of safety concerns about leaks of the caustic gas, Chafee said. But he did not view the amounts of chlorine used in Warwick as a major security issue.

Chafee also said that there will be another opportunity to debate the issue this year, when the Senate Homeland Security Committee, of which he is a member, considers wider-ranging chemical plant security legislation.

During the course of two interviews on the topic -- as well as his dialogue with the Greenpeace lobbyist -- Chafee took a sober-minded approach to the safety of the nation's wastewater treatment systems.

But the senator also found humorous possibilities in the jeremiads about terrorist targeting of sewage plants. "They're going to blow up our poop," Chafee joked.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com / (202) 661-8423