HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: National

April 24, 2001, 9:52PM

Pilot program will reward employers for e-commuters

By KAREN MASTERSON Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A new federal program launched Tuesday will offer tax breaks and other incentives to companies in five cities, including Houston, that let employees work from home.

Businesses would get a credit for each of its "e-commuters" that the company could use for an IRS tax break or sell to power plants and other large polluters -- which would use them to delay adhering to stricter clean air requirements.

Houston is one of five cities selected for the pilot project, overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that essentially pays employers to let workers stay at home. Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington are the other four cities in the program.

While Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and some environmentalists say the program would help clean the air over Houston, critics charge it would do little to stop smokestacks from pumping carcinogens and other pollutants into the air over economically poor communities.

"Everyone supports efforts to improve air quality," said DeLay, who joined EPA Administrator Christie Whitman at a news conference Tuesday to launch the program.

He said industry pollution is a separate matter for science, technology and federal policies to address.

E-commuting is a voluntary, incentive-based program designed to help reduce car emissions, DeLay said, that avoids using "the blunt instrument of heavy government regulations."

DeLay helped secure funding for what he called this "new and bold approach" to controlling car emissions last year as part of the transportation spending bill.

While not commenting on how to address the larger problem of industrial CO2 emissions, Whitman said e-commuting would help city smog-reduction programs, such as Houston's.

"It's a perfect example of what the president is talking about when he says he wants to develop partnerships" to help address serious environmental issues, she said.

But because the program allows polluters to buy credits that would help them get around meeting tougher emission standards, environmentalists are skeptical.

"That's a major concern for me and the rest of the environmental community," said George Smith, who sits on regional and statewide air quality committees. While Smith thinks the e-commute program is good because it will discourage the use of automobiles, he added, "We don't want to see auto emission credits going to industries so they can continue to pollute."

He said light rail, which DeLay opposes, would go further because it would give commuters a cleaner mode of transportation every day of the week. Under the e-commute plan, employees would stay at home one or two days a week.

Businesses have yet to sign up for the program in Houston.

The Houston-Galveston Area Council, which oversees emission reduction programs to help the city meet clean-air targets for 2007, received a $200,000 grant to get the program under way.

Alan Clark, the council's manager for transportation and air quality, said the group hopes to enlist up to 10 percent of Houston-area workers.

And he defended the credit part of the program. He said the council hopes that most businesses will use the credits for tax deductions, instead of selling them to other polluters. But even if all credits were sold, they would not buy companies much ability to pollute, he said.

"The amount of reductions in nitrogen oxides that will need to be made by major industries (to meet air quality requirements) is more than all of the emissions from all of the vehicles on Houston highways," said Clark. "This program is a short-term strategy for companies that need modest help in securing emissions reduction credits."

A "commuter choice workshop" for businesses interested in participating in the program is scheduled for May 16. For more information, call 713-993-2438.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2001