Two Key Decisions

> When the Environmental Protection Agency announced tough new anti-pollution rules for autos last year, Detroit was aghast. "Arbitrary," said General Motors Chairman Richard Gerstenberg. Henry Ford II declared that his company could not meet the standards--a 90% reduction in hydrocarbon and carbon-monoxide emissions by 1975--and that the timetable would require "suspension of most U.S. automotive operations."

The automakers therefore requested a one-year extension of the deadline, but EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus last week turned them down. After considerable study, he said, he had concluded that the technology for cutting pollution was "probably adequate," and that the automakers "have adequate lead time to apply this technology." If automakers cannot meet the deadline after efforts pursued in "good faith," Ruckelshaus said, then they may ask again for an extension.

> "After great deliberation and reflection, I have determined that it is in the national interest ... to grant a right-of-way permit for the trans-Alaska pipeline from the North Slope to the southern port of Valdez." In making that announcement last week, Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton explained that the U.S. will need at least 20 million barrels of oil per day by 1980, and that domestic production apart from Alaska will be only half that much. As for the rival route across Canada, he declared that the $3 billion, 770-mile Alaska line will be cheaper and quicker.

Actually Morton cannot yet issue construction permits because he is under a court injunction that requires him to give two weeks' notice to environmentalists who are already suing him in an effort to stop the pipeline. Those suits charge that the pipeline will damage the tundra and threaten wildlife, so it will finally be up to the courts to decide how, when, where, or indeed whether the pipeline will be built.

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