Pollution: Muddying the Waters

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Hoping to finish the job of cleaning up America's lakes and rivers, Congress this year unanimously passed an $18 billion clean-water bill that by 1994 would have removed 85% of all solid and inorganic matter from U.S. sewage. Just because a bill is popular on Capitol Hill does not make it so with Ronald Reagan. He refused to sign it last week, saying it was triple the amount the Government proposed.

Outraged environmentalists and politicians of both parties charged that the President had deliberately held his pocket veto until after last week's elections, since Congress would not be in session to override him. Sponsors in the Senate and the House vowed to introduce the legislation in the new Congress. "If he was dissatisfied with the cost," said Republican Senator Robert Stafford of Vermont, a co-sponsor, "then he should just wait to see what the Democratic Congress comes up with next year."