EPA duties keep Leavitt scrambling

For the first election in 12 years, former Gov. Mike Leavitt is not running for public office. That does not mean, however, that he doesn't sometimes feel as if he's hard on the campaign trail.

After all, if President Bush loses on Nov. 2, Leavitt, the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, would "wake up on Nov. 3 with a whole new life."

When coupled with the amount of traveling he has done — an estimated 39 states and five countries during his tenure with the EPA — he said it may as well be a campaign, even if the president told his Cabinet members to eschew campaigning and focus on doing their jobs.

"I enjoyed campaigning, and when I hit eight or nine states in a week, it can feel like campaigning," Leavitt said. "But I am glad to have a cycle off."

Leavitt made the round of Utah media outlets Thursday, giving him a chance to "catch up" with the news organizations who covered him for more than a decade before he was appointed by Bush last year.

Among the stops was an hourlong conversation with the Deseret Morning News Editorial Board, as well as a guest appearance on KSL Radio's "Doug Wright Show" and on-air chats with multiple television stations.

As a Cabinet member in the Bush administration, Leavitt said he has tried to bring the same problem-solving approaches to Washington, D.C., that he used as governor in Utah. To accomplish that, he took along many of his top Utah staff members to the EPA, as well as his "enlibra" philosophy of moderation and compromise in decision-making.

"There are very few environmental problems that don't have numerous geographic and political subdivisions," Leavitt said. "You need to have creative, collaborative problem-solving."

Air quality has been a predominant issue for Leavitt, both in improving air quality and preventing further pollution. Currently, he said, the EPA is developing technology that will cut emissions from coal-fired power plants to almost nothing.

They are also always looking for ways to reduce emissions and increase fuel efficiency in vehicles, something he said may be best accomplished by new technology that makes diesel engines less polluting than unleaded gas engines, as well as quiet and reliable in cold weather — two problems that scare American consumers away from the diesel engines Europeans heavily favor.

"If we were able to reach the penetration level that diesel engines have in European countries — which I think we will in the next decade — we could eliminate the dependance on foreign oil equal to what we import from Saudi Arabia," he said.