The Environmental Protection Agency head met last week with leaders of the groups to discuss the forthcoming designations of areas that exceed new national limits on fine particle pollution such as soot from wood fire smoke and fossil fuel emissions from vehicle exhaust.

If a county is listed as "nonattainment" under the new standards, it must begin planning how to reduce air pollution or face federal sanctions, including the potential loss of highway funds.

The standard to restrict microscopic airborne pollutants is part of the Bush administration's plan to achieve environmental success without damaging economic progress, Leavitt has said. Speaking to a Senate committee earlier this year, he called fine particle pollution "perhaps the greatest threat to public health."

The 21 states where fine particle pollution readings are in excess of the new standard - California and in the East - have asked EPA to designate just 142 counties as nonattainment. EPA has recommended that 244 counties be designated.

Watchdog organizations believe the agency inappropriately excluded counties with high or rising particle pollution levels that are next door to counties where monitors have recorded a violation of the standard. If those neighboring counties are included, environmentalists say Leavitt should designate 406 counties as nonattainment.

"He told us it will be more counties than the states recommended and probably less than we want to see," said Janice Nolen, director of national policy for the American Lung Association. "We're seeing power plants, huge sources of problems, eliminated from these areas."

Leavitt, the former governor of Utah, has told Congress he wants to address air quality problems for counties downwind of power plants through the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which he has pledged to release by year's end.

But the outlook for CAIR has become mired in a political struggle between Leavitt and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Environment Committee who was instrumental in getting Leavitt confirmed last year, fears if Leavitt issues the new interstate guidelines administratively, there could be little incentive for Congress to advance Inhofe's stalled "Clear Skies legislation" next year.

Last month, Leavitt and Inhofe met with Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality to discuss whether EPA should stall or abandon CAIR in favor of resurrecting Clear Skies in the new Congress.

"My sense is that administrator Leavitt is caught in the middle of those politics," said Angela Ledford, director of Clear The Air. "What's the future of this administrator if he's overruled by the White House?"

Frank Maisano of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents a group of utilities that use coal to generate power, said his clients want CAIR delayed but do not feel it would interfere with getting Clear Skies passed.

"I know what Leavitt has said in the past but there's no time constraint on him with CAIR," said Maisano. "These are hard, complex rules and they always tend to drag in the final stages."