WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats permitted a committee yesterday to approve President Bush's nomination of Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt to be chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, but several threatened to block the nomination on the Senate floor.
The Environment and Public Works Committee voted 16-2 in favor of Leavitt's nomination, though Democrats expressed reservations about his ability to lead the embattled agency on a course independent of what they called the anti-environment policies of the Bush administration.
