ARLINGTON, Va. — The drunken driving trial of Robert Burford, the Interior Department official who is married to Anne McGill Burford, the former head of the EPA, will begin Dec. 17, court

officials said Wednesday. He also faces a charge of refusing to take a breath test.

A court hearing for Anne Burford’s public drunkenness charge has been set for Dec. 13. She is accused of screaming obscenities, clawing an officer with her fingernails and banging her shoes

on the bars of her jail cell.