Whitman Rejects Clean Air Plan

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37064-2002Feb20.html

Whitman Rejects Clean Air Plan

By H. f Hebert

Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, February 20, 2002; 3:18 AM

WASHINGTON -- A Bush administration proposal to clean up dirty power plants

represents either a dramatic step toward cleaner air or a step backward from

gains already scheduled.

People on both sides present numbers they say prove their case.

Since President Bush revealed his " Clean Skies " initiative last week, the

market-based pollution reduction plan has been under intense attack from

environmentalists who see it as a rollback from goals set by Clean Air Act

regulations already on the books.

On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman rejected such criticism and

called the president's proposal, which needs congressional approval, " the

most aggressive initiative to cut air pollution in a generation. "

She told a seminar sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and

Brookings Institution that the Bush plan will " achieve real air quality

improvements " and bring common sense to the maze of regulations now used to

force power plants to stop spewing tons of chemicals from their smokestacks.

The president's plan would replace some of the regulations by imposing broad

caps on three major power plant pollutants: sulfur dioxide, which causes

acid rain; nitrogen oxide, a precursor to smog; and mercury, a toxic

chemical that contaminates waterways and up the food chain through fish to

people. To ease the cost, utilities would be able to sell or trade pollution

credits.

" This approach will bring better and faster results in cleaning up our air, "

Bush said in announcing the initiative last week.

Environmentalists argue that power plants, especially older coal-burners,

will have to cut less pollution under Bush's plan than is projected under

various EPA regulations that already exist or about to be issued under the

Clean Air Act.

" The president's plan is a Trojan horse for a rollback, " argues

Stansfield, of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental

organization active in the clean air debate.

Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council, another

environmental group, said the Bush proposal also would give power plants

much more time to make the reductions than current air regulations.

" This allows companies to generate credits for the next 18 years by making

very small reductions ... and accumulate them in a (trading) bank that they

will then be able to use after 2018 to keep pollution high, " Hawkins said.

The environmentalists contend that some of the EPA's own analysis supports

the argument that the Bush plan is weaker than current regulations under the

Clean Air Act, strongly disputed by senior EPA officials.

At a briefing for the Edison Electric Institute last September, the EPA said

nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants could be cut by 75 percent to

1.25 million tons over the next decade if existing Clean Air Act rules were

fully implemented, according to documents obtained by environmentalists.

The agency also said that by 2012 sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain,

could be cut to 2 million tons under an EPA rule that requires reductions of

soot and other microscopic particles. They estimated that regulations about

to be issued could be expected to cut mercury emissions to 7.5 tons.

Bush's market-based approach would cap nitrogen oxide at 1.7 million tons

and sulfur dioxide at 3 million tons but not until 2018, although interim

reductions would have to be taken. Mercury would be reduced from 48 tons to

no more than 15 tons by 2018.

This amounts to 36 percent to 50 percent more pollution than would be

allowed under current acid rain and smog-reducing regulations if they were

fully implemented, said Stanton of the National Environmental Trust.

On Tuesday, senior EPA officials discounted the analysis presented in

September to the Edison institute, the trade group for investor-owned

utilities.

" They do not reflect realistic projections, " EPA spokesman Joe Martyak said.

He said the numbers were meant only to illustrate a comparison of a

multipollutant strategy as opposed to the current piecemeal approach of

dealing separately with different chemicals.

Holmstead, head of the EPA's air office, said Tuesday the numbers

from the September briefing were " never intended to be a projection of where

we would be " under existing clean air regulations.

" We get dramatically greater reductions under the president's proposal than

we could possibly get under the Clean Air Act, " said Holmstead.

In his congressional briefing Friday, Holmstead produced different numbers:

Over the next decade, under the current regulations and a " business as

usual " approach, nitrogen oxide would be cut to only 4 million tons, sulfur

dioxide to only 9.1 million tons and mercury to only 43 tons - all well

short of what the president's plan was expected to achieve.

" It's an attempt by EPA to rewrite history, " said Stanton of the

National Environmental Trust.

© 2002 The Associated Press