EPA proposes relaxing rules on air pollution

[Guest guest]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/766181.asp?0dm=B28CN

(Thinking of moving to a place that has " healthier air " ? Check out this

article and the graphics before you do. This administration seems oblivious

to the fact that millions of people - primarily children - are suffering

from asthma at epidemic rates. Are they hell-bent on killing our kids or

what?)

EPA proposes relaxing rules on air pollution

Plan to ease requirements on coal-fired plants, refineries draws

environmentalists' ire

MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON, June 13 - In a report to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy

task force, the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed

significant changes to air pollution rules affecting coal-fired power

plants, oil refineries and other smokestack industries. The EPA and industry

said the changes would make plants more efficient, and thus cleaner. But

environmentalists said the EPA was rolling back the Clean Air Act, and they

vowed new lawsuits along with Northeastern states that complain of downwind

air pollution.

THE LONG-AWAITED announcement addresses one of the most contentious air

pollution issues facing the Bush administration and would give industry

greater flexibility in expanding electricity production without having to

install additional emissions controls.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said her agency's review of the

controversial rules, known as New Source Review, " clearly established that

some aspects ... have deterred companies from implementing projects that

would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution. "

The utility industry had lobbied intensely for the rule changes,

arguing that the regulations had inhibited expansion of facilities. And

Cheney's energy task force had asked for a re-examination of the air

pollution regulations more than 15 months ago.

But environmentalists have maintained that the current regulations,

which had been pressed in lawsuits filed by the Clinton administration,

ensure that utilities install additional pollution controls when they

modernize or expand the plants to produce more electricity.

Easing the rules, they argued, would produce millions of tons of

additional pollution and amount to a rollback of the Clean Air Act.

Indeed, prior to the policy shift, the EPA and the Justice Department

had threatened heavy fines on utilities unless they spent tens of billions

of dollars to more strictly control emissions of acid rain-causing sulfur

dioxide, smog-causing nitrogen oxides and mercury, a toxic chemical that

contaminates waterways.

Activists note that coal-fired power plants are also major emitters

of carbon dioxide, which is not regulated but which many scientists fear is

contributing to global warming.

(see graphic )

While Cheney's task force urged that the overhaul be completed in 90 days,

the issue became embroiled in long internal debate over how far the agency

should go in easing requirements for the utilities. Whitman had said the

administration wanted modest changes, while the Energy Department and some

White House presidential aides had argued for stronger action.

The proposed changes include:

Allowing industry to expand production by lowering the threshold that would

trigger a requirement for new pollution controls.

Giving plants that voluntarily install state-of-the-art pollution controls

more flexibility.

Allowing industry to use pollution levels from any two consecutive years

during the past 10 to establish an emissions baseline that would determine

how much additional pollution would be allowed before the controls kicked

in.

Clarifying the definition of " routine " repairs to coal-fired power plants

and other older smokestack industries that emit pollutants.

INDUSTRY'S VIEW

The issue of routine repairs has been at the heart of the debate,

with the power industry saying the Clinton administration unfairly

reinterpreted a provision of the Clean Air Act.

The New Source Review provision, it notes, was meant to apply only to

" non-routine " changes that increase pollutants significantly. In fighting

the lawsuits, the industry has argued that the Clinton administration began

applying the provision to routine changes.

The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an industry group,

called the Clinton interpretation " a disaster for the environment and the

economy, "

" By discouraging routine maintenance and repair, " council spokesman

Segal said in a statement, the Clinton administration " discouraged

efficiency, undermined environmental protection, hampered workplace safety,

diminished international competition, and disproportionately impacted

economically-troubled urban and rural communities. "

ENVIRONMENTALISTS' POSITION

Environmentalists believe the Bush revisions will threaten the

pending lawsuits filed during the Clinton administration alleging that 51

power plants were violating the Clean Air Act by making modifications that

produced more electricity and more pollution.

" This is the end of the Clinton administration's long attempt to

force dirty coal-fired power plants to clean up, " Phil Clapp, head of the

National Environmental Trust, said after the EPA briefed his group on the

plan. " It will undermine all the pending lawsuits EPA and states like New

York have brought to make big utilities comply with the Clean Air Act. "

" What is really amazing, " he added in a statement, " is that the

administration has made this decision without calculating how much more air

pollution it will mean, how many more asthma attacks, or how many more

deaths. They simply have no numbers. "

Added O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust:

" However they try to spin it, the Bush team is looking to adopt

industry-sought changes that would weaken current clean-air protections. In

effect, they would be creating new loopholes that would permit big polluters

to continue polluting and even increase pollution. "

Environmentalists and state attorneys general from the Northeast have

said they would challenge in court any substantial weakening of the program.

An easing of the rules, they argued, will produce millions of tons of

additional pollution from older coal-burning plants and amount to a rollback

of the Clean Air Act. The Northeastern states say pollution from power

plants in the Midwest drifts eastward.

" It is difficult to imagine a more aggressive assault on our clean

air protections, " said Stanfield, a Clean Air Act specialist at the

U.S. Public Interest Research Group. " We hope and expect that many of these

changes will be ruled illegal, but in the meantime a lot of people will

suffer unnecessarily from heart and lung disease, and a lot of environmental

damage will be done. "

TIME FOR TRADING SYSTEM?

In a letter to President Bush, Whitman also suggested the

administration might want to replace the New Source Review with a system

where industries could buy and sell emission credits, using market forces to

reduce emissions over time.

Gruenspecht, an economist with Resources for the Future, an

environmental think tank, said such an approach would work better than the

current system.

New Source Review assumed utilities would retire old power plants, he

notes in a research paper coming out next week, but instead those older

units were kept running because of the expense in building new plants.

Gruenspecht, a member of then President Clinton's Council of Economic

Advisers, contends the solution is to motivate new and old plants to cut

emissions, contends, and the best approach is to cap total emissions and use

a trading system to assure any emissions increase at one plant are balanced

by offsetting reductions at another.

For its part, the association of state air pollution officials said

that while it believes New Source Review " can be improved " it also fears

that the reforms " will not only result in unchecked emission increases that

will degrade our air quality and endanger public health, they will also

undermine the chances of any responsible changes to the NRS program ever

taking effect. "

The proposed New Source Review changes, which must go through a

rule-making review period before being enacted, are online at

www.epa.gov/air/nsr-review.

MSNBC.com's Llanos as well as The Associated Press contributed

to this report.