http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0822-03.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 22, 2003, 8:24 AM
CONTACT: Natural Resources
Defense Council
John Walke, 202-289-2406
David McIntosh, 202-289-2426
Bush Administration to Gut Clean Air Act:
Rule Would Allow More Pollution at 17,000 Facilities
WASHINGTON - August
22 - Next week the Environmental Protection
Agency plans to release its final rule on the Clean Air Act's
definition of "routine maintenance" that would allow
more air
pollution from approximately 17,000 industrial facilities across
the country, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).
NRDC obtained a leaked
copy of the final rule, which essentially
repeals the "new source review" provision of the Clean
Air Act.
That provision requires industrial facilities to install modern
pollution controls when they make upgrades to plants that increase
air pollution. The new final rule would allow facilities to avoid
installing pollution controls when they replace equipment
-- even if the upgrade increases pollution -- as long as the
cost of the replacement did not exceed 20 percent of the cost
of what the EPA broadly defines as a "process unit."
For example,
if a coal-fired power plant replaced a boiler whose cost was less
than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the entire process
unit -- the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment that
turns coal into electricity -- the company would not have to
control the resulting pollution increases.
Under this scheme,
all of the Clean Air Act violations the
Justice Department is prosecuting at nine Tennessee Valley
Authority power plants and those at a recently convicted Ohio
Edison plant would have been allowed, according to NRDC.
The upgrades at those plants increased air pollution
by hundreds of thousands of tons, but because they cost
less than 20 percent of the replacement value of the
process units, TVA and Ohio Edison would not have had
to install modern pollution controls under the new rule.
"The Bush administration,
using an arbitrary, Enron-like
accounting gimmick, is authorizing massive pollution
increases to benefit Bush campaign contributors at the
expense of public health," said John Walke, director of
NRDC's Clean Air Project. "Corporate polluters will now
be able to spew even more harmful chemicals into our air,
regardless of the fact that it will harm millions of Americans."
New Source
Review and Enforcement
The Clean Air Act's
new source review provision was instituted
in 1977 to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants,
oil refineries and other large industrial facilities.
The provision requires companies to install modern pollution
control technologies in new plants, and in old plants when
they make significant emissions-increasing modifications.
While facilities operating at the time the rule was
implemented were exempt from the new requirements under
a "grandfather" clause, policymakers assumed that either
they would be eventually replaced by new, cleaner facilities
or upgraded with modern-day pollution controls. But the rule
was inadequately enforced, so many older facilities are still
operating without proper emissions reduction technology.
At the same time that
the Bush administration has been preparing
this new rule, the Department of Justice, state attorneys general,
NRDC and other organizations have successfully prosecuted or
settled new source review lawsuits that the Clinton administration
brought against the 12 owners of the country's oldest, largest
and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. According to a study
performed by Abt Associates, a technical consulting firm that
frequently works for EPA, the failure to install modern pollution
controls at the 51 plants at issue in the enforcement cases
is responsible for 5,000 to 9,000 premature deaths and 80,000
to 120,000 asthma attacks every year.
The Justice Department
has obtained settlements from five
of the companies, and, on August 7, won a landmark case against
another -- Ohio Edison. The five settlements will force the
companies to reduce their annual emissions of smog- and
soot-forming pollution by more than 500,000 tons each year.
Meanwhile, the victory over Ohio Edison is expected to force
that company to reduce its annual emissions by tens of thousands
of tons.
Altogether, EPA officials
have estimated that if it won all
of the enforcement cases involving the 51 plants, it would
cut nearly 7 million tons of harmful air pollution annually.
That would amount to a 50 percent reduction of air pollution
generated by U.S. electric utilities.
The Timing
of the Announcement: Protecting Gov. Leavitt?
NRDC also pointed out
that the timing of the final rule
announcement is likely motivated by the fact that Congress
is on recess and much of the nation is on vacation and,
perhaps most important, by the Bush administration's desire
to insulate its nominee for EPA administrator from criticism.
The nominee, Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, is an exponent of
what he has coined "enlibra" principles, which include
empowering states to protect the environment without federal
interference and developing environmental policy collaboratively
with all stakeholders.
At March 31 EPA public
hearings, state and local officials
blasted the proposed rule for violating the very principles
Gov. Leavitt espouses. EPA developed the rule without state
or public input, they pointed out, and noted that it would
interfere with states' abilities to protect their residents
from harmful air pollution. Gov. Leavitt's own air quality
director, Rick Sprott, testified in opposition to what is
now the final rule, calling it a "train wreck."
Campaign Contributors
The same companies
that are currently being prosecuted
for new source review violations are major contributors
to the Republican Party and had easy access to Vice President
Cheney's secret energy task force. For example, the Edison
Electric Institute, an industry trade group comprising the
power plant defendants in the Justice Department new source
review cases, had at least 14 contacts with the Cheney task
force and contributed nearly $600,000 to the Republican Party
from 1999 to 2002. (For more information, see this May 2002
NRDC press release.)
The Natural
Resources Defense Council is a national,
non-profit organization of scientists, lawyers and
environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public
health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has
more than 550,000 members nationwide, served from offices
in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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