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Bush Administration Eases Air Pollution
Controls
By J.R. Pegg
WASHINGTON, DC, November 22, 2002 (ENS) - The Bush
administration has enacted changes to clean air rules that
will allow power plants and refineries to avoid new pollution
controls when they expand operations. The decision drew sharp
criticism from Congressional leaders, state officials,
environmental groups, public health organizations and the
former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who
charge the administration has put industry interests ahead of
public health and the environment.
Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut,
criticized the Administration's "shameful record of abandoning
environmental protection" and called on EPA Administrator
Christie Whitman to resign in protest.
;)
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman is a former governor of
New Jersey. (Photo courtesy Office of Congressman
Linder )"Governor Whitman has a good record and
good intentions, but on her watch this administration has
undertaken the biggest rollback in Clean Air Act history and
scaled back countless other environmental protections," said
Lieberman. "Time and again, her advice has been overruled by a
White House determined to gut commonsense environmental
standards. Out of principle and protest, she should step
down."
"All this rule change will do is extend the life of the
dirtiest industrial plants and worsen the lives of citizens
that breathe the pollution from their smokestacks every day,"
Senator Lieberman warned.
The changes, announced today by the EPA, are to the New
Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act.
New Source Review requires that an air pollution source,
such as a power plant or industrial complex, install the best
pollution control equipment available when it builds a new
facility or when it makes a major modification that increases
emissions from an existing facility. It was designed to ensure
that older facilities built before the Clean Air Act took
effect in 1977 would not hamper the nation's progress toward
cleaner air.
President George W. Bush (Photo courtesy The White
House)The Bush administration said in a prepared
statement that its changes to New Source Review (NSR) will
"increase energy efficiency and encourage emissions
reductions" and will have a "net benefit to the environment."
Critics, however, strongly dispute the administration's
findings.
"This is the most significant rollback of clean air
standards ever," said Mark Wenzler, environmental counsel for
the National Environmental Trust.
Then EPA Administrator Carol Browner testifies in a
Congressional committee review of EPA’s Proposed Ozone and
Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards
Revisions. May 15, 1997 (Photo courtesy House of
Representatives)"The Bush administration's
announcement retreats from the promise of the Clean Air Act -
fresh and healthy air for all Americans," said former EPA
Administrator Carol Browner who served in the Clinton
adminstration.
"This rollback in the law will permit thousands of the
oldest, dirtiest smokestacks to continue spewing out pollution
rather than installing state of the art pollution controls,"
Browner said. "It is nothing but a special deal for the
special interests. It comes at the expense of all who breathe
and most particularly our children."
"The EPA is stripping away vital, cost effective clean air
measures that have protected Americans from the harmful
effects of industrial air pollution for a quarter century,"
warned Environmental Defense senior attorney Vickie Patton.
"Today's action puts Americans in communities across the
country at serious health risk by exempting thousands of power
plants, refineries and other major industrial facilities from
fundamental air pollution controls," she said.
The changes are the culmination of a 10 year process, but
are largely based on a report issued to President George W.
Bush in June 2002. The report found that "instead of being a
tool to help improve air quality, [NSR] has stood in the way
of making numerous environmental improvements at many
facilities across the nation."
"NSR is a valuable program in many respects but the need
for reform is clear and has broad based support," EPA
Administrator Christie Whitman said. "The steps we are taking
today recognize that some aspects of the NSR program have
deterred companies from implementing projects that would
increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution."
Emissions rise from power plant at the University of
Northern Iowa. (Photo courtesy UNI)But Wenzler argues that the
administration cannot "point to any statement from any
government or state agency or representative that supports
these changes."
"No one in the government has ever called for any of these
new loopholes," he said, "and no one has embraced these beside
industry insiders."
Leaders of the State Territorial Air Pollution Program
Administrators (STAPPA) and the Association of Local Air
Pollution Control Officials (ALAPCO) joined in the chorus of
disapproval over the administration's changes to the New
Source Review provision.
"Although our associations believe NSR can be improved,"
said William Becker, executive director of STAPPA and ALAPCO,
"we firmly believe the controversial reforms the EPA is
putting in place today will result in unchecked emission
increases that will degrade our air quality and endanger
public health."
The administration has made four highly technical changes
to the provision. One change alters the standard for
determining the baseline for a facility's pollution to allow
it to select any 24 month period over the past 10 years upon
which to establish its emissions baseline.
"This will result in higher baseline levels," said Nat
Mund, Washington representative with the Sierra Club.
The second change allows Plantwide Applicability Limits
(PALs) to be established with an emissions cap that looks back
over 10 years and does not decline over time. This is a
voluntary program that allows a facility to operate within a
site specific emissions cap. The rule change also establishes
no minimum control requirements for new sources or existing
sources with outdated pollution controls.
This coal burning power facility at Brilliant, Ohio, uses
a process wherein sulfur dioxide emissions are cut by 90
percent, nitrogen oxides by 50 percent, and carbon dioxide by
15 percent. (Photo courtesy American Electric Power
Service Corporation)The third change refers to
"clean unit status," whereby facilities that install the best
available control technology or lowest achievable emission
rate control levels on a one time basis are allowed to make
changes that do not trigger a New Source Review for a specific
period of time.
The administration will now apply the rule retroactively to
any plant that applied the technologies by 1990 and it will
apply for 10 to 15 years.
"Making this retroactive simply takes away the incentive to
adopt additional pollution control technologies," Mund said.
Fourth, the EPA will now allow the industry to determine
which of its pollution prevention projects are eligible for
potential exemption from the New Source Review. Previously,
this eligibility was determined by local and state
authorities.
According to the EPA, these four changes will, in sum,
"remove perverse and unintended regulatory barriers to
investments in energy efficiency and pollution control
projects, while preserving the environmental benefits of the
NSR program."
But these barriers were not created by the program, Mund
argued, and facilities can avoid them if they simply agree not
to pollute any more than they do today.
"These are four new loopholes that Congress never
authorized that will essentially allow plants to make changes
to their plants that increase pollution yet not have to put on
new pollution controls," added Wenzler. "These dirty old
grandfather plants will never, ever shut down or retire. This
is a law that is supposed to prevent pollution increases."
State officials also fear the changes will make their jobs,
tougher, not less difficult.
"Many of EPA's reforms will weaken the existing NSR program
and we cannot afford to have our hands tied from pursuing more
stringent requirements that will better protect air quality
and public health in our jurisdictions," said ALAPCO president
Ellen Garvey on behalf of local air pollution control
officials.
Even without today's changes, data from the EPA indicates
that large pollution sources such as power plants release
about 11.4 million tons of harmful sulfur dioxide and 5.2
million tons of smog forming nitrogen oxides each year,
comprising 62 percent and 21 percent of the national totals
for these contaminants.
The EPA decision is a "major setback to public health,"
said John Kirkwood, president and CEO of the American Lung
Association.
"According to the EPA, 175 million Americans live in areas
violating health standards for smog or soot," Kirkwood said.
"Relaxing air pollution control rules applicable to 18,000
industrial pollution sources defies basic principles of common
sense and good government."
Cherokee Station coal burning power plant, Denver,
Colorado. The Public Service Company of Colorado relies
primarily on coal for power generation. (Photo courtesy
NREL)Today's announcement also
featured an additional proposal by the Bush administration to
expand the definition of "routine maintenance, repair and
replacement," a key concept within NSR. Plants that undergo
activities falling under this definition are not subjected to
additional pollution control measures.
The administration proposes a range of options, including a
mechanism that would allow the cost of maintenance projects to
determine whether NSR would affect the activity.
This proposed change, and the rules issued today, threaten
to undermine a slew of lawsuits against major industry
players, including the government owned and operated Tennessee
Valley Authority, who have been brought to court for allegedly
evading NSR obligations, said Wenzler.
This concern prompted New York Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer to testify at a Senate hearing in July that he would
file suit in federal court to stop the administration's
changes to NSR.
There are signs that officials from Connecticut, Maryland
and New Jersey, as well as several environmental groups, are
also considering legal action to challenge the decision.
The motivations of the Bush administration have weighed
heavily on the debate over NSR and some fear only more of the
same will follow.
"Today's actions are a harbinger of what is to come from
this administration," Wenzler said. "They'll stop at nothing
to pay back the coal, oil and energy industries that financed
their campaign."
Senator Jim Jeffords will yield chairmanship of the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee to Republican Jim
Inhofe when Congress reconvenes. (Photo courtesy Office
of the Congressman)"Today's package of final and
proposed regulations on New Source Review violates the spirit
and the letter of the Clean Air Act," said Senator Jim
Jeffords, an Independent from Vermont and chairman of the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "The
administration has failed to do an honest, credible assessment
of the net impact on the environment, public health and air
quality.
"This early Christmas gift to industry means more pollution
and less protection," Jeffords added. "If the administration
is so proud of these regulations, you have to ask yourself why
they would wait until after the election, after Congress
adjourns for the year and on the Friday afternoon before
Thanksgiving to release them?" | 
