To the business community, it’s a welcome step to make power plants, refineries and chemical plants more efficient. But environmentalists and some state officials say it strikes at the heart of the fight to give people cleaner air.
The Bush administration’s overhaul of a major clean air enforcement tool is causing a torrent of criticism, with one Democratic senator calling for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to resign. Others promise a long fight in Congress, perhaps into the 2004 campaigns.
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said last week that the rule changes will provide utilities and other companies the flexibility needed to improve and modernize plants. She rejected critics’ claims that the changes allow utilities and industry to release millions of tons of additional pollution into the air, saying it could even “encourage emission reductions.”
POINT
“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,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who called on Whitman to resign.
“Out of principle and protest, she should step down,” said Lieberman, a possible presidential contender in 2004. President Bush has made clear he wants changes in the so-called New Source Review regulations to make them more industry-friendly.
Connecticut and New York officials promised to challenge the rule changes in court. “This issue is literally a matter of life and death,” said Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, saying that air pollution is responsible for thousands of premature deaths and many more respiratory illnesses.
COUNTERPOINT
Businesses have long complained that the 1977 Clean Air Act prohibits them from making significant modifications or improvements in older plants without running the risk of having to install expensive new pollution controls.
The Clinton administration put teeth behind the law in 1999 when it began a series of enforcement actions against nine utilities, claiming they, under the guise of “routine maintenance,” had flouted the rule by making changes at 43 power plants that added to pollution.
The Bush administration is still pursuing the cases–two have settled– but it has decided to dramatically change what it will consider a violation in the future, easing the standard. The old rules “have deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution,” Whitman said.
