Like other old coal-fired power plants across the country, the Cayuga power plant north of Terre Haute, Ind., puffs a variety of toxins into the air as it generates electricity for homes and businesses.
But as the federal government charges its operator, Cinergy, with releasing massive, illegal amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, a new Bush administration policy means the plant probably won’t have to tighten its pollution controls.
In November 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relaxed a key and controversial element of the Clean Air Act, an obscure rule called New Source Review that was designed to clean up the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants.
The Bush administration’s move pleased power-plant operators, who long had argued that the anti-pollution requirement was cumbersome and expensive. But the change alarmed health advocates, who fear it will increase air pollution and lead to more cases of respiratory diseases.
“The debate is not about whether air quality should get better. We share that goal,” said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “It’s a question of the policy tool we use to get there.”
New Source Review required older power plants and smokestack industries to improve pollution equipment when they made a major upgrade that would increase emissions. The provision was designed to promote cleaner air by requiring the filthiest plants to eventually clean up or close down and be replaced by cleaner alternatives.
It never worked that way. Instead, plants kept using antiquated equipment and found ways to avoid triggering the rule. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency said, the provision actually discouraged energy-efficiency projects-such as boiler upgrades-that could decrease harmful emissions.
But critics say relaxing the rule will increase air pollution as it weakens clean air requirements for 17,000 facilities and will wipe out dozens of lawsuits against plants charged with violating pollution laws.
An October General Accounting Office report found that the revisions to New Source Review could lead the EPA to abandon investigations into 50 old coal-fired power plants for violations of the Clean Air Act, including a case against the Cayuga plant. The cases would be judged under new, less-stringent rules rather than the rules in effect when the investigations began.
Fourteen states, including Illinois, are seeking a court injunction to block the measure before it can take effect on Dec. 26. Nine states have come to the EPA’s defense, saying the rule gives states regulatory flexibility and reduces the enforcement burden.
White House officials said the provision of the Clean Air Act was changed to boost economic investment by industry and to protect the environment.
Now coal-fired plants and refineries can avoid adding pollution controls when they undertake maintenance projects as long as the work’s cost doesn’t exceed 20 percent of the plant’s replacement cost. Even if emissions increase, new pollution controls do not need to be added.
Lacking comprehensive data on the effectiveness of New Source Review, the EPA changed the rule based on anecdotal evidence provided by the four main industries most affected by the Clean Air Act provision, according to a General Accounting Office report.
“Because the information is anecdotal, EPA’s findings do not necessarily represent the program’s effects across the industries subject to the program,” the report said.
A report by EPA consultants found that installing modern pollution controls at 51 plants cited for air-emission violations would each year save more than 4,300 lives and prevent 80,000 asthma attacks.
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THE ISSUE:
Old coal-fired power plants are permitted to burn less cleanly than new plants, raising health concerns.
RECENT ACTION:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weakened a provision of the Clean Air Act that required coal-fired power plants, chemical plants, oil refineries and other industries to install new pollution controls when modifications to their equipment result in increased emissions.
‘I’m interested in job creation and clean air, and I believe we can do both.’
— President George W. Bush
‘This is the first time since President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act into law that a change in it has actually increased pollution rather than decreased it.’
— Judith Enck, policy adviser with the New York attorney general’s office
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THE AUTHORS OF THIS REPORT
Pete Souza is the Tribune’s national photographer, based in the Washington bureau. He traveled to 13 states during the last year to take the photographs in this report.
Julie Deardorff is a staff reporter who has written extensively about health and the environment.
