Responding to reservations about the EPA's New Source Review programme highlighted in its own assessment (see MPS July 2002, p5) the Bush administration has introduced a set of proposed modifications to help the operators of old coal fired plant avoid what they see as unfair penalties for installing pollution control equipment. It includes rules that will allow power plants and refineries exemption from the regulations if their emissions fall below a set level, or if they install new equipment. EPA would also change the definition of "routine maintenance" to allow utilities more room to modify plant without triggering additional pollution reduction requirements.
But the proposal has instantly run into a storm of opposition from legislators and environmental groups. In response the EPA has defended its new rules as simply giving power plants and oil refineries more flexibility to cut emissions by modifying plant. But the industry itself says the new rules do not go far enough to help generators.
The proposed rules will not in any case take effect until the EPA has collected and analysed feedback from utilities, green groups and others. And there has been no shortage of feedback. The proposal has been roundly condemned by Democrat politicians and environmental groups. New York state has said that it will raise a challenge in federal court to protect the public health. And Democrat senator Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) has called for the resignation of EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, saying that during her tenancy 'this administration has undertaken the biggest rollback in clean air act history and scaled down countless other environmental protections'. She should step down, he says, in protest at the continual determination of the White House to overrule her advice and proceed to 'gut' commonsense environmental standards. This theme was taken up by Rebecca Stanfield of the Public Interest Research Group who said 'it is difficult to imagine a more aggressive assault on our clean air protections'. Meanwhile New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer is to file a lawsuit in the federal courts challenging rules which he said were written to favour the financial interests of the energy industry rather than public health. He maintains that state legislators have a public duty to defend their citizens' right to breathe clean air, and claimed that the proposed change would worsen air quality in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, an area already struggling with dirty air blown in from Midwestern states.
But the Electric Reliability Co-ordinating Council, which represents large utilities, has criticised the new rules as incomplete, because they "fail to be definitive on maintenance" according to Scott Segal, an attorney acting for the group.
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