The EPA has announced a plan to rollback the clean air protections contained in the Clean Air Act. The proposal would allow companies to increase pollution from power plants, oil refineries and manufacturing facilities without installing modern pollution controls. If this weakening of the New Source Review takes effect, harmful soot and smog pollution in our skies will radically increase across the United States.

In November the Bush Administration relaxed air pollution regulations and proposed other changes to make it easier for older factories, refineries and power plants to modernize without having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment.

This undermining of the New Source Review’s safeguards (within the Clean Air Act) will allow major energy corporations to dramatically increase air pollution. Final rules signed by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Christie Whitman, are now law, while even more drastic proposed rules have moved one step closer to law.

The long-awaited regulatory changes by the EPA have ignited a firestorm of criticism from many groups concerned about protecting creation, as well as from state air quality regulators. There is also a courtroom challenge from nine Northeastern states affected by power plant pollution.

New Source Review

The New Source Review (NSR) is the Clean Air Act program that requires the oldest and dirtiest ‘grandfathered’ power plants and refineries to install modern pollution controls, whenever they make major modifications that substantially increase pollution. The program also applies to more than 17,000 industrial facilities like incinerators, steel mills, and paper plants.

The EPA also proposed a new definition for what constitutes “routine maintenance, repair and replacement” at aging coal-burning power plants. The proposed new language will allow older power plants to make major modifications without forfeiting their exemption from tougher standards imposed on plants built in the last 25 years.

EPA Administrator Whitman said in a statement that the changes will “encourage emission reduction” by giving manufacturers, utilities and refinery operators new flexibility when considering operational changes and expansion. According to Whitman, the old New Source Review program has “deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution.”

The older plants had been exempted from being treated as new sources of pollution. But as companies started replacing outdated equipment to improve efficiency, the Clinton Administration began treating improvements as new pollution sources, requiring the expensive, state-of-the-art controls.
Environmental groups working closely on Clean Air Act issues have expressed strong opposition to the new rule. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stated in their press release of November 22: “Today’s Bush Administration decision to weaken a key Clean Air Act provision will dramatically increase air pollution and threaten the health of millions of Americans.”

Environmental policy analysts warn that the administration’s recent decision is a sign of things to come. Many environmental groups are predicting that the Bush Administration, emboldened by the recent election results, will intensify its campaign to dismantle longstanding environmental safeguards across the board.

According to NRDC’s Clean Air Program, “more than 30,000 Americans die every year from power plant air pollution alone, and crippling the standards will only make things worse.” NRDC has stated that it will take legal action against the rule change.

After reviewing a draft version of the final EPA rule, NRDC says it is clear that the administration will weaken the New Source Review (NSR) in a number of fundamental ways, including:

• Under the old NSR provision, changes at industrial facilities that resulted in significant pollution increases (e.g., 40 tons per year) triggered a clean-up obligation. To determine whether pollution increases, a company must compare its pollution before the change, known as its pollution “baseline,” with pollution levels after the change. The administration’s rule change will allow an industrial facility to pick a fictional pollution baseline that is worse than its actual pollution levels, essentially allowing the facility to pollute more and pretend that it is not.
  
• The EPA is creating a loophole in New Source Review requirements called the “clean unit” exemption. Far from being clean, the sole purpose of the exemption appears to be to allow significant increases in air pollution so that companies can avoid their clean-up obligation and can avoid installing state-of-the-art pollution controls as required under old NSR rules.
  
• The EPA is also adopting a plant-wide applicability limit (PAL) concept that claims to be a 10-year “cap” on pollution levels—without having to reduce those levels—and avoid cleanup under the New Source Review for 10 years and beyond.
  The EPA will not mandate pollution control requirements for new or existing polluting equipment under a PAL. A PAL will last 10 years, allowing pollution decreases that occurred nine years ago to purportedly “offset” actual and significant pollution increases today, thereby avoiding cleanup.
  
• And in an additional EPA proposed rule change, the administration is proposing a loophole in routine maintenance within the NSR cleanup standards. Specifically, the agency proposed two versions of a loophole that would allow facilities to increase pollution from hundreds to tens of thousands of tons.

The first version would allow companies to replace as much as 15 percent of the total capital cost of their facilities each year, increase pollution as much as they wanted, and avoid cleanup.

The second would allow companies to replace any piece of equipment of any size with the same similar new equipment, increase pollution as much as they wanted, and avoid cleanup. (See the NRDC statement from November 22.)

The religious community has long supported strong clean air provisions that protect all of God’s creation. The rule changes mandated and proposed by the administration will further harm vulnerable people within our country, while adding more power plant emissions – which are causing global climate change. Advocates are strongly encouraged to tell the administration to start listening to the American public instead of industry lobbyists, and to change the new rules. Write to:

Christie Whitman
Administrator
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
(202) 260-2090
Fax: (202) 501-1761
email

Tell the Administrator that you strongly oppose the EPA’s proposal to rollback the clean air protections contained in the Clean Air Act. You feel that the changes that were announced, particularly not installing modern pollution controls, would allow companies to increase pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and manufacturing facilities, without regard for the harm inflicted on public health and the environment.

Whitman’s agency has acknowledged that the soot and smog caused by industrial air pollution are responsible for tens of thousands of asthma attacks, hospitalizations, and premature deaths every year. If the proposed gutting of the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review program takes effect, the amount of harmful soot and smog pollution in our skies would be allowed to increase radically all across our nation.

General Assembly

On Cleaning Up Power Plant Pollution
The 214th General Assembly (2002) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) directs the PCUSA to educate Presbyterians, through PCUSA offices and publications, about the environmental and health consequences of pollution from outdated coal-fired power plants, the benefits of ensuring that these plants adhere to tighter air pollution limits, and the economic consequences of such actions.

The General Assembly also asks all Presbyterians to exercise stewardship by urging government officials to support federal policies and multipollutant legislation that will in the most cost-effective way:

1. enforce clean air laws by federal and state governments;
   
2. resist efforts to abolish or undercut established clean air programs;
   
3. enact new clean air laws for power plants that will substantially reduce pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, respiratory disease, mercury contamination, and global warming;
   
4. end the “grandfather” loophole that exempts older coal-fired plants; and
   
5. encourage federal funding of technologies that will facilitate and reduce the costs of these recommendations.

Additionally, the resolution directs the Stated Clerk to communicate this new policy to power companies that have outdated coal-fired plants that were “grandfathered” under the Clean Air Act and directs the Washington Office and Environmental Justice Office to incorporate these concerns into their advocacy work in environmental issues (Minutes, 2002, Item 12-08, p. 598-599).

By Douglas Grace, 4th Quarter 2002