The Great EPA Crackdown Fantasy

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http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/19309/

 

The Great EPA Crackdown Fantasy

By Amanda Griscom, Grist Magazine

 

 

Posted on July 22, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19309/

 

What's this on the wires? The U.S. EPA is gearing up

to prosecute a new batch of new-source review (NSR)

cases against polluting power plants? Could it be that

the Bushies have suddenly taken a keen interest in

enforcing a Clean Air Act rule that they have gone to

great lengths to weaken?

 

Not really.

 

The story goes like this: Greenwire reporter Darren

Samuelsohn recently got ahold of an EPA document

containing a list of 22 electric utilities that in the

last five years have allegedly run afoul of NSR by

making upgrades to their facilities without installing

the required pollution controls. Greenwire published a

story saying the utilities could face enforcement

actions, and other news outlets followed suit.

 

According to Eric Schaeffer, a former top enforcement

official at the EPA who left in protest over

air-enforcement lapses under Bush, the publicity was

not welcome news to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt:

" The word inside the agency is that Leavitt is

apparently furious that this news is out. It's not

likely that this indicates that the agency is doing

some kind of election-year crackdown on utilities. In

fact, it's a political embarrassment – it just shows

how the administration is holding up prosecutions

recommended by its own staff. "

 

Between 1999 and 2001, the Clinton EPA filed cases

over alleged NSR violations at 51 power plants owned

by nine utilities. Though several of these cases have

been settled, most are still hanging in limbo, having

stalled out under the Bush administration.

 

Bush's assistant administrator of air and radiation at

EPA, Jeffrey Holmstead, made it his top priority to

scrap the NSR rule at the behest of the electricity

industry (which just happened to contribute $4.8

million to Bush, the Republican National Committee,

and Bush's inaugural committee during the 2000

campaign, according to Public Citizen). So far

Holmstead has been successful in his efforts to

significantly loosen the way smokestack industries

measure their baseline emissions under the rule.

 

But his higher-priority initiative to exempt power

plants from a provision requiring them to install

state-of-the-art pollution controls in all expanded

and upgraded facilities – which the administration

issued as a rule change in August 2003 – was blocked

by a D.C. circuit court in December after a group of

state attorneys general asked for a stay.

 

Despite this kink in his plans, Holmstead has not only

allowed enforcement of the Clinton-era cases to lapse,

he has filed only one new NSR case, against a utility

in Kentucky – one whose violations were so severe that

it would have been culpable even under the relaxed

rules that the administration is pushing for.

 

The new list of 22 potential culprits includes some of

the largest power producers in America, including

Reliant (now Centerpoint Energy), Allegheny, and

subsidiaries of Southern Company. So it's no surprise

that the utility industry has already got its

propaganda machine in high gear to gird against the

possibility of new lawsuits. Frank Maisano, a

spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Coordinating

Council, a utility group, said the news of potential

new enforcement cases has created " widespread industry

uncertainty that could cause utilities to put off

needed facility upgrades ... [and] perhaps hurt the

stock performance of those companies down the line. "

 

Leavitt in the past has publicly promised that the EPA

would move forward with any NSR cases that would bring

about substantial pollution savings. But after news

spread about the document last week, Leavitt's

spokesperson, Cynthia Bergman, refused to address the

matter with the press. " I won't comment on ongoing

enforcement investigations, " she said.

 

Leavitt's proactive message doesn't gel with insider

accounts from EPA enforcement employees. " We've known

about these cases for a while, " Schaeffer said. " A lot

of them have been sitting for years because there's

been a mandate from the White House to keep them from

happening. Basically, Bush appointees have been trying

to decide what kind of political consequences would

occur if the cases were prosecuted. "

 

According to Chris Miller, a minority staffer at the

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works,

insufficient political will isn't the only thing

keeping these cases from happening – financial and

human resources are also in short supply. No new

lawsuits will go forward unless the Department of

Justice decides to take them on, and currently the

agency simply doesn't have the funds or people to

handle new cases.

 

" We've talked to Justice at length about this and

they've said that they simply don't have the funds to

do more than 15 environment-related cases a year, "

Miller said. " Already they are in the process of suing

eight large companies over NSR issues alone, and

overall there's a backlog of environmental lawsuits

for them to work on. The continuing shortfall of funds

for environmental enforcement at the Department of

Justice is very unfortunate. "

 

DOJ has requested a 39 percent increase in its fiscal

year 2005 budget for the Environment and Natural

Resources Division, which is responsible for enforcing

and defending environmental laws. Sen. Jim Jeffords

(I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on

Environment, is planning to file a request to the

Senate Judiciary Committee to press for these funds.

 

For now, however, the Bush administration is surely

aware that as long as the DOJ lacks the resources to

press forward on NSR cases, all the talk of crackdowns

and enforcement is just that – election-year talk. It

may fool voters, but Bush's big campaign contributors

won't lose any sleep.

 

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19309/