Bush Team Prepares to Weaken Clean Air Act at Expense of States

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Thu, 03 Feb 2005 14:06:52 GMT

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Bush Team Prepares to Weaken Clean Air Act at Expense of States

 

 

Bush Greenwatch

 

February 3, 2005 | Back Issues

 

Bush Team Prepares to Weaken Clean Air Act at Expense of States

 

For several years state attorneys general have been among the most

aggressive enforcers of environmental law. In 1999, for example, New

York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and other northeastern attorneys

general sued several Midwestern power plants for failure to comply

with provisions of the Clean Air Act when they expanded their

capacities. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced an

intent to sue the Tennessee Valley Authority under the same

requirement last June.

 

Now these activist attorneys general have become a target for the Bush

administration and its corporate allies. Indeed, Michael Greve of the

ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute has listed " curbs on

state attorneys general " as one of his top three priorities, along

with such hot-button issues as tort reform.

 

The administration's attack is personified in its proposed rewrite of

important provisions of the Clean Air Act, euphemistically named the

" Clear Skies " Act. Reintroduced in the Senate last week, Clear Skies

would eviscerate two key Clean Air Act provisions that state attorneys

general employ to sue polluting power plants.

 

First, Clear Skies would gut the Clean Air Act's New Source Review

(NSR) program. NSR requires power plants to add new pollution controls

when they expand their capacity. The Bush plan would reduce the number

of situations in which power plants would have to install new

pollution control technology.

 

" The approach taken in [Clear Skies] would allow power plant operators

to keep plants operating for 100 years without applying modern

emission controls, " Conrad Schneider of the Clean Air Task Force told

a Senate Committee last week. If NSR is crippled, dirty plants can run

indefinitely without reducing their pollution emissions. The AGs

trying to protect the public will be able to do nothing about it.

 

The second attack on state AGs comes from Clear Skies' planned

weakening of the Clean Air Act's interstate air pollution remedy

process (known as Section 126 petitions). A state that is out of

compliance with Clean Air Act standards can file a Section 126

petition which asks the EPA to take action against out-of-state

sources that are fouling its air.

 

North Carolina's Cooper filed such a petition against plants in 13

states last March. Northeastern state AGs filed similar petitions in

the 1990s against Midwestern and Southeastern power generators.

 

When the EPA acts on a Section 126 petition, it usually gives the

targeted power plants about three years to clean up their stacks. But

Clear Skies would block any Section 126 fixes until 2014, giving

polluters a nine-year pass.

 

Even after 2014, states asking for EPA's help to crack down on

out-of-state plants would have to show they have applied every single

more cost-effective measure at cutting pollution. The Clean Air Task

Force's Schneider calls this " an impossible showing. "

 

Republicans and Democrats alike support a strong role for the states

in protecting the environment, a principle known as cooperative

federalism. GOP governors George Pataki of New York and Arnold

Schwarzenegger of California last month reminded the Senate that

" states do the majority of the work to carry out [the Clean Air Act's]

mandates. "

 

The governors asked the Senate to " protect the cornerstones " of the

Clean Air Act, specifically the strong role of the states.

 

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