Clean Air

[Guest guest]

Hi,

 

As you may know, since his days on the campaign trail President Bush has

promised to clean up the oldest and dirtiest power plants by reducing

their most harmful pollutants, including the global warming pollutant

carbon dioxide. However, a massive lobbying effort by energy industries

has eroded the President's promise.

 

Now, instead of producing a new plan to reduce pollution, the Bush

Administration is actually preparing a major rollback of existing Clean

Air Act limits on power plant air pollution. Follow the link below to go

to a web page where you can e-mail President Bush and ask him to keep our

clean air laws strong.

 

http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=9 & id4=ES

 

 

BACKGROUND

 

The Bush Administration is planning to move forward with an extensive

package of regulatory changes to the Clean Air Act's " grandfathered "

industry clean-up program, " New Source Review " (NSR). This is a key Clean

Air Act program that requires the oldest and dirtiest " grandfathered "

power plants and refineries to reduce their emissions. It kicks in

whenever they make major modifications that substantially increase

pollution.

 

In its energy plan last May, the Administration called on the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other departments to review this

program to see if it was having an impact on energy production. Despite

initial findings of no adverse impact, changes are imminent after seven

months of industry pressure.

 

Under the current system, these plants need to install state-of-the-art

pollution controls if they make changes that increase the pollution they

emit. Under the Administration plan, however, these plants will be able

to avoid these controls and keep their " grandfathered " status

indefinitely, thanks to several new loopholes. These likely include:

 

* A loophole that lets these plants increase their pollution so long as

they emit no more than the highest amount spewed by the plant during their

dirtiest year in the past five or even ten years. This will make the

maximum dirtiest year the status quo, ensuring that these plants, most

over 25 years old, will never get cleaner - and in many cases will get

even worse than they are today.

 

* A loophole that lets these plants increase their pollution as much as

they want, so long as the plant modifications that cause the increase cost

less than some arbitrary threshold. Industry is known to be pushing an

exemption of $100 million per power plant per year - a huge figure which

would almost completely gut the provision, since even major modifications

that increase pollution by tens of thousands of tons per year can cost

much less than that.

 

The fact is that enforcing the Clean Air Act saves lives. According to a

study by EPA's own consultants, Abt Associates, as many as 9,000 American

lives are shortened each year due to exposure to the pollution from just

the plants that have been charged with violating this provision of the

law. Modern pollution standards would avoid 4,300 to 7,000 of these

deaths every year. Additionally, these plants trigger between 107,000 and

170,000 asthma attacks annually.

 

The Bush Administration should produce a new plan to reduce pollution, not

roll back existing Clean Air Act limits on power plant air pollution.

Follow the link below to go to a web page where you can e-mail President

Bush and ask him to keep our clean air laws strong.

 

http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=9 & id4=ES

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Becky Stanfield

State PIRGs Staff Attorney

http://www.CleanAirNow.org

 

P.S. Thanks again for your support, please feel free to share this e-mail

with your family and friends.