U.S. Easing Pollution Rules to Spur Building of Power Plants

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 � The Bush administration said today that it wanted to ease cumbersome anti-pollution rules to encourage the expansion of power plants and refineries without fouling the skies.

The long-expected change in policy will actually "encourage emissions reductions" by giving plant operators more flexibility, Christie Whitman, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said at a news conference this afternoon.

Ms. Whitman said that the old rules "have deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution."

The new rules contain language more palatable to the plant operators on what constitutes "routine maintenance," a definition that can be crucial in determining how to interpret the E.P.A.'s "new source review" rules.

The new source review concept was originally intended to shelter older plants from strict new pollution rules unless they were modernized and increased their capacity, in which case they would have had to enhance their pollution controls as well. The assumption was that older plants would eventually be replaced by newer plants that would be cleaner as well as more efficient.

But people skeptical of new source review have contended that it can have perverse effects by discouraging managers of plants built in the 1940's and 1950's from doing anything to make them more efficient, since modernization can necessitate costly new pollution-control measures.

Some environmentalists have criticized plant managers for carrying out extensive overhauls but disingenuously describing them as "maintenance" to skirt the new source review regulations.

While not surprising, Ms. Whitman's action is certain to touch off new debates, both in the political arena and in the courts, where environmental groups and a group of Northeastern states, led by New York and Connecticut, plan to file suit against the changes.

"The Bush administration decided to allow corporate polluters to spew even more toxic chemicals into our air, regardless of the fact that it will harm millions of Americans," said John Walke, director of Natural Resources Defense Council'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." The environmental group said it would take legal action against the rule change.

States in the Northeast have long complained that their air (and the lungs of their residents) are fouled by pollutants that descend on the region in the natural west-to-east flow of the winds.

The changes announced today, which are administrative and do not need Congressional approval, have been sought by utilities and by the coal and oil industries. Ms. Whitman said more than a year ago that her staff was drafting a new approach to controlling emissions.

Ms. Whitman's announcement made official what had been known for many months: that the Bush administration wanted to revise some sections of the Clean Air Act in ways that would answer utilities' complaints that the rules tied them up in paperwork and deterred investment in new power plants needed to provide electricity to consumers and businesses. The last major amendments to the act were adopted in 1990.

The move puts the Bush administration at odds not only with some environmental groups but with some politicians normally friendly to President Bush.

Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, a fellow Republican, has long opposed the White House's approach on the issue. So has another New York Republican, Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, of the Utica area. Air pollution has been a major concern in New York State for decades, in part because polluted air coming from the west has been blamed for fouling the once pristine skies and lakes in the state's Adirondacks region.

The Clinton administration initiated several lawsuits against operators of some big coal-fired electric plants, contending that their "maintenance" over the years amounted to changes that should have triggered new source review. Some utilities settled and agreed to cut back on pollution. But other operators backed away from negotiations with the government, hoping that the rules would be relaxed.

Copyright The New York Times Company

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Also, for those of you who still don't think we're inching ever-closer toward living in a police-state, read this. Nice to know our Federal gov't is so concerned about our health, by the way.

Also, see these pics? As The Memory Hole notes, "Besides being a probable violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, any governmental filming of people who are engaged in peaceful protest is a sign of a police state, pure and simple." I couldn't agree more.

You'll recall that yesterday I wasn't saying much about the new wire-tap laws (bet you all wish I was so silent today, huh?). This is all the same thing. Think we have the freedom to say what we think and have peacful demonstrations in this country? Well, perhaps not for long. Frankly, I'm just waiting for this journal to be looked at closely. Thank Christ there aren't that many people reading it. I may be some silly nobody and really who cares what I think, but I'll bet my bottom dollar that a lot of people in that crowd in DC thought the same of themselves. And now their picture is likely in some FBI file and with these new laws all nicely passed and signed into legislation, their phones can be tapped, their internet files looked at...all because they were excercising their right to a peaceable demonstration.

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