Another key EPA enforcement official set to retire
Date: 25-Jul-02
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
Sylvia Lowrance, EPA's principal deputy assistant administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, will retire in the near future, an EPA spokesman said.
Lowrance helped oversee Clinton-era lawsuits filed in 1999 against nine U.S. utilities to force them to install expensive pollution-reduction equipment at aging coal-fired power plants. One case has been settled out of court.
Environmental groups are concerned that the lawsuits might be dropped by the Bush administration, which last month proposed to relax air pollution rules for aging plants. Under a Clinton-era rule known as "new source review," such plants had to install expensive anti-pollution devices when they made major renovations or expansions.
Utilities contend that the regulation is too costly and drives up the price of electricity.
Environmentalists say the regulation is needed to protect the public health from emissions of smog, acid rain and soot.
Lowrance, an EPA employee for more than two decades, declined to comment on her future plans.
Her low-key departure will come on the heels of the resignation of Eric Schaeffer, another high-ranking enforcement official who left in March to protest what he called the Bush administration's lax enforcement of emission cases.
Schaeffer, in an interview with Reuters, refused to comment on the motives behind his former boss' departure. He did speculate that her action will hurt the progress of the enforcement cases.
"Especially now, with enforcement under the gun inside the administration, it's going to leave a hole," he said. "I'm sure (EPA) staff feel that way."
EPA spokesman Joe Martyak said Lowrance's departure was not connected to the agency's high-profile enforcement cases. He also criticized Schaeffer's interpretation of what Lowrance's departure will mean.
"With all due respect ... Eric Schaeffer doesn't know what he's talking about," Martyak said. "Just because (he) worked in that department does not make him mister know-it-all about everything that goes on" there, he said.
Phyllis Harris, tapped to replace Lowrance on an interim basis, has experience in EPA enforcement actions, Martyak said.
Harris will head the EPA enforcement effort while a Senate committee considers the confirmation of former New Jersey gaming industry official John Peter Suarez as an assistant administrator, Martyak said.
Hanging in the balance are several lawsuits filed three years ago against Midwest and Southern utilities that operate dirty, coal-fired power plants.
Another case is pending against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in late June ordered the TVA case put on hold until the end of August to allow mediation talks.
Lowrance's departure "will be a real setback for the Clean Air Act because she has been one of the champions trying to enforce it," said Frank O'Donnell at the Clean Air Trust.
Lowrance took the hard-line stance toward enforcement set by Clinton-era EPA chief Carol Browner, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents some U.S. utilities.
"Clearly we just didn't see eye to eye," Maisano said. Utilities have complained that current rules stifle their ability to build new plants and perform routine maintenance.