Ex-EPA chief attacks Bush's utility pollution rules
Date: 05-Sep-02
Country: USA
Author: Chris Baltimore
The Bush administration announced a plan in June to ease requirements that utilities install costly anti-pollution devices when renovating old coal-fired power plants.
The utility industry had sought such changes in the Clean Air Act, contending that much of the work that triggered the expensive new equipment was routine maintenance.
Environmental groups criticized the White House plan as a way of allowing utilities to rebuild dirty, aging power plants from the inside out without state-of-the-art equipment to cut emissions that cause smog, acid rain and soot.
Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, denied the Bush administration's assertions that parts of its plan were offshoots of Clinton-era deliberations.
"Some have suggested that the administration's announced changes are changes the Clinton administration supported. Nothing could be further from the truth," Browner said.
She testified before a Democrat-led Senate Health subcommittee, which has demanded that the White House provide an analysis of whether relaxed rules will lead to more asthma and respiratory ailments, some of which can be deadly for some children and the elderly.
The pollution rule changes, now under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, are interpretations of the Clean Air Act and do not need congressional approval.
ELECTION-YEAR POSITIONING
Senate Democrats have targeted the rule changes as a campaign issue ahead of elections in November. Sen. John Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat and 2004 presidential hopeful, has threatened to attach language to a federal spending bill to delay the proposal.
Current EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman was invited to testify before the panel, but was at the U.N. environmental summit in Johannesburg.
In her absence, EPA Assistant Administrator Jeffrey Holmstead testified that 1996 EPA analysis found that the public health impacts of the rules set to be finalized by the administration will be "environmentally neutral."
"The changes we are finalizing are substantially the same as those that were proposed in 1996," Holmstead said.
Edwards said the Bush administration failed to provide a health analysis of the rule changes in the so-called New Source Review program.
"I was told I'd get some data and analysis. It never came," Edwards said. A letter sent by Whitman last week did not contain the analysis requested by 44 mostly Democratic senators, he said.
Browner said the planned changes will mean dirtier air.
"In many instances they appear to be nothing but loopholes that fly in the face of common sense and come at the expense of the public's health," she said in written testimony.
She called for more health studies before the plans are put into effect. "If in fact they can demonstrate real pollution reductions, then show them," she said. "If not, don't do it."
Browner said the 1996 proposal was incomplete because it came before the EPA introduced two "crucial" standards to reduce soot and smog. Moreover, the EPA never adopted the rules that it proposed for industry comment in 1996, Browner said. "We didn't adopt them. That's the evidence," she said.
Edwards, the panel chairman, said he would do "everything in my power" to stop the EPA from enacting the new rules, "including adding a rider to the VA/HUD appropriations bill."
Environmental issues could play an important part in some November congressional elections. Democrats are eager to solidify their hold on the Senate while Republicans try to increase their slim majority in the House of Representatives.
"If more Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration don't start paying attention, then they can expect to pay at the polls this November and beyond," said Mark Wenzler at the National Environmental Trust.
The proposed rule changes will have no effect on power plant emissions, said utility lobbying group Edison Electric Institute. "Power plants cannot emit b
