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Epa eases pollution rule at power plants { August 27 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3347536http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3347536
EPA Eases Pollution Rule at Power Plants
Wed August 27, 2003 08:12 PM ET
By Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday revised clean air regulations to make it easier for power plants and refineries to repair and upgrade their facilities -- a move environmental groups said will cause more air pollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule that would let industrial facilities make some upgrades without installing expensive equipment to fight air pollution.
"The changes we are making in this rule will provide industrial facilities and power plants with the regulatory certainty they need," said EPA Acting Administrator Marianne Horinko.
"This rule will result in safer, more efficient operation of these facilities and, in the case of power plants, more reliable operations that are environmentally sound and provide more affordable energy," she said.
The Edison Electric Institute, the trade group that represents big electric companies, said the new rule would allow utilities to provide more power supplies.
"Americans deserve a reliable supply of electricity and continuing air quality improvements," EEI said. "These new regulations are vital to achieving these goals."
The American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group of the major oil firms, said the new policy will help refineries to easily perform routine maintenance and increase the flow of gasoline to U.S. consumers. "Recent gasoline spikes are an indication of what can happen with unanticipated refinery problems," API said.
Environmental and public health groups argue the new rule will allow old, coal-fired power plants and refineries to emit more air pollutants in some cases.
MORE POLLUTION?
The National Resource Defense Council estimates that this new rule will allow more air pollution from about 17,000 industrial facilities across the country.
Emissions from coal-fired plants can aggravate asthma, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.
"EPA policy should be based on protecting public health, not bolstering industry profits," the American Lung Association said in a statement.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he will sue the Bush administration to block the rule change and will ask other states to join his challenge. New Jersey and Massachusetts said they will follow suit.
"This flagrantly illegal rule will ensure that ... Americans will breathe dirtier air, contract more respiratory disease and suffer more environmental degradation caused by air pollution," Spitzer said.
The rule would let facilities replace equipment without installing pollution controls as long as the cost of the replacement does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of what the EPA broadly defines as the entire "process unit."
In addition, the replacement equipment cannot cause the unit to exceed any emissions limits.
Under the new rule, if a coal-fired plant replaced a boiler whose cost was less than 20 percent of the cost of replacing the entire process unit -- the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment that turns coal into electricity -- the company would not have to control any resulting pollution increases.
Green groups accused the Bush administration of deliberately releasing the final rule while Congress is on recess, and also to protect the administration's nominee to head EPA, Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, from having to decide whether to issue the controversial rule. EPA denied this.
Utilities have been fighting the EPA for years over what constitutes routine maintenance to power plants built before the mid-1970s.
When Congress wrote the "new source review" provision of the Clean Air Act in 1977, it assumed most of the aging plants would be gradually replaced with new ones and exempted plants operating at the time from stricter pollution controls, unless they launch a major renovation or expansion.
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