Putting the heat on AEP

In April of 2011, lobbyists for one of America’s biggest polluters, the utility American Electric Power (AEP), quietly circulated a 56-page draft bill in Congress, blandly titled the Electric Power Regulatory Coordination Act of 2011.

The bill was a stealth attempt to scuttle proposed EPA rules that would require utilities to reduce emissions of soot, sulfur dioxide and mercury, all produced by coal-fired power plants.

AEP-backed bill had deadly consequences

Within days, EDF’s legal team issued an analysis that showed the real damage the bill would do. By derailing EPA’s rules, it would cause an estimated 17,000 deaths and 110,000 asthma attacks in its first year of implementation alone.

Fred Krupp, EDF’s president, called it “Washington at its worst, corporate lobbyists writing legislation to block limits on pollution—and then shopping around for sponsors in Congress.”

Our staff and members united to stop it

EDF’s analysis was broadly disseminated through the media and on Capitol Hill, where even coal-friendly legislators scrambled to distance themselves from AEP’s bill.

EDF members sent 100,000 messages to Congress, urging legislators to stop corporate lobbyists from undercutting health-based air standards. Thousands more sent Twitter messages and Facebook posts.

AEP's misinformation campaign continues

Still AEP kept trying. It lamented that the air rules would be a disaster, forcing it to close some plants—a misleading claim, since the utility was already planning to close these obsolete plants. What’s more, at the same time, the utility was telling stockholders it was well prepared to meet the new standards.

For its part, EDF and partners like the Moms Clean Air Force are keeping the pressure on utilities not to join AEP’s cynical dirty air campaign.

Stealth legislation supported by the mining industry threatens the Grand Canyon.

In July, we helped organize a demonstration in front of AEP’s Columbus, OH headquarters.

Nearby, we’ve placed a billboard ad asking if the utility really thinks 17,000 Americans a year should die so it can continue polluting our air.

Stealth attack on clean air

With opponents of environmental protection, if one approach doesn’t work they’ll try another.

One ploy is to get compliant congressmen to slip so-called riders into the giant bills that fund the government. Written in obscure language, these riders would transform federal policy.

Here’s a recent House rider:

Sec. 435. None of the funds made available by this Act or any subsequent Act making appropriations for the Environmental Protection Agency may be used by the Environmental Protection Agency to develop, adopt, implement, administer, or enforce a change or supplement to the rule dated November 13, 1986, or guidance documents dated January 15, 2003.

Translation: This would block EPA’s attempt to strengthen protections for wetlands that filter pollution and prevent flooding.

Clean air standards could be decimated

This summer, an unprecedented 40 anti-environmental riders were added to the 2012 spending bill for the Interior Department and EPA. They reveal the scope of the pollution lobby’s attack on public health and the environment.

If they became law, they could:

• Prevent EPA from regulating mercury, smog and soot from power plants.
• Bar EPA from spending to enforce the agreement between the administration and car manufacturers to raise vehicle fuel economy, effectively killing the deal.
• Open up one million acres adjacent to the Grand Canyon to uranium mining, despoiling that iconic landscape.

EDF is fighting back with tough radio and billboard advertisements in key states that focus on the threat to children’s health. The ads target fence-sitting House members.