Ignoring Health Risk, EPA To Authorize Air Pollution Increases Nationwide

(August 22, 2003 - Boulder, CO)  The Bush administration is preparing to finalize some of the most far-reaching anti-clean air measures in the history of the Clean Air Act.  According to government records, on August 1, 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency submitted sweeping rollbacks to the Clean Air Act’s “new source review” for final White House review.  If finalized, the changes would allow thousands of power plants, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities nationwide to substantially increase air pollution in surrounding communities without having to meet long-standing clean air safeguards.

“This is the single most destructive anti-clean air rule in the history of the Clean Air Act,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Vickie Patton. “The Bush administration is preparing to eliminate vital, cost-effective clean air measures that have protected Americans from the harmful effects of industrial air pollution for a quarter century.”

EPA data indicates that even without the impending rollbacks, large pollution sources such as power plants release about 11.4 million tons of harmful sulfur dioxide and 5.2 million tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides each year, comprising 62% and 21% of the national totals for these contaminants. 

“This decision will mean more pollution in our cities and communities, more pollution for our families and children and less accountability and responsibility for America’s largest polluters,” Patton said.  “Americans want polluters to clean up their act, but the Bush administration is helping them do the exact opposite.”

The traditional “new source review” program adopted in the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments has long required old, high-polluting sources such as power plants to prevent pollution increases that would worsen unhealthy air quality in urban centers or adversely impact national parks.  By contrast, the administration’s initiative would allow virtually all air pollution increases from old, high-polluting sources to go unregulated.  Specifically, the EPA is preparing to finalize new rules that would broadly exclude existing industrial sources from the long-standing requirement to modernize pollution controls by imposing an arbitrary economic test that would exempt major pollution-increasing activity from clean air protections.