Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 18, 2002
President Bush's administration is sending a mixed message on clean air. On Wednesday, the Justice Department said it would prosecute cases brought by the Clinton administration against coal-fired power plants and oil refineries that refused to install pollution controls as required by the Clean Air Act. At the same time, the White House and Environmental Protection Agency are considering weakening the very rules that are used to enforce the act.
Already seen as too soft on polluters, the administration would be better served to avoid confusing actions. Such misdirection could appear to be a strategy to give in to polluters while pretending to care about the environment and public health.
At stake is an effort -- called new source review -- to rein in pollution spewed by older power-generating plants. Those coal-fired plants were allowed to produce electricity without cleaning their smokestack emissions, in the belief that they would be replaced by newer, cleaner plants. But power companies found that without having to buy expensive pollution-control technology, they could make more money from the dirty plants. The review provision of the Clean Air Act required the plants to meet the latest environmental standards at any time they increased capacity (and therefore pollution). Instead, some of the plants made upgrades under the guise of maintenance and refused to add the required pollution controls.
Now, 51 power plants in 12 states pour tens of millions of tons of pollutants into the air, mostly in the Midwest and Eastern states. And while cleaning up the pollution has a cost, as the power companies argue, so does the status quo. Pollutants from those plants shorten the lives of at least 5,500 people and cause more than 100,000 asthma attacks each year, according to a study by the Clean Air Task Force.
Under President Clinton, the EPA and Justice Department charged more than half of those plants with violating the law. While Attorney General John Ashcroft said he would enforce the law, the Bush administration is considering first weakening it. One proposal would allow some of the old coal-fired plants to increase production and emit more pollutants without having to meet modern standards. If that is the decision the president makes, he will undercut the enforcement effort and show more concern for the industry's profits than for the threat to public health.
It would be a shame if President Bush backs down on one of our most important environment challenges: to clean the air we breathe.