Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Scientists' report is skeptical of new air pollution rules

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration might add to air pollution by making it easier for thousands of aging factories and plants to modernize, scientists say.

A report Friday from the National Academy of Sciences casts doubt on federal attempts to help power plants, refineries, manufacturers and other industrial facilities comply with a 29-year-old Clean Air Act program known as "new source review."

The scientists' review says the administration's changes to the program would probably add pollution from nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, though they acknowledge "substantial uncertainty" about how much pollution there would be and where it would turn up.

The Clean Air Act program requires businesses to use the most effective antipollution controls.

Opponents and proponents have long agreed that it comes with too much bureaucratic red tape.

Some of the administration's changes to that program are under review by the Supreme Court, which was due to receive legal briefs on the matter Friday.

Nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides are two of the main chemicals targeted by the review program.

They add to smog, acid rain and fine particles that lodge in people's lungs and cause thousands of premature deaths, asthma and other respiratory ailments a year.

Vickie Patton, an attorney for Environmental Defense, said the study shows the Environmental Protection Agency failed to even evaluate the health and environmental effects of its rulemaking.

The EPA took a different view, after spending $1-million to sponsor the NAS study because of a request from Congress.

Bill Wehrum, the EPA's acting chief of its Office of Air and Radiation, said the study confirms the administration's view that more companies should be allowed to buy and sell pollution rights.

That approach, promoted in the EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rule, allows plants that don't meet their required reductions to pay plants that cut more pollution than is required. But that rule doesn't take full effect until 2015 and beyond.

Starting in 1999, President Bill Clinton used the clean air program to sue owners of 51 coal-burning power plants. The Bush administration continued those cases, but rewrote the rules.

Some of the administration's 2002 changes were struck down by a federal court last year; the rest went into effect only in a few states.

The 2003 revisions, affecting replaced equipment, were struck down by a court two years ago.

[Last modified July 22, 2006, 01:15:51]