Governors, Environmentalists, and Health Advocates Fume Over Bush's Last Minute Air Pollution Rule

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Governors, Environmentalists, and Health Advocates Fume Over Bush's Last Minute Air Pollution Rule

by J.R. Pegg


WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of six Northeastern governors is urging the Bush administration to abandon a plan that would relax pollution control requirements on power plants, saying the proposed rule would increase air pollution and threaten public health.


Dominion Energy's Brayton Point power plant in Massachusetts burns coal, oil and natural gas. (Photo by Alexey Sergeev)

The concerns raised by the governors echo worries expressed by environmentalists and public health advocates, who also fear the Bush administration is keen to push through additional industry-friendly air rules before leaving office on January 20, 2009.

The regulation that has drawn the ire of the Northeastern governors would change a key part of the Clean Air Act's New Source Review, NSR, program, which was created to ensure that owners of older power plants would modernize pollution controls when they make modifications to facilities that result in increased emissions.

Currently, the NSR requirements are triggered when a power plant makes an upgrade that will result in an increase in annual emissions. The Bush administration's proposal would change that test, exempting facilities from NSR if the modifications do not change in the plant's hourly emissions.

"What might appear to be a simple word change could have an enormous - and ominous - impact," said Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. "Using hourly instead of annual emissions as the threshold for a New Source Review and the installation of pollution control devices stands the intent of the Clean Air Act on its head."

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/25-1