the Sugar Conspiracy

Friday, August 22, 2003

You've won this round, industry!

After more than two years of internal deliberation and intense pressure from industry, the Bush administration has settled on a regulation that would allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices, according to those involved in the deliberations.

The new rule, a draft of which was made available to The New York Times by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, would constitute a sweeping and cost-saving victory for industries, exempting thousands of industrial plants and refineries from part of the Clean Air Act.

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The current rule requires plant owners to install pollution-control devices if they undertake anything more than "routine maintenance" on their plants. Industries have long argued that the standard is too vague and hinders substantial investment in cleaner, more efficient equipment.

The new rule says that as much as 20 percent of the cost of replacing a plant's essential production equipment — a boiler, generator or turbine — could be spent and the owner would still be exempt from installing any pollution controls, according to people involved in the deliberations.

Together, such equipment can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes more than $1 billion, to replace. A utility or factory could thus make tens of millions of dollars worth of improvements without being required to install pollution controls.

I don't understand how it took two years of "internal deliberation" for the Bush administration to STILL do what they wanted to do in the first place - support industry. Although, the administration originally wanted that 20% figure to be closer to 50%, so maybe that's where the deliberations came in. But forget trying to clean up the environment - as long as industry is able to do whatever it wants and not have to spend its precious billions of dollars on things like being environmentally responsible.

posted by chris at 12:45 PM
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