Thursday, November 06, 2003
Get out of jail free card
A change in enforcement policy will lead the Environmental Protection Agency to drop investigations into 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act, lawyers at the agency who were briefed on the decision this week said.
The lawyers said in interviews on Wednesday that the decision meant the cases would be judged under new, less stringent rules set to take effect next month, rather than the stricter rules in effect at the time the investigations began.
The lawyers said the new rules include exemptions that would make it almost impossible to sustain the investigations into the plants, which are scattered around the country and owned by 10 utilities.
The lawyers said the change grew out of a recommendation by Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which urged the government two years ago to study industry complaints about its enforcement actions.
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Under the old rules of the so-called New Source Review program, power plants, oil refineries and industrial boilers that were modernized in ways that increased harmful emissions generally had to install more pollution controls.
Under the new rules, any renovation project that costs less than 20 percent of the power-generating unit's value will be exempt, and no pollution controls will need to be added even if the project increases emissions. Critics say thresholds set at that level would exempt most of the power plants that have been under investigation.
One career E.P.A. enforcement lawyer said the decision, coupled with the changes in the underlying rules, could mean that the utility industry could avoid making as much as $10 billion to $20 billion in pollution-control upgrades.
And people say Cheney's energy task force was pro-industry.
posted by chris at 11:48 AM
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