Old power plants could avoid cleanup

Friday, August 29, 2003

By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Pennsylvania will file a federal lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's decision to weaken air quality rules and exempt thousands of old power plants, refineries and factories from having to install expensive pollution controls when they upgrade production facilities.

State Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said the administration's controversial amendments to the Clean Air Act's New Source Review standards will lead to more air pollution and increased public health risks and put Pennsylvania businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

"Pennsylvanians will pick up the tab for this blow to our competitiveness and this assault on our health. We urge President Bush to reverse course and protect commonwealth residents," McGinty said.

McGinty said the state would take a lead role in the legal challenges to the federal rule changes, and Kurt Knaus said the state was in contact with several other states yesterday to discuss the states' response to the federal rule changes.

Under the old rule, plant operators were required to retrofit their facilities with anti-pollution equipment if they did anything more than "routine maintenance."

Under the new federal rule, a major revision of current federal standards that date to 1971, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will allow power plants and industries to replace up to 20 percent of their production facilities and still be exempted from installing costly anti-pollution controls.

Theoretically, older power plants will be able to incrementally replace all of a facility's production equipment -- boiler, generator, turbine -- over a five-year span and increase both production and pollution without installing new pollution controls.

With the new rule in place, it is estimated that more than 17,000 older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units could avoid making extensive upgrades to reduce emissions.

The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utilities that favors the rule changes, was critical of McGinty's and the state's reaction to the new rule, which utilities said would benefit both the state's economy and the environment.

"Despite what critics have said, this rule will reduce emissions," said Scott Segal, council director. "In any event, parts of the Clean Air Act completely unaffected by today's action are in place to continue the trend of emissions reductions. All power plants covered by this rule are under tight permit conditions fully protective of human health.

"Over the last two decades, emissions from the power sector have significantly declined. That trend will continue."

John Hanger, president and chief executive officer of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, a statewide environmental group, said rule changes signed Wednesday by EPA's acting administrator, Marianne Horinko, are a political payoff to industries that contributed more than $50 million to his first presidential campaign.

Hanger said power plants are "talking out of both sides of their mouths" in trying to justify the rule changes and noted that 61 power plants are facing pending charges they violated the long-standing NSR standard by making changes to power plant operations that increased pollution.

"For Western Pennsylvania, it's a message to drop dead," Hanger said of the new rule. "Pennsylvania has more than 1 million people suffering from respiratory illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the kind of pollution that comes from power plants."

Although the rule has been signed, it must still be published in the Federal Register.

Knaus said once the rule is published, states may file suit in federal court.

Pennsylvania was one of 10 northeastern states that are parties to an earlier federal lawsuit challenging changes to pollution rules that deal with construction and modification of large industrial sources of pollution. That case has not been decided.

McGinty has also urged the U.S. Senate to support an energy bill amendment that would prevent the EPA from forcing states like Pennsylvania to implement the NSR rule changes unless the agency could demonstrate that the final rules would not weaken federal air quality requirements for any facility in the state.

Although the energy bill passed without amendment, the measure is slated for conference committee in Congress.

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