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Dirty
Work
The
Bush administration discreetly published its final changes
to the Clean Air Act on New Year’s Eve, and attorneys general
from nine Northeast states quickly filed a lawsuit in federal
court.
The nine state attorneys general, including New York’s Eliot
Spitzer, filed their lawsuit on the grounds that changes made
to the new source review element of the Clean Air Act—which
determines the amount of money that power plant owners can
invest on-site before having to install more pollution controls—will
lead to dirtier air, and are therefore in violation of the
federal Clean Air Act.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s updated
rules for new source review, businesses are allowed “more
flexibility to respond to rapidly changing markets and to
plan for future investments in pollution control and prevention
technologies.” But Mark Violette, a spokesman for Spitzer,
said the changes let the fox guard the chicken coop.
“It
allows the polluter to decide when the law applies to them,”
said Violette. “I wish I had that power with the IRS.”
Aside from placing too much power in the hands of polluters,
the attorneys general claim the changes to the Clean Air Act
would present more of a problem for northeastern states due
to prevailing winds.
“In
New York, we are tremendously blessed by nature,” Violette
said, “but at the same time we are cursed by nature to a certain
degree. We are the last stop for air currents that blow across
the Midwest picking up pollution, and this can be related
to health problems and acid rain.”
The attorneys general claim that since 1970, presidents from
both Republican and Democratic administrations have either
strengthened the Clean Air Act or left it alone. The Bush
administration, they contend, is the first in three decades
to “gut key components of the Clean Air Act.”
Further, Violette said, the timing of the administration’s
announcement “was dreadful,” and should be viewed for the
admission of guilt that it is.
“They
announced these new rules right at Thanksgiving and then formally
published them on New Year’s Eve,” Violette said, “clearly
hoping that the public at large would be distracted and not
paying attention to the news. If they actually believed that
these changes would be better for the environment, they would’ve
held a high-profile press conference.”
—Travis
Durfee
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Columns
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