EPA chief under attack for backing Clean Air Act exception

NATION

EPA chief under attack for backing Clean Air Act exception

By LARRY BIVINS
and ERIN KELLY
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — The nation's dirtiest power plants, including those the TVA operates, soon may get bigger without having to get cleaner.

Aging coal-fired power plants, located mostly in the Midwest and Sooth. should be allowed to expand and upgrade without having to automatically install modern pollution-control equipment, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency recommended yesterday. President Bush is widely expected to approve the recommendation, which energy company lobbyists have long sought.

Environmentalists quickly denounced the announcement from EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman to relax the Clean Air Act standard known as the New Source Review as a gift to polluters and a threat to public health.

"This announcement basically undermines~ a very key foundation of the Clean Air Act," said Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville. "It appears to be widening the loophole to allow utilities with old, dirty plants, like TVA, to continue to prop up those plants without having to put in pollution controls."

Smith said the clean air issue resonates in Tennessee where the American Lung Association has listed four cities — Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville — as among the 25 worst nationwide in terms of air quality.

Don Barger, southeast regional coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association, said yesterday's decision would worsen haze and acid rain problems in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation's most visited park.

Officials at TVA, embroiled in a legal dispute with the Environmental Protection Agency over clean air standards, hailed the EPA announcement.

"We have contended for some time that NSR needs some work," said John Shipp, manager of environmental policy and planning. "TVA needs to be able to maintain our coal-fired power plants in the manner we have been so that we can continue to provide low-cost power to our customers."

The dispute is awaiting a ruling at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. If judges side with EPA, TVA would have to spend more than $1 billion on new pollution controls at seven of its coal-fired plants.

TVA is installing 18 systems to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 75% and five additional scrubbers to filter out 85% of sulfur dioxide emissions from current levels, Shipp said.

Attorneys general in the Northeast, where Midwest power plant emissions are causing acid rain and exacerbating lung disease, are threatening to sue to block the policy change. They also are angry that the administration's action undermines existing lawsuits, like the one against TVA in Atlanta, that federal and state governments have filed trying to compel polluters to install controls.

"This appears to be the biggest rollback of the Clean Air Act in history," said Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt, chairman of the ~e Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "This decision is a victory for outdated polluting power plants and a devastating defeat for public health and our environment." ■