Letters fog air debate on clean air rules

TVA RETROFITS

In 2000, an EPA review board found that TVA spent an estimated $208 million in plant retrofits over the years. In one case, TVA spent about $20 million to replace most of a boiler at a coal-fired plant in Cumberland, Tenn.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis said the agency believes "it was appropriate for the administration to closely examine the issues, particularly how the new source review would affect energy production."

He said TVA's disagreement with EPA is not "over the desirability of reducing emissions but rather, it was over doing so in a manner that would prevent the maintenance of TVA power plants. We are reducing the emissions."

Scott Segal, a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of electric utilities including TVA, has advocated relaxing the New Source Review standards.

Mr. Segal dismissed concerns about ozone, saying the plants already are controlled by rigorous standards in their permits. He said that since adoption of the Clean Air Act, power plants have reduced major pollutants 35 percent while increasing coal use 70 percent.

He also said utilities, manufacturers and the public are hurt by the EPA's insistence that "routine maintenance" projects are in fact major retrofits.

"Simply put, we want a bright line distinction between routine maintenance and major modification," Mr. Segal said. "What we want is the way this program effectively operated for 30 years."

Air: Regulation

new facilities.

During the Clinton administration, EPA proposed stricter enforcement of the Clean Air Amendment, which had exempted some businesses — including coal-burning power plants — from the strictest air emission standards. The exemptions were intended, authorities said, to allow manufacturers to phase out the older plants over time, replacing them with cleaner, better technology.

EPA has sued TVA and eight other power companies, claiming the companies upgraded older plants and kept them operational with major work disguised as "routine maintenance." EPA said the companies took advantage of their temporary loophole.

When President Bush took office, the tougher enforcement plans were put on hold. And in his resignation statement Thursday, Mr. Schaffer said backing away from tougher enforcement "would turn narrow exemptions into larger loopholes that would allow old 'grandfathered' plants to be continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase) without modern pollution controls."

PAPER PLANT AFFECTED

In his letter, Mr. Wilson cited the case of a West Tennessee paper plant, Packaging Corporation of America, which had proposed to replace tubes in one of its chemical recovery boilers because some "had thinned to a potentially unsafe point."

He said the state's Department of Environment and Conservation approved the project as routine maintenance. Last September, the EPA disagreed and said New Source Review regulations would apply.

Such interpretations, Mr. Wilson wrote, "could undermine the safe and reliable operation of industrial and electrical generation facilities in Tennessee and other states. Routine maintenance, repair and replacement of equipment are necessary and vital activities, and should not be hindered by complex and time-consuming regulation."

Manufacturers, too, are unhappy with the tougher EPA enforcement and reportedly are trying to generate a letter-writing campaign of their own among congressmen.

Letters fog debate on clean air rules

BY ANDY SHER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — The Tennessee governor's office and 11 state attorneys general have written letters urging the Bush administration to loosen Clinton-era clean air requirements for power plants, refineries and factories.

Now those letters — written between October and January — are generating criticism from environmental groups, who said relaxing rules and enforcement will lead to dirtier air and pollution-related illnesses.

And in the wake of Eric Schaffer's resignation in protest Thursday from his post as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's director of regulatory enforcement, some say there is growing concern the state officials' letters could provide the Bush administration a further argument to curb the tougher enforcement approach.

The concerns all surround the interpretation and "reinterpretation" of so-called New Source Review regulations which could force manufacturers and utilities — including the Tennessee Valley Authority — to retrofit older plants with the same kind of best available pollution control equipment already required or