Mr. Bush's giveaway to polluters

Mr. Bush's giveaway to polluters

Despite all the talk out of Washington lately about the need to restore corporate responsibility, the Bush administration's so-called "clear skies" proposal - finally unveiled by the president last week - turns out to be a reversal on the theme. In fact, it is precisely the deceptive retreat from the concept of corporate responsibility that its advanced billing suggested, and that public health and environmental organizations have reasonably feared from an administration admittedly in thrall from the outset to the power industry.

So forget the "clear skies" label; that's blatant propagandist window-dressing. The Bush proposal would let egregious corporate polluters - particularly utilities that operate the nation's dirtiest coal-fired electric power plants, the most massive polluters in the country - off the hook for years. It begs the very question of corporate responsibility for current emissions that are presently damaging Americans' health and the environment, and that will continue to do so until more forceful clean air advocates require concrete improvements.

There is hardly any question about the present damage. Excessive pollution from TVA and other dirty, regional power utilities, for example, is the main source of the nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and carbon dioxide which plagues the Tennessee Valley and is visibly present on any hot, still, smoggy day. Nitrogen oxide produces smog, which causes asthma and other deadly respiratory diseases and obscures vistas. Sulfur dioxide contributes to smog and produces acid rain, acid fog and fine particle pollution. The former kill plants and streams; the latter damages lungs. Mercury is toxic and harms the central nervous system. Carbon dioxide causes global warming. The effects of each are seen in present environmental damage and the virtual pandemic in recent years of asthma.

Mr. Bush's proposal promises, and promise is the key word, 70 percent reductions in three of these pollutants, excluding carbon dioxide, by 2018, well after he's out of office and not responsible for the outcome. But that deceptive promise is far too empty in the interim years. And 16 years is simply too long to wait for clean air improvements that are needed immediately, many of which already should have made under the current New Source Review (NSR) standards that Mr. Bush would now dump.

There is a reason for this proposal and its gutting of NSR enforcement: Mr. Bush's glowing rhetoric about possible reductions in the long-term future is bureaucratic cover to disguise the present giveaway to his old power company cronies.

The New Source Review (NSR) standards that Mr. Bush would erase were to have been applied to old plants - originally exempted from Clean Air Act standards - when utilities overhauled those plants to extend their life-cycles. NSR rules required utilities in those circumstances to install modern pollution control technologies, but the rules were largely ignored by utilities that deceptively labeled their piece-meal overhauls as "routine maintenance."

The EPA discovered in the 1990s that many of the nation's largest utilities - including TVA - had been evading NSR rules. In 1999, the agency filed lawsuits against at least eight utility companies, including TVA, to force them to comply. Several other utilities voluntarily entered settlement talks to avoid lawsuits.

Resistant utilities, however, organized the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council and have lobbied intensively to kill the NSR standards to short-circuit the lawsuits. A compliant Mr. Bush put the standards "under review" almost immediately when he entered office, fueling resignations in the EPA's enforcement division. His present industry-friendly "clear skies" plan, squashing NSR rules, is the final result of his downgrading of the Clean Air Act rules.

Thus Mr. Bush's misnamed initiative effectively gives the heaviest polluting utilities their long-sought victory. His proposal, if approved by Congress, not only would dump the NSR standards entirely; it also would shift Clean Air Act protocols from specific control technologies mandated by the EPA to a system of voluntary, blanket reductions and emissions trading. The latter would allow laggards - typically the dirtiest utilities - to trade for emission rights from companies that achieve clean air targets early, as many already have. That would effectively allow the worst present air pollution to continue indefinitely. Of course the industry loves the proposal.

A much better approach to securing cleaner air exists in a bill proposed by Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont. It would keep the NSR standards and fix target deadlines for 2008 -- a full 10 years earlier than the Bush proposal. That clearly would spur TVA, Georgia Power and other utilities with dirty plants to resume good-faith negotiations with the EPA on ways to comply with NSR standards.

Sen. Jeffords' proposal merits broad support. Sen. Bill Frist, a lung surgeon who professes to be disturbed by Tennessee's air pollution problems, should step forward and support the Jeffords' bill. So should Sen. Fred Thompson, who also has complained that utility air pollution is killing the Smokies.

It's killing Tennesseans, as well: the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a broad coalition of public health and environmental groups, believes some 1,440 Tennesseans annually die prematurely as a result of power plant pollution. There's ample reason for a genuine "clear skies" initiative. Too bad President Bush's proposal goes the other way.