Provisions of Clean Air Act must be enforced to protect citizens / Our Environmental President... Save Your Breath

Provisions of Clean Air Act must be enforced to protect citizens

Editor, the News-Sentinel:
Recently, amidst the heavy smog in our treasured Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Christine Todd Whitman gave a thumbs-up and told environmental protesters that she was on their side. I imagine her smiles and words did not mean much to the protesters, who knew she had just touted President Bush's new Clear Skies plan, which is a back-handed attempt to weaken the Clean Air Act.

The Bush administration is trying to fool the American public on clean air, plain and simple. Does the Bush administration think that Americans will believe the Environmental Protection Agency's parade of facades? Americans want a lot more than a thumbs-up and unrealized promises. Americans want to see 77 smogless miles across the Smokies again. Americans want clean air for their children and their children's children.

The Bush-Cheney energy plan issued in May included a proposal to ease power plant regulations established by the Clean Air Act over 30 years ago. Recently, the EPA announced its plans to weaken the Clean Air Act even more by gutting the New Source Review provision.

When the Clean Air Act was crafted, old and dirty power plants were not required to meet the new regulations under the assumption that these old plants would be shut down as newer and more efficient plants were constructed. NSR requires that otherwise grandfathered power plants, refineries and other industries install state-of-the-art pollution controls if they make major, pollution-increasing plant modifications.

NSR closes a loophole, preventing dirty power plants from abusing their grandfathered status to pollute even more. The NSR provision has kept more than a million tons of air pollution out of our skies each year.

The EPA's proposed changes would give old dirty power plants the luxury to expand and improve their facilities without updating their emission-control equipment. This is a huge problem because it is these same dirty older plants that are responsible for the most hazardous emissions. In fact, they are responsible for four to 10 times the hazardous emissions than newer, more efficient plants.

In 2000 here in Tennessee, power plant emissions were responsible for 65,294,367 tons of noxious chemicals released into our air. A plethora of health studies from the American Lung Association and other organizations report that air pollution increases both asthma attacks and deaths due to heart and lung disease. Nationally, air pollution from power plants causes 30,000 premature deaths each year, along with 20,000 hospitalizations and millions of lost workdays due to asthma and other respiratory ailments.

If the Bush administration's recent attempts to gut our Clean Air Act by axing the NSR provision doesn't convince you the new Clear Skies plan is simply clear lies, the story of 2000 elections, contributions will. During the 2000 elections, President Bush's campaign was the lucky recipient of $4,127,638 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas, mining, automotive, electric utility and forest product industries.

This impressive sum has bought the American public a legacy of poor clean-air decisions, including: a refusal to consider the international Kyoto accord on global warming; weakened requirements for the levels of information about the chemical emissions of nearby power plants; and proposals to weaken provisions of the Clean Air Act.

A louder public outcry over our government's capitulation to industry is long overdue. I encourage my American neighbors to consider the extent to which they are willing to let the cavernous pockets of their national administrators be filled by those whose only concern is profit and political prowess. The right to breathe clean air is among the most basic tenets of the right to life, and it seems to be the one most often taken for granted.

Julia Reed
Nashville

Editor, the News-Sentinel:
With air pollution on the rise in Tennessee, Sen. Bill Frist should be commended for bringing Environmental Protection Agency chief administrator Christine Whitman to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to witness the air quality problems firsthand. Moreover, we applaud his cautious approach toward Bush's Clear Skies initiative, which will likely not reduce the dangerous pollution from coal-fired power plants across the region enough to remove the haze obscuring the view of our crown jewel's beautiful vistas ~gh atop Clingmans Dome.

ViSJbility in the park is often reduced from 100 miles on a clear day to less than 15 miles from po~e.r plant pollution.

While Frist stood at one of the highest peaks among the dead trees eagerly listening to Whitman proclaim that Bush's Clear Skies plan would reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants by 70 percent - a plan that would not be in full effect until 2018 - he has turned a deaf ear to the science showing that 1,440 lives in Tennessee alone are shortened annually from power plant particulate matter.

EPA touts that Clear Skies will avoid 4,000 deaths in the Southeast region, while a bill that recently passed out of the Senate committee on Environment and Public Works would reduce the mortality figures by 6,336 annually - and would start doing this 10 years sooner.

An analysis from Bush's own EPA also shows that Clear Skies would not clean the acid-plagued streams of the mountains enough to return them to natural conditions. Worse yet, the Bush plan includes full rollback of current Clean Air Act laws that, if enforced, could reduce over 50 percent of the dirty pollution troubling the air in the Smoky Mountains.

Frist bas options and chou:.es on. wba.t U> ~
as good legislative policy to -reduce l)O'We: ~um'-
pollution and the p\an of the Bush administration is a gift to the utility polluters rather than a breath of clean air for the people of Tennessee. Right now, the air in the Great Smoky Mountains is often more dangerous to breathe than the air of a major urban area like Atlanta - Sen. Fred Thompson said so himself.

Frist is right not to endorse the Clear Skies initiative, which is an administrative effort to lean clean air standards in favor of industry over public health and the environment. His support of a stronger clean-up bill would potentially save 2,336 more lives annually in the Southeast than Bush's plan.

And thanks are in order to Frist for bringing Whitman to the park, as well as encouragement for him to continue to not endorse the Bush plan.

Frist needs to listen to the pleas of his constituents who want clean, healthy air for their children and grandchildren and not endorse a plan that doesn't get us there.

Liz Albertson
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Knoxville