Public health under attack by Bush admin!!!!!

[wwwunspunmediaorg]

http://www.lungusa.org/press/envir/air_082703jlk.html

Bush Administration to Gut Clean Air Act

Rule Would Allow More Pollution at 17,000 Facilities


WASHINGTON (August 22, 2003) - Next week the Environmental Protection Agency plans to release its final rule on the Clean Air Act's definition of "routine maintenance" that would allow more air pollution from approximately 17,000 industrial facilities across the country, according to NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

NRDC obtained a leaked copy of the final rule, which essentially repeals the "new source review" provision of the Clean Air Act. That provision requires industrial facilities to install modern pollution controls when they make upgrades to plants that increase air pollution. The new final rule would allow facilities to avoid installing pollution controls when they replace equipment -- even if the upgrade increases pollution -- as long as the cost of the replacement did not exceed 20 percent of the cost of what the EPA broadly defines as a "process unit." For example, if a coal-fired power plant replaced a boiler whose cost was less than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the entire process unit -- the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment that turns coal into electricity -- the company would not have to control the resulting pollution increases.

Under this scheme, all of the Clean Air Act violations the Justice Department is prosecuting at nine Tennessee Valley Authority power plants and those at a recently convicted Ohio Edison plant would have been allowed, according to NRDC. The upgrades at those plants increased air pollution by hundreds of thousands of tons, but because they cost less than 20 percent of the replacement value of the process units, TVA and Ohio Edison would not have had to install modern pollution controls under the new rule.

"The Bush administration, using an arbitrary, Enron-like accounting gimmick, is authorizing massive pollution increases to benefit Bush campaign contributors at the expense of public health," said John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air Project. "Corporate polluters will now be able to spew even more harmful chemicals into our air, regardless of the fact that it will harm millions of Americans."

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[gratuitous]

1. Make a campaign contribution

Get an exemption from the law. Could the quid pro quo be any more open and blatant? But of course, the standard response is "That money had nothing to do with our decision, and if you had just sent us a couple of million for our campaign, that wouldn't have had anything to do with it if our decision had been in your favor."

I'm just so sick of the little dance of bribe and payoff.

[newyawker99]

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NYer99
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[Fescue4u]

Sounds like a good plan...

The limits on upgrades are largely responsible for why our power grid is crap and why we had the power outages...

This was a bad law that made power plant upgrades unafordable in many cases.

[Fescue4u]

3. Sounds like a good plan...

The limits on upgrades are largely responsible for why our power grid is crap and why we had the power outages...

This was a bad law that made power plant upgrades unafordable in many cases.