Anglers and Air Pollution

But even before Messrs. Bush and Cheney assumed office, utilities and fossil-fuel industries were hissing in their ears. The Edison Electric Institute-a trade group comprised in large measure by the defendants in the federal action-had at least 14 contacts with Cheney's secret energy task force. The American Gas Association (part of the oil industry whose refineries belch forth vast quantities of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates and volatile (often toxic) organic compounds) had at least eight contacts. Enron (heavily invested in energy production) had at least four contacts and met with Cheney at least six times. In March 2001 Senators John Breaux (D-LA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) wrote to the vice president, claiming that the lawsuits were inconveniencing the power industry and demanding that, as chairman of the National Energy Policy Development Group, Cheney make the lawsuits go away. But the major power companies and their cronies wanted more than just an end to the lawsuits; they wanted an end to New Source Review.

Mr. Bush's commitment to clean air proved brief as summer love. As soon as he was in the White House he broke his campaign promise to reduce carbon emissions. Then he reneged on the nation's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases.

On May 15, 2001, following intense lobbying by the power industry to kill the New Source Review lawsuits, Christine Todd Whitman-now Bush's EPA administrator-assured Congress and the nation that the White House had no intention of doing any such thing. Forty-eight hours later the administration released a plan by which the US Attorney General, taking as long as he liked, would evaluate the lawsuits to see if they were causing energy problems. At the same time the EPA and the Department of Energy would vet the entire New Source Review program to determine if it were holding back power-plant enhancement. The White House denied that it was dilly-dallying with the lawsuits or that it had frozen them, but it was impossible for anyone paying attention to reach any other conclusion. The perception of fact emboldened Cinergy Corporation of Cincinnati, the nation's second biggest sulfur-dioxide polluter, to back out of a court settlement with the Justice Department by which it had agreed to pay fines of $8.5 million, perform $21 million worth of projects that benefited the environment, and spend $1.4 billion cleaning up 10 coal-fired power plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. The deal would have annually removed 100,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide from North American air. Other utilities followed suit.

Then, on June 22, 2001, the EPA released its New Source Review findings, reporting that the program had in no way interfered with energy production and that the industry's woes resulted not from environmental regulation but economic climate. This was a fact that air polluters and their friends in the administration didn't want to acknowledge.

On August 28, 2003, in the most significant revision of the Clean Air Act in its 33-year history, the administration finalized a rule that basically does away with New Source Review, permitting some 500 antiquated power plants and 20,000 factories, gas-oil industry refineries and other industrial facilities to increase production without installing modern pollution controls. According to the General Accounting Office, the new rule was hatched without "comprehensive data" and is based on "anecdotal evidence from industries."

The reaction among former EPA officials, environmentalists and downwind states was outrage and disbelief. New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, South Carolina, California and the cities of Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, began developing their own, tougher air-pollution rules. Other states are expected to do the same. New York, New Jersey and all the New England states have filed suit. "The Bush Administration is again putting the financial interests of the oil, gas and coal companies above the public's right to breathe clean air," New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said. "It is incumbent on the states to take action to ensure that the public health and environment are protected."

In July 2002 the EPA's assistant administrator for air policy, Jeffrey Holmstead, told Congress that his agency did "not believe these [proposed rule] changes will have a negative impact on the enforcement cases." But his own enforcement agents had repeatedly informed him and other EPA officials that the scuttling of New Source Review would be catastrophic for future enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

The President has submitted to Congress a plan he claims "will replace a confusing, ineffective maze of regulations for power plants" and, at the same time cut their emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by 70 percent by 2018. Instead of ordering their clean up, under the new plan old, dirty plants would be allowed to purchase pollution credits from modern, cleaner plants. "The Clear Skies Initiative," Bush calls it.

There are a number of problems here. First, although there's nothing wrong with the idea of selling credits for relatively benign pollutants such as carbon that get widely distributed in earth's atmosphere, it's a bit heartless to hawk credits for deadly, bioaccumulating nerve poisons such as mercury. Basically, the Bush Administration is telling the American people this: If you live downwind of a modern power plant, lucky you; if you live downwind of a pre-Clean Air Act relic, suck it up.

Another problem is that Clear Skies is a lot worse than just enforcing the existing Clean Air Act. Instead of requiring 70 percent cuts in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by 2018 as allowed under Clear Skies, the current regulations require cuts of almost 90 percent by 2007. By 2025 Clear Skies would allow nearly five times as much additional mercury releases as the Clean Air Act.