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John Blair is the President of Valley Watch. |
by John Blair In late August, when Congress was not in session, the Bush Administration rolled back protections of the Clean Air Act that could have serious consequences for the health of thousands of tri-state citizens, young and old.
More than 17,000 industrial sources of pollution were given a green light to keep their polluting behemoths operating for additional decades without having to upgrade their pollution controls.
When Congress passed Clean Air Act, existing plants and those already proposed were “grandfathered,” meaning they could operate outside the Act’s new requirements until they were either retired or rebuilt. Owners of the old plants assured a skeptical Congress that these plants only had an operating life of thirty to forty years and it would be unfair to make them put on modern controls with such a short life left.
Congress approved but placed a caveat in the law that said that if an old plant had its life extended through rebuilding it, then it, too, would be subject to what was called New Source Review (NSR). New Source Review is the method that allows public participation to assure that “Best Available Control Technology” or BACT would be incorporated in the design and operation of the plant so that pollution controls would always be up to date.
In the action Bush took in late August, that protection was essentially scrapped allowing companies to escape being required to upgrade their pollution controls when they rebuilt their plants to extend their life, regardless of how old the plant is.
In our region of Southwestern Indiana and Western Kentucky, the Bush rollback may have devastating health impacts for people who live here.
Most of the coal fired power plants in this region and some industrial facilities like GE and Alcoa were “grandfathered” because they were built prior to the passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Now, they can essentially operate into perpetuity sometimes using no pollution controls at all.
Cinergy’s, largest in the US generator, just west of Princeton is a good example. The first units of the Gibson Station, as it is called, were built in the early 1970s. One of the five 650,000,000 watt units was not grandfathered due to its late construction and it was required to incorporate “scrubbers” to remove sulfur dioxide, SO2 (acid rain, fine particle pollution) from its exhaust. Four of the units were not.
Congress, with the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1990, set out to better control acid rain by forcing fifty percent removal of SO2 from stack emissions nationwide. Also included in that act was a rudimentary “trading” system to allowed markets for tons of SO2 to be traded.
For Gibson, Cinergy chose a combination of trading or buying credits and the placement of scrubbers on one additional unit to comply with the 1990 Act. In other words, they have been allowed to continue to have elevated SO2 emissions at three of the Gibson units by buying credits from others who chose to do better than the Act required. Nationally, this plan has had mixed success, falling short of the Act’s fifty percent reduction goal but making progress toward clean air nevertheless.
Unfortunately, this region still must bear the burden of the pollution of the other three units which manifests through enormous amounts of fine particle pollution which is a serious health threat for children and the elderly.
Our saving grace was that these plants would have to soon upgrade to BACT because they are nearly thirty years old now and will require rebuilds.
But Bush has changed all that.
Now, Cinergy needn’t worry about having to upgrade their pollution controls on Gibson 1,2, and 3. They have been given a gift by our president which will allow them to pollute at current levels or greater for as long as they wish
The same is true for AEP’s Rockport (IN) facility, TVA’s Paradise (Muhlenberg County, KY) plant, Big River’s Sebree (KY) plant, etc..
We live in the center of the largest concentration of coal fired generation in the world. Coal plants are this nation’s biggest polluters. Our air will remain dirty for years to come just so the utility executives that are friends of George can avoid cleaning up.
We need to remember that building scrubbers, precipitators and baghouses create local construction employment and general economic activity. But apparently that is economic growth that we are not allowed to enjoy in the tri-state. Instead we continue to breathe dirty air so that customers far removed from this region can have clean economic growth and cheap electricity.
That is no bargain to me.
