|
|
|
|
|
Search
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact Jim: jdipeso@rep.org (253) 740-2066 / 2009 Archive / 2008 Archive / 2007 Archive / 2006 Archive / 2005 Archive
Put Those Singing Coal Chunks Back in the Stockings
December 11, 2008
The Clean Coal Carolers is a merry chorus of bituminous chunks that will come to your on-line door and perform such holiday favorites as "Frosty the Coalman" for your listening pleasure.
Quick review: The California Raisins, they're not.
Anyway, the carbonaceous carolers are singing courtesy of America's Power, a lobbying group of utilities, railroads, and other industries pushing a message that coal is cheap, abundant, and is not going away anytime soon.
It's not likely, however, that the carolers will be humming about EPA's decision this week to drop a proposal to loosen up Clean Air Act rules for coal plants.
The rule would have changed the application of New Source Review. That's the 31-year-old section in the Clean Air Act that requires power plants and other emission sources to install modern pollution controls if plant upgrades trigger increases in emissions.
In another too-clever example of split-the-baby legislating, New Source Review was a halfway house between forcing power plants that predate the Clean Air Act to clean up immediately or letting them slide. At the time, Congress figured most of the old coal plants would give way to nukes, so cleaning them up would be a non-issue.
Along came Three Mile Island and high costs, forcing nuclear into a ditch that it's just now climbing out of. Rather than close the old coal burners down, utilities slapped "don't laugh, it's paid for" stickers on them and kept them running.
New Source Review turned into a stickier legal wicket than its drafters had expected. Utility, government, and environmental lawyers have chased each other in circles through federal courtrooms for years arguing about its interpretation.
Since 2001, the Bush administration EPA has pushed rules to loosen New Source Review, only to be slapped down in court. The latest gambit was a proposed rule that would, in essence, raise the trigger point for applying New Source Review's cleanup requirement.
But with the Bush administration about to turn into a pumpkin, EPA found itself running out of time to finalize the rule and pulled the plug.
Things would be easier if Congress were to take advice offered a few years ago by the National Academy of Public Administration. The academy suggested amending New Source Review with a "birthday clause"
requiring all of the old power plants to upgrade their pollution controls by a fixed deadline.
Unfortunately, the idea sank without a trace – like an old song that never caught on.
Still, in fairness to EPA, the agency hasn't let Clean Air Act enforcement slide entirely through the cracks in the past eight years. EPA issued a report December 4 boasting that its fiscal year 2008 enforcement actions will result in a record level of pollution reductions.
The biggest action was a settlement with American Electric Power to install selective catalytic reduction devices and scrubbers at 16 coal-fired power plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. The controls will cut nitrogen oxides by an estimated 69 percent and sulfur dioxide an estimated 79 percent.
Once the pollution control devices are installed, it will be easier for carolers downwind of the plants to sing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."
|
|
