Air Quality Protections Under Attack

In late August, the Bush administration announced the most significant rollback of clean air protections in our nation's history.

Under the Clean Air Act, old power plants are supposed to install modern pollution control devices whenever they upgrade their existing operations. Power plants are a major source of air pollution in the United States, and most of the country's power plants were built more than thirty years ago. Up to 90% of the pollution these plants emit could easily be avoided by installing readily-available, modern-day technologies.

In August, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule that allows these old, dirty power plants to overhaul up to 20% of their operations each year without having to install new pollution controls. An entire facility could essentially be rebuilt every five years, allowing these power plants to go on polluting at outrageous rates forever.

Nationwide, this avoidable pollution will result in an estimated 20,000 premature deaths and 400,000 asthma attacks each year. Many of these health effects will be felt in Pennsylvania. Some of the dirtiest power plants in the country are just upwind of our communities in the western part of the state, in Ohio and in Indiana.

The Bush administration is allowing big corporations to rewrite our environmental laws so the can pollute our air-and our families' health will suffer because of it.

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Ways We Can Fight for Healthy Air

Clean Air Council is working with state officials and other environmental groups across the country to introduce a lawsuit challenging this rollback. We feel that the Bush administration is overstepping its legal authority by gutting the Clean Air Act in the manner, and we will be asking the courts to intervene to protect our air quality.

Clean Air Council is also pushing Pennsylvania's elected officials in Washington to support "The Clean Power Act of 2003." This bipartisan legislation would require power plants to reduce emissions of the four major pollutants that cause smog, soot, acid rain, global warming and mercury contamination. It would require older power plants to install modern pollution controls, effectively reinstating the air quality protections that EPA has just dismantled.

You can make a difference by writing a letter to Senator Arlen Specter in support of the Clean Power Act. Senator Specter has not yet decided on whether or not to support this Act. Your letter could help push him onto our side!

You can also make a difference by becoming a member of the Council. The more members that Clean Air Council has, the more influence we'll have in Washington and Harrisburg.

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The Clean Power Act of 2003

"The Clean Power Act of 2003" is a bipartisan bill that would significantly reduce the air pollution that causes smog, respiratory disease, mercury poisoning, global warming and acid rain. The bill would dramatically cut emissions of four major power plant emissions by 2009:

* Nitrogen oxide (NOX) emissions would be cut by 75% from 1997 levels.
* Sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions would be cut by 75% from levels currently required by law.
* Mercury emissions would be cut by 90% of 1999 levels.
* Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be cut to 1990 levels.

NOX, SO2 and mercury would be reduced to levels necessary for meeting America's public health and environmental goals, making use of cost-effective and readily-available pollution-control technology. The CO2 reductions are the first step needed for addressing global warming. They are the reductions called for in the Rio Accord on global warming that was signed by President George Herbert Walker Bush and ratified by the United States Senate in the early 1990s.

In addition to requiring overall pollution reductions across the power industry, the Clean Power Act will require individual power plants that have avoided installing modern pollution control technology to do so by the plant's thirtieth birthday or within five years after enactment of the Act, whichever comes later. This will help protect public health in "downwind" states like Pennsylvania and New York, while reducing the unfair advantage that old, dirty power plants have had in the competitive marketplace.

The Clean Power Act takes full advantage of market mechanisms, by allowing emissions trading among modernized power plants to help control pollution at a reduced cost. This lets companies meet their emissions reduction requirements at the lowest expense possible, while still preventing adverse impacts on public health and the environment. Trading that enables a power plant to pollute at levels that could hurt the local community will not be allowed under the Act. Thus, trading of mercury pollution allowances is prohibited.

The Clean Power Act also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to work with federal and state government to increase energy efficiency, promote the use of renewable energy and to implement other sound energy policies. These are measures that can save consumers money and benefit the economy.

The Clean Power Act of 2003 is a win-win-win situation for public health, the environment and the economy.

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