Scientists skeptical of Bush smog plan
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration might add to air pollution by making it easier for thousands of aging factories and plants to modernize, scientists say.
A report Friday from the National Academy of Sciences casts doubt on federal attempts to help power plants, refineries, manufacturers and other industrial facilities comply with a 29-year-old Clean Air Act program known as “new source review.”
The scientists’ review says the administration’s changes to the program would probably add pollution from nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, though it acknowledges “substantial uncertainty” about how much pollution there would be and where it would turn up.
The Clean Air Act program requires businesses to use the most effective anti-pollution controls. Opponents and proponents have long agreed that it comes with too much bureaucratic red tape.
Some of the administration’s changes to that program are under review by the Supreme Court, which was due to receive legal briefs on the matter Friday.
Nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides are two of the main chemicals targeted by the review program. They add to smog, acid rain and fine particles that lodge in people’s lungs and cause thousands of premature deaths, asthma and other respiratory ailments a year.
The academy, which advises the government on scientific and technological issues, also implicitly criticized the Environmental Protection Agency’s information gathering, saying “a lack of data and the limitations of current models” prevent anyone from drawing firm conclusions about how the rules might affect air pollution.
However, Bill Harnett, an EPA division director in its air office, said the NAS overlooked some data EPA had from questionnaires it sent five years ago to automakers, pharmaceutical companies, computer chip makers and other industrial facilities.
Bill Wehrum, EPA’s acting chief of its Office of Air and Radiation, said the agency acted in the best interests of public health and the environment in its rulemaking. He said the study confirms the administration’s view that more companies should be allowed to buy and sell pollution rights.
That approach, promoted in EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule, allows plants that don’t meet their required reductions to pay plants that cut more pollution than is required. But the CAIR rule doesn’t take full effect until 2015 and beyond.
Starting in 1999, President Clinton used the clean air program to sue owners of 51 coal-burning power plants. The Bush administration continued those cases, but rewrote the rules.