Between 1999 and 2001, the Clinton administration filed lawsuits alleging violations at 51 electric power plants owned by nine utilities. Several of the cases were settled, but most have stalled out under the Bush administration.
The lawsuits involve the issue of New Source Review (NSR), under which utilities are required to add modern new air pollution controls when they expand or upgrade their facilities.
But when Greenwire reporter Darren Samuelsohn recently reported on a document containing the names of 22 utilities that have allegedly ducked the NSR requirements over the last five years, news stories began reporting that those utilities might be facing enforcement actions by EPA. [1]
Not a chance, said Eric Schaeffer, who quit his post as EPA's top enforcement officer two years ago in protest over the Bush administration's reversals on environmental protection. "The word inside the agency is that Leavitt (EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt) is furious that this news is out," Schaeffer told GRIST magazine. "In fact it's a political embarrassment. It just shows how the administration is holding up prosecutions recommended by its own staff."
Indeed Bush's assistant administrator for air and radiation at EPA, Jeffrey Holmstead, has made it his top priority to cripple the NSR rule. He has already loosened the way smokestack industries measure their baseline emissions under the rule. And in total-wipeout mode, Holmstead shepherded through a rule change that actually exempted power plants from installing state-of-the-art pollution controls when they upgrade. That coup, however, was at least temporarily blocked when a group of state attorneys general won a stay in D.C. circuit court.
The leaked list of 22 possible violators includes some of the nation's largest power producers, such as Reliant (now Centerpoint Energy), Allegheny, and subsidiaries of the Southern Company. "We've known about these cases for a while," says Schaeffer, who now heads the Environmental Integrity Project. "A lot of them have been sitting for years because there's been a mandate from the White House to keep them from happening."
Another obstacle is the fact that the Justice Department lacks sufficient funding to pursue more than 15 environment-related cases per year. It is already in the process of suing eight large companies over NSR issues. Justice has requested a 39-percent increase in its budget for Environment and Natural Resources, and Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT) plans to request that the Senate Judiciary Committee press for those funds.
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This story was jointly produced by BushGreenwatch and Grist Magazine. For more on this story, visit Grist Magazine.
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SOURCES:
[1] "Second Wave of NSR Cases Await Bush Administration Action," Greenwire, Jul. 14, 2004.
