ENVIRONMENT Energy industry lauds relaxed clean-air rules

A spokesman for the owner of a Niles power plant applauded the changes.
By DAVID ENRICH
STATES NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- Energy industry officials and some congressional lawmakers applauded the Environmental Protection Agency's new emissions rules, which they said would allow power plants in Northeast Ohio to produce power more efficiently.
The Bush administration announced Friday that it is relaxing clean-air restrictions. The new rules set a higher and more lenient standard for calculating the amount of air pollution that power plants are permitted to emit.
"This is certainly a step in the right direction for the industry," said Richard Wheatley, a spokesman for Reliant Energy, the Houston-based company that owns the coal-burning power plant in Niles, Ohio.
Rectifying problems
EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said that current emissions regulations "deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution," a problem that the new rules are meant to rectify.
The EPA also announced Friday proposed new rules that would more broadly define what constitutes "routine maintenance, repair and replacement" under federal clean air laws. The looser language is expected to make it easier for aging power plants to be maintained or upgraded without reducing emissions.
But environmentalists blasted Friday's announcement, saying that the think the Bush administration is gutting the nation's clean air laws. They called the rules a gift to the energy companies that own some of the nation's dirtiest power plants, including several in northeast Ohio, and would mean more air pollution.
The new rules could mean significant increases in the amount of nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide that are being spewed into the air, according to a coalition of environmental groups. Those pollutants have been tied to respiratory ailments such as asthma, as well as acid rain and other environmental problems.
Dirtier air
Amy Simpson, director of the Ohio Public Interest Research Group, said she thinks the new rules would "mean much dirtier air for Ohioans."
Simpson and other environmentalists acknowledged, however, that except in the immediate vicinity of dirty power plants, the risks of pollution are not very severe for Ohioans because most of the pollution drifts eastward and settles over states in the Northeast.
Some of those states vowed Friday to sue the EPA to block the implementation of the new rules.