[Sustain] EPA easing rules on power plants near national parks
Eric Brooks
brookse32 at aim.com
Fri May 16 08:15:50 PDT 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/16/MNLA10NFLS.DTL&type=printable
EPA easing rules on power plants near national parks
Rank-and-file staff, managers who oppose Bush administration plan
spread the word
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
Friday, May 16, 2008
*(05-16) 04:00 PDT Washington -* --
The Bush administration is on the verge of implementing new air quality
rules that will make it easier to build power plants near national parks
and wilderness areas, according to rank-and-file agency scientists and
park managers who oppose the plan.
The new regulations, which are likely to be finalized this summer,
rewrite a provision of the Clean Air Act that applies to "Class 1
areas," federal lands that currently have the highest level of
protection under the law. Opponents predict the changes will worsen
visibility at many of the United States' most prized tourist destinations.
Nearly a year ago, with little fanfare, the Environmental Protection
Agency proposed changing the way the government measures air pollution
near Class 1 areas on the grounds that the nation needed a more uniform
way of regulating emissions near protected areas. The agency closed the
comment period in April and has indicated it is not making significant
changes to the draft rule, despite objections by EPA staff members.
Jeffrey Holmstead, who now heads the environmental strategies group at
the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani, helped initiate the rule change
while heading EPA's air and radiation office. He said agency officials
became concerned that EPA's scientific staff was taking the most
conservative approach in predicting how much pollution new power plants
would produce.
The move is the latest in a series of administration efforts going back
to 2003 to weaken air quality protections at national parks, including
failed moves to prohibit federal land managers from commenting on
permits for new pollution sources more than 31 miles away from their
areas and to only protect air resources for parks that are big and
diverse enough to represent complete ecosystems.
For 30 years, regulators have measured pollution levels in the parks,
over both three-hour and 24-hour increments, to capture the spikes in
emissions that occur during periods of peak energy demand. The new rule
would average the levels over a year so that spikes in pollution levels
would not violate the law.
Many National Park Service and EPA officials have challenged the rule
change, arguing that it will worsen visibility in already-impaired
areas, according to internal documents obtained by the House Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform.
In one set of comments, EPA's regional computer modeling staff wrote
that the proposal would allow for significant degradation of the parks'
air quality. An e-mail from National Park Service staff called aspects
of the plan bad public policy that would make it much easier to build
power plants near Class 1 areas, which include some Fish and Wildlife
Service-protected land.
When committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, asked the EPA
whether the rule would lead to construction of more power plants near
protected areas, Robert Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator
for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, replied in an April 24 letter
that this was not the intention of the rule, but he could not rule it out.
"We developed this proposal based on the need to clarify how increment
consumption must be addressed, and not whether or not it would be easier
to build power plants," Meyers wrote. "In the absence of any data or
evidence provided by the National Parks Service, we are unable to
conclusively confirm or deny their suggestion."
On Thursday, the National Parks Conservation Association, a lobbying
group, issued a report estimating that the rule would ease the way for
the construction of 28 new coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of
10 national parks.
In each of the next 50 years, the report concludes, the new plants would
emit 122 million tons of carbon dioxide, 79,000 tons of sulfur dioxide,
52,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,000 pounds of toxic mercury into
the air over and around the Great Smoky Mountains, Zion and eight other
national parks.
"It's like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in
a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven
all year, I've averaged fifty-five miles per hour,' " said Mark Wenzler,
director of the National Parks Conservation Association's clean air
programs. "It allows you to vastly underestimate the impact of these
emissions."
Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the National Park Service's
air resources division in Denver, said of the new rule: "I don't know of
anyone at our level, who deals with this day to day, that likes it or
thinks it's going to make sense.
"We really want to have clean air at national parks all the time, and
not just at average times," Shepherd said. "All of our national parks
have impaired visibility. ... It would really be a setback in trying to
make progress."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/16/MNLA10NFLS.DTL
This article appeared on page *A - 3* of the San Francisco Chronicle
--
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara
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