Court orders utilities to clean the airCopyright 2000, MSNBC
June 23, 2000
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
June 23 — 100 million Americans can expect to breathe cleaner air after a federal appeals court upheld a plan forcing states and utilities to reduce smog-forming emissions that are drifting their borders. The Environmental Protection Agency had drawn up the plan as a way to eliminate “interstate smog.”
‘One of the major health benefits of this action will be the reduction of incidents of childhood asthma, which has been growing at alarming rates.’
“THIS DECISION is a major environmental victory for everyone living throughout the eastern United States,” EPA Administrator Carol Browner Browner said in a statement. “It means over a hundred million people will now breathe healthier air as a result of significant reductions in harmful emissions from the most polluting power plants throughout the region.”
“One of the major health benefits of this action will be the reduction of incidents of childhood asthma, which has been growing at alarming rates,” Browner said.
The ruling came late Thursday by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively rejecting appeals by Midwest utilities and other industry groups for a delay.
The ruling means that 19 states now have four months to submit to the EPA plans for reducing nitrogen oxide by May 2003.
The EPA is letting states decide whether to crack down on power plant emissions or use some other method, such as attacking pollution from the exhausts of cars and trucks. But it says going after utilities will in many cases be the cheapest way for states to comply.
The court decision came in response to a request for reconsideration of a March decision by a three-judge panel. That panel had ruled in EPA’s favor on rules for 19 of the 22 states that EPA identified as causing downwind pollution problems.
The full appellate court upheld that earlier decision and lifted a stay that had blocked implementation of the request for nitrogen oxide-limiting plans.
The 19 states are Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.