EPA claims huge clean-air victory
Copyright 2000, Reuters
Friday, June 23, 2000
By Patrick Connole
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner today claimed a major victory for clean air after a federal appeals court upheld a plan to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from blowing into Eastern states from mostly Midwestern power plants.
"This decision is a major environmental victory for everyone living throughout the Eastern United States," 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."
The ruling came late on Thursday by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively rejecting appeals by Midwest utilities and other industry groups for a delay in having to implement costly new installation of NOX emissions scrubbing devices.
EPA said it can now mandate that 19 states and the District of Columbia come up with new plans, called NOX-SIP calls (State Implementation Plans), for fixing a schedule to reduce harmful emission from coal-burning power plants and other industrial sources.
"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 NOX-SIP program aims to mandate cleaner emissions technology be installed
at coal-fired power plants from as far north as
Massachusetts, to as far south as South Carolina and as far west as Michigan.
Clean-air activists claimed the decision was a huge win for the agency and would
help the fight against pollution.
"This is a huge decision, and will bring cleaner air to tens of millions of
Americans," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust
group in Washington D.C.
EPA had asked the court to remove the stay and let it tell 19 states to submit
new NOX reduction plans by September.
The states included in the new program are: the District of Columbia; Alabama;
Connecticut; Delaware; Illinois; Indiana; Kentucky;
Massachusetts; Maryland; Michigan; North Carolina; New Jersey; New York; Ohio;
Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; South Carolina; Tennessee; Virginia; and West
Virginia.
Facilities in those states will have to install air pollution controls by May1,
2003.