The Environmental Protection Agency proposed new clean air requirements Thursday to cut chemical pollutants produced by factories and power plants in an effort to curtail air pollution traveling across state borders.
The “Interstate Air Quality Rule” requires coal-burning power plants to upgrade their facilities to reduce the amount of mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides released into the air. This proposal would make the “steepest emissions cuts” in over a decade.
“These actions are the largest single investment in any clean air program in history,” EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt said in a statement. “We are committed to working with our congressional sponsors to move this landmark legislation through Congress, we must move forward with these steps now.”
Leavitt added that pollution reductions will help states meet tougher federal air quality health standards, mainly for smog prevention, that were issued in 1997 and are just now being implemented after years of litigation.
Their plan, which will be made final after a comment period, aims to cap sulfur dioxide emissions at 3.7 million tons, a cut of 40 percent from current levels, by 2010 and another 2.3 million tons when the rules are fully implemented after 2015, a cut of nearly 70 percent. Smog-causing nitrogen oxide would be limited to 1.7 million tons by the same date.
“We continue to believe that the Clear Skies Act is the best approach to reducing power plant emissions,” Leavitt said.
The EPA also sent letters to states Thursday, informing them that many regions across the United States are in violation of the more stringent 1997 health standards. They will be required to develop pollution control plans to comply with the new standards.
Wisconsin legislators have spent this past year debating the air quality issue in conjunction with their job creation plans, particularly with manufacturing jobs.
The most controversial bills, AB 655 and its Senate counterpart, SB 313, raised debates over its possible slackening of state air pollution laws.
“As part of this reform, Wisconsin’s air standards would be limited to Federal standards, thereby restricting the state’s ability to respond to local conditions,” Susan Mudd, member of the Board of Directors for the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, said in a letter to Wisconsin legislators. “[The reform] would also allow offsets from Wisconsin-owned plants in Illinois to be credited to Wisconsin businesses, thereby both creating jobs and cleaning up the air in Illinois but not Wisconsin.”
Mudd added that the reforms also do not do anything about the 56,000 manufacturing jobs that were lost in the state in 2003.
However, Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer, R-West Bend, disagreed, saying the reforms are beneficial.
“Wisconsin’s 19th Century, command-and-control, regulatory climate is costing us 21st Century jobs. If we want to see this state’s economy move forward we need to fundamentally reform that regulatory climate,” Panzer said.
A public hearing on these measures was held earlier this week, but no decision has yet been reached.
The EPA’s new air regulations are the first to be proposed by Leavitt, the former Utah governor who took the agency’s chief position in October. He said he plans to rely on “market-based solutions” to improve the country’s air quality through such provisions as “cap-and-trade,” which give state incentives to meet up to the standards.
A final rule on the EPA’s Interstate Air Quality Rule is planned for 2005.
