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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
Do Your Own Research
 Sat Aug 23, 2003 5:44 am
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8/22/03
New Jersey.com Washington News
White House influenced EPA on rosy post-9/11 air quality statements
John Heilprin
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency wrongly told New Yorkers not to worry about health risks of debris-laden air from the World Trade Center collapse, the agency's watchdog says in a report.
President Bush's senior environmental adviser defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security.
The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.
"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA did not adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.
In all, EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 that reassured the public about air quality.
The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the NSC, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says.
Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which "influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
For example, the inspector general found, EPA was convinced to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.
James Connaughton, chairman of that council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly. He said EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.
"The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities. That included the NSC -- this was a major terrorist incident," Connaughton said.
"In the back and forth during that very intense period of time," he added, "we were making decisions about where the information should be released, what the best way to communicate the information was, so that people could respond responsibly and so that people had a good relative sense of potential risk."
Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs. "For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts," he said.
Marianne L. Horinko, EPA's acting administrator, said in a telephone interview Friday that the inspector general's report said the White House's role was mainly to help EPA sift through an enormous amount of information.
"We put out the best information we had, based on just the best data that we had available at the time," said Horinko, who headed the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, which oversaw the World Trade Center environmental monitoring and cleanup.
"And it was using our best professional judgment, it was not as a result of pressure from the White House," she said. "The White House's role was basically to say, 'Look, we've got data coming in from everywhere. What benchmarks are we going to use, how are we going to communicate this data? We can't have this Tower of Babel on the data.' "
The EPA inspector general recommends EPA adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are supported by data and analysis. Other recommendations include developing better procedures for indoor air cleanups and asbestos handling in large-scale disasters.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/washington/index
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8 August 2003
The Washington Post
Bush Misuses Science, Report Says
The Bush administration has repeatedly mischaracterized scientific facts to bolster its political agenda in areas ranging from abstinence education and condom use to missile defense, according to a detailed report released yesterday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
The White House quickly dismissed the report as partisan sniping.
The 40-page document, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration," was compiled by the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee's special investigations division. It marks the launch of a new effort by Waxman and others in Congress to highlight simmering anger among scientists and others who believe that President Bush -- much more than his predecessors -- has been spiking science with politics to justify conservative policies in areas such as reproductive rights, embryo research, energy policy and environmental health.
"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," according to the report, posted yesterday at www.politicsandscience.org. "The subjects involved span a broad range, but they share a common attribute: the beneficiaries of the scientific distortions are important supporters of the President, including social conservatives and powerful industry groups."
White House spokesman Adam Levine said it would take time for the administration to address the specifics of the report. However, he said, "I'm hard-pressed to believe anyone would consider Congressman Waxman an objective arbiter of scientific fact."
Several prestigious scientific journals have editorialized about the Bush administration's dealings in science in recent months, including Science, Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine.
An editor at Science, for example, recently said in print that the administration was injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this kind of manipulation."
And the editors of the Lancet noted "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels on the basis of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels.
The General Accounting Office has been investigating such allegations since some in Congress asked the agency to do so in September, but it has not released any findings.
Among the purported abuses documented in the report:
-- "Performance measures" used to determine the effectiveness of federally funded "abstinence only" sex education programs were altered by the administration in ways that made it easier to say the programs were effective. And information about how to use a condom -- along with scientific data showing that sex education does not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity in young people -- was removed from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.
-- In testimony before Congress, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton omitted -- and in at least one case misstated -- federal scientists' findings that Arctic oil drilling could harm wildlife.
-- The administration altered a National Cancer Institute Web site in a way that wrongly implied there was good evidence linking abortions to breast cancer.
-- The Education Department circulated a memo instructing employees to remove materials from the department's Web site not "consistent with the Administration's philosophy," prompting complaints about censorship from national educational organizations.
-- Bush has appointed to key scientific advisory committees numerous people with political, rather than scientific, credentials. For example, his appointee to a presidential AIDS advisory committee, marketing consultant Jerry Thacker, has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and referred to AIDS as the "gay plague."
A spokesman for Waxman said the report will be updated on the Web as new examples arise.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31318-2003Aug7.html
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Politics & Science.org
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience/
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Deborah on 08-22-2003] |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 3:33 pm
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20 August 2003
NATURE Science Update: 21 August 2003
No way to run a superpower
The scientific community had low expectations for the Bush administration when it was first elected. The record since 2001 shows that these expectations were justified.
From its outset, the administration of President George W. Bush drew a line in the sand on several major science-related issues, including global warming (it opposed government action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions) and ballistic-missile defence (it would be deployed, and would work). Critics, including scientists, have been shut out from providing meaningful input on these issues.
More positively, from scientists' perspective, this administration's budgets have been reasonably supportive and the president has, on the whole, appointed competent officials to key positions. Over the past two-and-a-half years, however, there has been a steady accumulation of reported attempts by the Bush administration to distort scientific evidence or rig advisory panels for political purposes. With the Republican Congress ever compliant to the administration, few questions have been raised about these complaints and the administration has been under little pressure to justify its actions.
That's why this month's report by Henry Waxman (Democrat, California), the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives, should be welcomed. In a relatively comprehensive and succinct 33-page document, Waxman's staff have, at the very least, put together a cogent case for the prosecution (http://www.politicsandscience.org; see Nature 424, 715; 2003).
"The Administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the President, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists," it states.
Waxman has a good record in health and environmental issues, and his staff's detailed criticisms of administration actions deserve to be taken seriously. But the White House response has been characteristically curt, deriding Waxman as a biased observer who was "playing politics".
The rest of the administration's defence has been unintentionally self-revealing. "This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told The New York Times.
Administration officials have offered no point-by-point repudiation of the allegations in the report, either when they were first made or when Waxman repeated them. If they had done so, many of the allegations might have been laid to rest. There has been some political interference in agencies' decisions, and decisions have been made on the basis of political considerations rather than science. But Waxman does not establish that that this has been much more pervasive than under previous administrations.
It isn't by the prevalence of junior-level dabbling that this administration should be judged. Two things stand out in its track record on science: its handling of a few key scientific issues; and its culture of iron-clad corporate discipline, which has come into conflict with relative independence customarily enjoyed by US scientific agencies. Waxman is on his strongest ground when he attacks the impact of the latter on such nominally independent agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The premature departure of Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate Republican, from the administrator's position in the EPA speaks to the curtailment of that independence under Bush.
On this occasion, Waxman doesn't dwell on the Bush administration's reluctance to engage. In 2001, the administration asked the National Academy of Sciences for an assessment of global warming that it hoped would cast aspersions on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. From the administration's point of view, the academy failed to come up with the goods, and it hasn't repeated the exercise.
On major policy issues such as global warming, ballistic-missile defence and stem-cell research, Bush committed early on to an ideologically driven approach, and has stuck to it. In an age when science pervades so many aspects of government, this is a remarkable, and remarkably ill-judged, approach to setting policy.
http://www.nature.com/nsu |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sat Aug 23, 2003 6:02 pm
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12 August 2003
The Washington Post
No Substitute for Sound Science
By Henry Kelly
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46938-2003Aug11.html
Distinguishing truth from fantasy has been a full-time occupation in Washington for generations. But even the most seasoned politician can be baffled by debates on the safety of smallpox vaccines, the potential of fuel-cell automobiles, stem-cell research and hundreds of other issues that hinge on matters of science.
The painful reality, however, is that Congress lacks an independent source of science and technological advice -- one that can cut through the tangle of special-interest analysis and help lawmakers understand what's known, what's unknown and what's unknowable.
While the need for unbiased technical advice has grown, the resources available to Congress are in increasing disarray. Last week, for example, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) issued a broadside arguing that "the administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress" and other evils. The previous week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) opened a hearing with the claim that "left-wing environmental communities insist sound science is outrageous."
Things started going downhill in 1995 when Congress abolished its Office of Technology Assessment. Even though the office reported to a bipartisan congressional board, it was a relatively easy political target, as its power to provide independent oversight was largely unknown to freshmen members of Congress.
Without the Office of Technology Assessment or an organization like it scanning the horizon, technology issues often explode on the agenda, leaving Congress without the time or the background analysis needed to develop thoughtful solutions. The office also had an important deterrent effect, making it a bit riskier for a member to wrap a favorite policy in phony science. And it was able to provide some early warning of opportunities and dangers that science was creating. It's ironic that when Congress was under attack from anthrax shortly after 9/11, members scrounged up old Office of Technology Assessment reports on the issue.
As things stand now, members faced with complex technical issues are often forced to rely on administration reports or studies by groups with special interests. When Congress found itself confronting an administration proposal to limit research to existing lines of stem cells, it was essentially clueless about what these limits really meant. A year and a half later lawmakers are still arguing about how many cell lines are allowed under the administration's proposal.
During the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, scientists held their breath as billion-dollar programs in the National Institutes of Health, the nuclear weapons laboratories and other scientific organizations were being moved about like Lego parts.
Of course, no forecasting process is infallible, but the Office of Technology Assessment probably would have prepared a clear review of stem-cell issues and technologies relevant to homeland security well in advance of the congressional debates. If not, it could have prepared focused studies on short notice.
An ability to look forward is also essential. For example, the federal government invests $5.5 billion a year in computers and other information technology for our schools. Yet much of this investment is stranded because we overlooked the fact that software to take advantage of this equipment is woefully inadequate.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration is also weakening traditional sources of scientific advice. Not long after President Bush took office, the administration quietly eliminated the office of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and moved the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy out of the White House complex. This is a new low point for an office with a vexed history. Starting with Franklin Roosevelt, most presidents have found trusted individuals to give them independent technical advice. President Nixon, furious with advice he didn't want, unceremoniously fired his science adviser, leading Congress in 1976 to create the Office of Science and Technology Policy by law.
The National Academies of Science have played a heroic role in trying to fill the gap. But it's unreasonable to expect them to play a universal role. The academies are organized for thoroughness rather than timeliness and have limited resources for starting projects not requested by an administration agency. Scientists share the blame for this state of affairs. Universities have seldom been able to provide the kind of timely, focused analysis that helps improve practical public decisions.
We're in the unique position of having a person with a strong scientific background as Senate majority leader. Bill Frist clearly understands that technical analysis can't substitute for the judgments and values that drive policy decisions. But he also knows that good science is essential for ensuring that choices being weighed have a foundation in unbiased analysis. Frist should move quickly to reestablish an independent office of science and technology advice. The investment would be repaid many times over in effective public policy.
[The writer, who has served in the White House Office of Science and Technology, is president of the Federation of American Scientists.]
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Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/
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NOTE: I don't WORSHIP science, despite the impression a number of people seem to have of me in this regard.
But I also don't think much of seeing certain consistently high-quality research being surreptitiously repressed by the current administration for POLITICAL reasons.
They're very disingenuous about what they're doing. This administration purports to desire the "best scientific study possible" on a number of increasingly serious issues - and then they MANIPULATE and STIFLE the data when it is presented to them. |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Aug 24, 2003 2:23 am
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23 August 2003
The San Francisco Chronicle
EPA misled public on 9/11 pollution
White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says
New York -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.
That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.
"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:
The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.
Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases..... [continued]
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/23/MN300070.DTL |
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theseeker
Joined: 25 Jul 2000
Posts: 3403
Location: Damnit...I'm a doctor jim |
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Sun Aug 24, 2003 3:23 am
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hard science...
Factors influencing Ozone concentrations
Stratospheric sulfate aerosols: large explosive volcanoes are able to place a significant amount of aerosols into the lower stratosphere, as well as some chlorine. Because more than 90% of a volcanic plume is water vapor most of the other compounds, including volcanic chlorine, get ''rained-out'' of the stratosphere. The effects of a large volcano on global weather are significant, which in turn can affect localized weather patterns such as the antarctic ozone hole. Many observations have linked the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption to a 20% increase in the ozone hole that following spring[Solomon et al. 1993]) . The effects of a large volcanic eruption on total global ozone are more modest (less than 3%) and last no more than 2-3 years.
Stratospheric winds: every 26 months the tropical winds in the lower stratophere change from easterly to westerly and then back again, an event called the Quasi-biennial Ocillation (QBO). The QBO causes ozone values at a particular latitude to expand and contract roughly 3%. Since stratospheric winds move ozone, not destroy it, the loss of one latitude is the gain of another and globally the effects cancel out.
[IMG]https://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/Images/seasonal_change.GIF[/IMG]
Greenhouse gases: to the degree that greenhouse gases might heat the planet and alter weather patterns, the magnatude of the stratospheric winds will certainly be affected. Some of the more popular senarios of global warming predict cooler stratospheric temperatures, leading to more polar stratospheric clouds and more active chlorine in the area of the antarctic ozone hole.
Sunspot cycle: ozone is created by solar UV radiation. The amount of UV radiation produced by the sun is not constant but varies by several percent in a rougly 11year cycle. This 11year cycle is related to magnetic changes within the sun which increase the solar UV output, and is heralded by an increase sunspots which appear on the surface of the sun. Comparisons of yearly ozone concentrations show a small 11 year variation in global ozone of about 2%. Episodes of unusual solar activity, solar storms and large solar flares, could certainly alter this value.
Stratospheric chlorine, coming mostly from man-made halocarbons. Careful subtracting of other natural factors yields a net decrease of 3% per decade in global ozone,1978-1991; due most likely to catalytic degredation by stratospheric chlorine.
https://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/ozonelayer.html#Ozone.levels
[Edited 1 times, lastly by theseeker on 08-23-2003] |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Aug 24, 2003 4:02 am
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12 September 2001
TAX NEWS UPDATE
Administration Official in Charge of New Source Review Has Ties to Polluters
The Bush Administration is reviewing an overhaul of the Clean Air Act that would do away with the New Source Review provision. That provision mandates that grandfathered power plants must upgrade their equipment to meet pollution standards as old parts are retired. Jeffrey Holmstead, Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the EPA, is now writing a plan that would do away with New Source Review and allow companies to trade pollution credits. Holmstead, however, is a former employee of Latham and Watkins, a company central to the lobbying efforts of companies accused of violating the Clean Air Act during the Clinton Administration. Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Trust has remarked that Holmstead's views in writing the plan for overhaul of the Clean Air Act mimic those of the Latham and Watkins lawyers advocating for their clients.
http://www.sustainableeconomy.org/tnu/vol.19/19.11.htm
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23 August 2003
New Jersey.com - Washington News
EPA to ease air pollution rules for maintaining coal-burning power plants
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a victory for industrial plant operators, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to issue a new rule within days to let thousands more facilities modernize without adding more pollution controls.
The new rule relaxes the agency's definition of "routine maintenance," a catch-phrase Congress adopted in its 1977 Clean Air Act amendments to describe the only reason an industry could modernize without having to install best-available pollution control technology.
"Routine maintenance" has been at the center of debate over the Clean Air Act's "new source review" program, which was intended to force businesses to install new clean-air devices if they modified or improved older plants in ways that increase emissions.
Bush administration members and industry officials who lobbied heavily for the changes describe them as clarifications of a confusing standard that has long stymied industry. The new source review program needs improving, said the EPA's acting administrator, Marianne L. Horinko, because "that program is not causing a whole lot of emissions reductions."
Horinko said she will sign the new rule, which is based on EPA's proposal last November, in the coming week and it will take effect in the fall. The announcement is planned for Wednesday.
"This rule is desperately needed to make America's power plants, factories and refineries safe and reliable," said Jeffrey Marks, director of air quality policy for the National Association of Manufacturers.
Scott Segal, a lobbyist and attorney for six large utilities, said even the new allowance for replacement costs wouldn't fix all the shortcomings in the new source review program, but it would "move us along the path of improving efficiency and reliability of the electric power system."
Environmentalists, Democrats and other critics contend the rule change is a giveaway to utilities and industry, allowing many of the nation's dirtiest coal-burning power plants and other facilities to release millions of tons of additional pollution into the air.
"This latest rule on NSR is just one more flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act and every court's opinion on this matter," said Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., the No. 2 senator on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
"This is the single most destructive anti-clean air rule in the history of the Clean Air Act," said Vickie Patton, a senior attorney in Boulder, Colo., for New York-based Environmental Defense, an advocacy group.
Some critics also have suggested the EPA announcement on the new rule was being moved up so that it would be out of the way if a Senate confirmation hearing begins next month for Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, President Bush's nominee to succeed former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. Horinko flatly denied that, saying "this was moving back when Whitman was here."
Horinko and other Bush administration officials have been largely silent on details of the new rule, fueling broad speculation about how much of a plant's modernization might be considered exempt. Administration officials said only that the percentage -- which one environmental group put at 20 percent based on a leaked draft of the new rule -- was still subject to change.
"The concern about air emissions is way off-base," said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Still, he said the routine maintenance exemption "will be 50 percent or less, because that's what we proposed."
The EPA issued other changes to the new source review program last December that eased pollution-control requirements for utilities, oil companies and manufacturers. But the administration said last month it would briefly reconsider parts of those new rules, after several environmental groups and states downwind from the biggest industrial sources of air pollution sued to overturn them because of concern for public health.
Those parts include the length of time permitted between pollution-control upgrades, record-keeping and pollution reporting, and the way emissions are calculated.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi? a0593_BC_CleanAirRules
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Deborah on 08-23-2003] |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Fri Aug 29, 2003 4:14 am
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27 August 2003
The Boston Globe: Business
Power Plant Pollution Rules Eased
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Wednesday revised clean air regulations to make it easier for power plants and refineries to repair and upgrade their facilities -- drawing an immediate threat of a legal challenge from New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
The Environmental Protection Agency's final rule to allow some upgrades without installing expensive equipment to fight air pollution was hailed by industry but denounced by environmentalists as likely to cause more air pollution.
"This flagrantly illegal rule will ensure that ... Americans will breathe dirtier air, contract more respiratory disease and suffer more environmental degradation caused by air pollution," Spitzer said in a statement.
Environmental and public health groups argue the new rule will allow old, coal-fired power plants and refineries to emit more air pollutants in some cases.
But EPA Acting Administrator Marianne Horinko said the rule change would give industry more regulatory certainty, which would benefit consumers and the environment.
"This rule will result in safer, more efficient operation of these facilities and, in the case of power plants, more reliable operations that are environmentally sound and provide more affordable energy," she said.
The Edison Electric Institute, the trade group that represents big electric companies, said the new rule would allow utilities to provide more power supplies.
"Americans deserve a reliable supply of electricity and continuing air quality improvements," EEI said. "These new regulations are vital to achieving these goals."
The American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group of the major oil firms, said the new policy will help refineries to easily perform routine maintenance and increase the flow of gasoline to U.S. consumers. "Recent gasoline spikes are an indication of what can happen with unanticipated refinery problems," API said.
MORE POLLUTION?
But the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that this new rule will allow more air pollution from about 17,000 industrial facilities across the country.
Emissions from coal-fired plants can aggravate asthma, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.
"EPA policy should be based on protecting public health, not bolstering industry profits," the American Lung Association said in a statement.
Spitzer said he will sue the Bush administration to block the rule change and will ask other states to join his challenge. New Jersey and Massachusetts said they will follow suit.
The rule would let facilities replace equipment without installing pollution controls as long as the cost of the replacement does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of what the EPA broadly defines as the entire "process unit."
In addition, the replacement equipment cannot cause the unit to exceed any emissions limits.
Under the new rule, if a coal-fired plant replaced a boiler whose cost was less than 20 percent of the cost of replacing the entire process unit -- the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment that turns coal into electricity -- the company would not have to control any resulting pollution increases.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2003/08/28/power_plant_pollution |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Fri Aug 29, 2003 4:18 am
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28 August 2003
New Jersey.com: Business
EPA declines to regulate greenhouse gases from motor vehicles
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it lacked authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles.
The agency denied a petition by the International Center for Technology Assessment, a technology watchdog group, and other organizations to impose new controls on vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions blamed for contributing to global warming.
"Congress must provide us with clear legal authority before we can take regulatory action to address a fundamental issue such as climate change," said Jeff Holmstead, EPA's assistant administrator, who heads the Office of Air and Radiation.
Agency officials, reversing a stance from the Clinton administration, said they lack authority to regulate greenhouse gases that scientists widely believe are contributing to global climate change.
Industry groups praised EPA, while environmental groups criticized the decision.
"They absolutely did the right thing, they did the only thing they could do," said William Kovacs, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He echoed the concerns of President Bush, who reversed a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide because he said doing so would harm the U.S. economy by reducing jobs and increasing energy costs.
Melissa Carey, a climate change policy specialist with Environmental Defense, countered: "Elvis is dead. Climate change is happening. There are certain things we have to come to terms with. It's time to stop the denial and move on with solutions.
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?f0333 |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Fri Aug 29, 2003 5:28 am
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29 August 2003
The Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Change in Clean Air Act brings Pennsylvania into suit
Old power plants could avoid cleanup
Pennsylvania will file a federal lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's decision to weaken air quality rules and exempt thousands of old power plants, refineries and factories from having to install expensive pollution controls when they upgrade production facilities.
State Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said the administration's controversial amendments to the Clean Air Act's New Source Review standards will lead to more air pollution and increased public health risks and put Pennsylvania businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
"Pennsylvanians will pick up the tab for this blow to our competitiveness and this assault on our health. We urge President Bush to reverse course and protect commonwealth residents," McGinty said.
McGinty said the state would take a lead role in the legal challenges to the federal rule changes, and Kurt Knaus said the state was in contact with several other states yesterday to discuss the states' response to the federal rule changes.
Under the old rule, plant operators were required to retrofit their facilities with anti-pollution equipment if they did anything more than "routine maintenance."
Under the new federal rule, a major revision of current federal standards that date to 1971, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will allow power plants and industries to replace up to 20 percent of their production facilities and still be exempted from installing costly anti-pollution controls.
Theoretically, older power plants will be able to incrementally replace all of a facility's production equipment -- boiler, generator, turbine -- over a five-year span and increase both production and pollution without installing new pollution controls.
With the new rule in place, it is estimated that more than 17,000 older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units could avoid making extensive upgrades to reduce emissions.
The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utilities that favors the rule changes, was critical of McGinty's and the state's reaction to the new rule, which utilities said would benefit both the state's economy and the environment.
"Despite what critics have said, this rule will reduce emissions," said Scott Segal, council director. "In any event, parts of the Clean Air Act completely unaffected by today's action are in place to continue the trend of emissions reductions. All power plants covered by this rule are under tight permit conditions fully protective of human health.
"Over the last two decades, emissions from the power sector have significantly declined. That trend will continue."
John Hanger, president and chief executive officer of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, a statewide environmental group, said rule changes signed Wednesday by EPA's acting administrator, Marianne Horinko, are a political payoff to industries that contributed more than $50 million to his first presidential campaign.
Hanger said power plants are "talking out of both sides of their mouths" in trying to justify the rule changes and noted that 61 power plants are facing pending charges they violated the long-standing NSR standard by making changes to power plant operations that increased pollution.
"For Western Pennsylvania, it's a message to drop dead," Hanger said of the new rule. "Pennsylvania has more than 1 million people suffering from respiratory illnesses that make them especially vulnerable to the kind of pollution that comes from power plants."
Although the rule has been signed, it must still be published in the Federal Register.
Knaus said once the rule is published, states may file suit in federal court.
Pennsylvania was one of 10 northeastern states that are parties to an earlier federal lawsuit challenging changes to pollution rules that deal with construction and modification of large industrial sources of pollution. That case has not been decided.
McGinty has also urged the U.S. Senate to support an energy bill amendment that would prevent the EPA from forcing states like Pennsylvania to implement the NSR rule changes unless the agency could demonstrate that the final rules would not weaken federal air quality requirements for any facility in the state.
Although the energy bill passed without amendment, the measure is slated for conference committee in Congress.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20030829air0829p3.asp |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Mon Sep 01, 2003 1:07 am
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30 August 2003
New Jersey.com
Feds back lawsuit seeking overturn of Southern California vehicle pollution law
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The federal government is backing a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn a California clean-air agency's attempt to curb pollution from buses, taxis, trash trucks and other fleet vehicles.
In a filing late Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice urged the court to overturn the South Coast Air Quality Management District's clean fleet rules for the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region. The laws, adopted in 2000 and 2001, require operators to buy cleaner-burning models when they replace or add vehicles to their fleets.
The laws have resulted in the replacement of hundreds of diesel trucks, buses and other vehicles with models that burn natural gas and other alternative fuels, according to the AQMD, which is charged with cleaning up the air in much of Southern California.
Two industry groups, the Western States Petroleum Association and the Engine Manufacturers Association, sued the AQMD in U.S. District Court. The clean-air agency prevailed in that court and in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear the case in December.
The Department of Justice's friend-of-the-court brief argues that under the federal Clean Air Act, states and local jurisdictions cannot establish their own emission standards for new vehicles without getting permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. [[Pretty slick, eh?]]
A message seeking comment from the Department of Justice was not immediately returned Saturday.
The AQMD maintains the rules do not set emissions standards. Instead, the rules ask fleet owners to choose from among the cleanest engine technologies available, and allow exceptions if no alternatives can be located, agency executive officer Barry Wallerstein said.
The Engine Manufacturers Association has argued that the rules constitute a de facto ban on certain engines and vehicles.
The brief marked the third time in a month the federal government has weighed in on issues that affect Southern California's fight against the nation's worst smog.
Previously, the EPA refused to commit to any emission reduction measures that the AQMD sought for the region. The AQMD requested the action in the latest update to its plan to clean up Southern California's air by 2010.
And on Wednesday, the EPA unveiled revisions to the 40-year-old Clean Air Act that will allow power plants and factories to upgrade without adopting the most up-to-date pollution control equipment.
Several states, including California, are expected to go to court to block the revisions. END
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0615_BC_CleanFleet |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:06 am
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31 August 2003
The Washington Post
A Change of Air
WHEN CHRISTINE Todd Whitman left her job as EPA administrator in June, she vehemently denied that her decision had any significance for the administration's environmental policy. Still, some doubted whether her decision to leave was purely personal -- and it seems they were right to do so. Over the past week, the EPA has announced two long-awaited, significant changes to policy, both of which inspire extreme environmentalist outrage and warm industry support. Both point to a shift in administration policy in the absence of Ms. Whitman's moderating influence.
The first decision, announced Wednesday, was a change to the EPA's "clean air" rules. Older power utilities will now be allowed to upgrade or modernize some of their facilities without having to add expensive new pollution-control equipment. Previously they were required to do so under a set of rules known as "new source review." Not surprisingly, the utilities most affected by this change have hailed it, on the grounds that it brings "clarity" to a heavily disputed (and heavily litigated) set of regulations and because it will allow them to install equipment that will, they say, make their plants run more efficiently. Environmental activists have lambasted the change, arguing that it will allow these older plants to install equipment that will raise their levels of pollution along with their efficiency.
On Thursday came the second decision: The EPA announced that, after careful consideration of the issue, the agency does not have the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The EPA's general counsel, Robert E. Fabricant, issued a memorandum reversing the arguments of his Clinton administration predecessors. He declared that the EPA "cannot assert jurisdiction to regulate in this area" and would require a congressional mandate to do so. Carbon dioxide emissions, while not harmful to humans in the same degree as other kinds of emissions, are thought to be the most important of the "greenhouse gases" that cause global warming. For technical reasons they are expensive to control, and this administration has gone out of its way to avoid regulating them. Indeed, Ms. Whitman's first setback as EPA administrator came when she was firmly told, early in her tenure, to stop talking about carbon dioxide altogether.
While neither of these changes will necessarily cause clouds of pollution to be released into the air right away, they do signify a major change of direction for the beleaguered agency. All week EPA officials sought to minimize controversy, claiming that the "new source review" decision is a technical rule change with little or no impact on actual levels of pollution and that legal arguments justify the carbon dioxide decision. Both claims are disingenuous, because both changes are significant. The agency had been pursuing litigation against older power plants, aimed at getting them to upgrade their equipment, but now will surely drop attempts to force compliance with a rule that no longer exists. Until last week, the question of whether the EPA would soon try to regulate carbon dioxide emissions was still open. Now it is closed. While the consequences of these decisions may not be felt for some time, they clearly reflect a bias toward industry and away from regulation. Although the agency was heading in that direction anyway, Ms. Whitman's departure may well mark a more substantial change of climate at the EPA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5513-2003Aug30.html |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Wed Sep 03, 2003 4:24 am
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2 September 2003
Capitol Reports
EPA denies petition to regulate motor vehicle greenhouse house gas emissions
http://www.caprep.com/0903003.htm
WASHINGTON (09/02/03) -- The U.S. EPA has signed a notice denying a petition to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The petition was filed by the International Center for Technology Assessment and a number of other organizations.
The Agency said it denied the petition to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles for two primary reasons:
-- Congress has not granted EPA authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases for climate change purposes.
-- EPA has determined that setting GHG emission standards for motor vehicles is not appropriate at this time.
"Congress must provide us with clear legal authority before we can take regulatory action to address a fundamental issue such as climate change," said Jeff Holmstead, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. "We cannot try to use the Clean Air Act to regulate for climate change purposes because the Act was not designed or intended for that purpose."
"We already are taking a number of actions, at home and abroad, to address climate change" said Mr. Holmstead. "Regulating the transportation sector for climate change purposes would have enormous economic, practical, and societal impacts. The U.S. is advancing realistic and effective long-term approaches to deal with this issue."
The Response to the Petition is available at: www.epa.gov/airlinks/airlinks1.html.
Comment: The chain of events being documented in this thread may not seem like any big deal right now. But it's going to have very significant repercussions down the road a bit. The story is telling itself.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Deborah on 09-02-2003] |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Wed Sep 03, 2003 4:36 am
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Test. |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Wed Sep 03, 2003 4:38 am
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Test. |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Wed Sep 03, 2003 4:39 am
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Test #3. |
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