According to Environmental NGOs, the proposed Clear Skies Bill is rife with loopholes that weaken the Clean Air Act and allow increases in mercury, arsenic, lead, and other toxic chemical emissions from industrial facilities.
“The industry-supported bill eliminates several cornerstones of the Clean Air Act which have reduced air pollution from power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, and other smokestack industries for decades. The bill eviscerates protections that have saved lives and protected our environment for the past 35 years,”said Matt Petersen, President of GlobalGreen, USA.
Groups from around the nation are concerned with the measure’s exemptions for known polluters, its roll-backs of existing laws; which are proving effective, and importantly, provisions that revoke state and local rights to strengthen air pollution protections beyond federal standards.
“Last week, California Governor Schwarzenegger and New York Governor Pataki urged Congress not to undermine the Clean Air Act’s framework for states to enforce air quality regulations or create tougher ones for their state’s citizens. “It is important that city and state leaders stand together with environmental, medical and public health advocates in opposition to the Clear Skies bill,” said Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. It’s a bad bill.”
“Under this bill, as many as 782 industrial facilities in California would be exempt from Clean Air Act-mandated reductions in toxic pollution”, said Sujatha Jahagirdar, of Environment California. The loophole would allow these industries to threaten the health of citizens across the state, according to the group.
The bill is truly a sweetheart deal for the nation’s biggest polluters,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, Director of the Southern California Air Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The Administration has promoted Clear Skies as a solution, but everyone knows it’s a give-away to the industries most responsible for fouling our air and water.”
“We should be supporting McCain-Lieberman’s bipartisan Climate Change legislation, not pitching this draconian elimination of the nation’s air and health protections,” said V. John White, Executive Director, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.”
Top 10 Ways Clear Skies Act Will Weaken the Clean Air Act
1. Guts Clean Air Act protections by creating enormous exemptions for most smokestack industries not just power plants.
2. Repeals Clean Air Act protections that require every power plant to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollutants to the maximum extent (on the order of 90 percent) by 2008.
3. Exempts certain industrial facilities from EPA regulations already on the books to reduce toxic air pollutants including arsenic, lead, and formaldehyde.
4. Strips states of their authority to take action against pollution blowing in from other states.
5. Revokes local authority to require new pollution sources to meet strict emission limits in areas already suffering from unsafe air.
6. Repeals the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards, which require new plants to install state-of-the-art pollution controls.
7. Repeals the Clean Air Actks New Source Review program, which requires the oldest and dirtiest plants to eventually meet modern pollution control standards.
8. Repeals Clean Air Act requirements that power plants reduce haze to protect national parks and wilderness areas.
9. Repeals Clean Air Act requirements that other smokestack industries that opt-in to the bill reduce haze to protect national parks and wilderness areas.
10. Delays deadlines for polluters to clean up to meet national health standards for ozone smog and fine particle soot for more than a decade, even as the science shows that the current standards are not tight even to protect public health. In late January, EPA staff recommended strengthening the national health standard for soot.
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