EPA Reduces Smokestack Pollution
EPA Reduces Smokestack Pollution, Protecting Americans’ Health from Soot and Smog
Clean Air Act protections will cut dangerous pollution in communities that are home to 240 million Americans
WASHINGTON – Building on the Obama Administration’s strong record of protecting the public’s health through common-sense clean air standards – including proposed standards to reduce emissions of mercury and other air toxics, as well as air quality standards for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today finalized additional Clean Air Act protections that will slash hundreds of thousands of tons of smokestack emissions that travel long distances through the air leading to soot and smog, threatening the health of hundreds of millions of Americans living downwind. The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will protect communities that are home to 240 million Americans from smog and soot pollution, preventing up to 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks, 19,000 cases of acute bronchitis, 400,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and 1.8 million sick days a year beginning in 2014 – achieving up to $280 billion in annual health benefits. Twenty seven states in the eastern half of the country will work with power plants to cut air pollution under the rule, which leverages widely available, proven and cost-effective control technologies. Ensuring flexibility, EPA will work with states to help develop the most appropriate path forward to deliver significant reductions in harmful emissions while minimizing costs for utilities and consumers.
“No community should have to bear the burden of another community’s polluters, or be powerless to prevent air pollution that leads to asthma, heart attacks and other harmful illnesses. These Clean Air Act safeguards will help protect the health of millions of Americans and save lives by preventing smog and soot pollution from traveling hundreds of miles and contaminating the air they breathe,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “By maximizing flexibility and leveraging existing technology, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will help ensure that American families aren’t suffering the consequences of pollution generated far from home, while allowing states to decide how best to decrease dangerous air pollution in the most cost effective way.”
Carried long distances across the country by wind and weather, power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) continually travel across state lines. As the pollution is transported, it reacts in the atmosphere and contributes to harmful levels of smog (ground-level ozone) and soot (fine particles), which are scientifically linked to widespread illnesses and premature deaths and prevent many cities and communities from enjoying healthy air quality.
The rule will improve air quality by cutting SO2 and NOx emissions that contribute to pollution problems in other states. By 2014, the rule and other state and EPA actions will reduce SO2 emissions by 73 percent from 2005 levels. NOx emissions will drop by 54 percent. Following the Clean Air Act’s “Good Neighbor” mandate to limit interstate air pollution, the rule will help states that are struggling to protect air quality from pollution emitted outside their borders, and it uses an approach that can be applied in the future to help areas continue to meet and maintain air quality health standards.
The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule replaces and strengthens the 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered EPA to revise in 2008. The court allowed CAIR to remain in place temporarily while EPA worked to finalize today’s replacement rule.
The rule will protect over 240 million Americans living in the eastern half of the country, resulting in up to $280 billion in annual benefits. The benefits far outweigh the $800 million projected to be spent annually on this rule in 2014 and the roughly $1.6 billion per year in capital investments already underway as a result of CAIR. EPA expects pollution reductions to occur quickly without large expenditures by the power industry. Many power plants covered by the rule have already made substantial investments in clean air technologies to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions. The rule will level the playing field for power plants that are already controlling these emissions by requiring more facilities to do the same. In the states where investments in control technology are required, health and environmental benefits will be substantial.
The rule will also help improve visibility in state and national parks while better protecting sensitive ecosystems, including Appalachian streams, Adirondack lakes, estuaries, coastal waters, and forests. In a supplemental rulemaking based on further review and analysis of air quality information, EPA is also proposing to require sources in Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin to reduce NOX emissions during the summertime ozone season. The proposal would increase the total number of states covered by the rule from 27 to 28. Five of these six states are covered for other pollutants under the rule. The proposal is open for public review and comment for 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/crossstaterule/
CONTACT:
Enesta Jones
jones.enesta@epa.gov
202-564-7873
202-564-4355
Agency action would cut transport of air pollutants from Pa. power plant
EPA Proposes to Grant Clean Air Act Petition to Improve Air Quality in New Jersey
WASHINGTON (March 31, 2011) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed to grant a petition submitted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to limit sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from a Pennsylvania power plant that are adversely impacting air quality in four New Jersey counties. The proposed rule, when final, would require the Portland Generating Station in Northampton County, Pa. to reduce its SO2 emissions by 81 percent over a three-year period. Exposure to SO2 can aggravate asthma and cause other respiratory difficulties. People with asthma, children, and the elderly are especially vulnerable to these effects.
Under the Clean Air Act, when a facility impacts air quality in another state, the affected state can petition EPA and request that the facility be required to reduce its impact. In a September 2010 petition, New Jersey asked EPA to find that the Portland power plant is impacting the state’s air quality and to require the facility to reduce its SO2 emissions. These emission reductions can be achieved using proven and widely available pollution control methods.
New Jersey conducted several air quality modeling analyses to evaluate SO2 levels in the state. These analyses show that the level of SO2 in the air is exceeding the agency’s 1-hour national air quality standard and that the Portland plant is the main source of emissions. EPA also conducted its own modeling analyses and found the same results.
Typically a mix of sources from multiple locations is responsible for air quality issues in a specific area. However, in this case, the extensive analysis shows a clear connection between the emissions from the Portland plant alone and the elevated level of SO2 in New Jersey.
EPA will accept comment on this proposal until May 27, 2011. The agency is also holding public hearing on this proposed rule on April 27, 2011 in Oxford, N.J. The hearing will provide stakeholders with the opportunity to submit written or oral comments in person. A written record of the hearing will be compiled and submitted to the docket. Any questions posed at the hearing will be replied to in a response to comment summary issued with EPA’s final response to the petition.
More information on the petition and public hearing: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/new.html
Contacts: Terri A. White, EPA Region 3, (215) 814-5523, white.terri-a@epa.gov
Elias Rodriguez, EPA Region 2, (212) 637-3664, Rodriguez.elias@epa.gov
Hope remains for future of coal-to-liquid fuels project
Questions about the financing and a murky national energy policy are clouding the future of a proposed $1 billion coal-to-liquid fuels project.
Yet John W. Rich Jr. remains optimistic his plan can help break the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
“There’s not any threat of a war over coal, but there sure is a threat of war over oil,” Rich said in an interview Thursday. “We’re continuing to pursue this whole effort. We’ve been at it for a long time. We certainly got tripped up at the federal level. … This is where the future is – making liquid transportation fuels.”
The project – planned for Mahanoy Township – has been in development for two decades. For much of that time, Rich had been counting on $100 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to help fund the project, which would convert waste coal to usable diesel fuel.
However, the federal government pulled that money from the project without explanation during the last days of the Bush administration. Read more
U.S. House Battles Over U.S. EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulations
WASHINGTON, DC, February 9, 2011 (ENS) – The Republicans and Democrats massed their forces today in the House of Representatives in a fight over the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases.
A different House from the Democratic-led body that passed a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade bill in June 2009, this Republican-led body is considering a bill that would prevent the U.S. EPA from regulating the emission of greenhouse gases from stationary sources such as power plants and refineries.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee today held its first hearings on the draft discussion bill from the new chairman, Republican Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan.
The bill, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, states its purpose as: “To amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas due to concerns regarding possible climate change, and for other purposes.”
Upton said today that his bill is designed to “to protect jobs and preserve the intent of the Clean Air Act.”
The bill would overturn the EPA’s December 2009 finding that the emission of greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare.
Along with a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are pollutants and the EPA has the duty to regulate them, this endangerment determination is the basis for EPA regulation of greenhouse gases.
Far from being an invention of the Obama administration’s EPA, the Bush-era EPA administrator also supported a positive greenhouse gas endangerment finding.
The committee’s top Democrat, Congressman Henry Waxman of California, Tuesday released a private letter that former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote to President George W. Bush on January 31, 2008.
“It addresses the same issue as your legislation: whether carbon emissions endanger the public,” Waxman wrote Friday in his own letter to Upton, in which he shares the contents of Johnson’s private letter to President Bush.
“Administrator Johnson wrote: ‘the latest science of climate change requires the Agency to propose a positive endangerment finding, as was agreed to at the Cabinet-level meeting in November.'”
“The latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research,” Johnson wrote.
“Administrator Johnson also wrote: ‘A robust interagency policy process involving principal meetings over the past eight months has enabled me to formulate a plan that is prudent and cautious yet forward thinking. … [I]t … creates a framework for responsible, cost-effective and practical actions.'”
“He added that actions to reduce carbon emissions ‘should spur both private sector investment in developing new, cost-effective technologies and private sector deployment of these technologies at a large scale.'”
Administrator Johnson released an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking in July 2008, which solicited public comment on an endangerment finding. The final endangerment finding was made by the Obama admininstration’s EPA head Lisa Jackson in December 2009.
Jackson testified today before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Chairman Upton’s draft bill to eliminate portions of the Clean Air Act.
“The bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken, or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public,” Jackson said. “I respectfully ask the members of this Committee to keep in mind that EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saves millions of American children and adults from the debilitating and expensive illnesses that occur when smokestacks and tailpipes release unrestricted amounts of harmful pollution into the air we breathe.”
“Last year alone, EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saved more than 160,000 American lives; avoided more than 100,000 hospital visits; prevented millions of cases of respiratory illness, including bronchitis and asthma; enhanced American productivity by preventing millions of lost workdays; and kept American kids healthy and in school,” Jackson told the committee.
Jackson emphasized that the Clean Air Act itself creates jobs, particularly in the growing U.S. environmental technologies industry. “In 2008, that industry generated nearly 300 billion dollars in revenues and 44 billion dollars in exports,” she said.
“Yesterday,” said Jackson, “the University of Massachusetts and Ceres released an analysis finding that two of the updated Clean Air Act standards EPA is preparing to establish for mercury, soot, smog, and other harmful air pollutants from power plants will create nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years.”
Chairman Upton said his bill, “allows states to continue setting climate policy as they please, but prevents those actions from being imposed or enforced nationally.”
The bill leaves in place the tailpipe standards for cars and light trucks from model years 2012 through 2016, and allows National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to continue to regulate fuel economy after 2016.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2011/2011-02-09-01.html
EPA Gets Tough with Polluters
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?5457
EPA Gets Tough with Polluters
January 4, 2011
By Brita Belli
This week, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency‘s greenhouse gas regulations will begin taking effect—and big polluters aren‘t happy. These regulations, in keeping with the Clean Air Act, aim to require major polluters—particularly fossil fuel power plants and oil refineries—to get permits for emitting greenhouse gases. It would also compel these major emitters to seek out cleaner technologies to make reductions. These reductions will happen on a case-by-case basis, instead of under a one-size-fits-all rule. And that has coal plant operators and other fossil fuel representatives upset. “It slows everybody down because nobody knows what the rules are going to be,” Jeffrey Holmstead, who headed EPA‘s air pollution office under President Bush, told National Public Radio.
The fight has grown particularly fierce in Texas where Republican Gov. Rick Perry has accused the Obama administration of interfering with state‘s rights. The state has refused to abide by the EPA‘s emissions regulations. So this January, the EPA has sidestepped state officials, issuing greenhouse gas permits directly to Texas industries. Texas is one of a dozen states that have filed lawsuits to challenge the greenhouse gas regulations—others are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon and Wyoming—but it‘s the only state to not even attempt to comply in the meantime. According to one article in the Shreveport Times: “About 200 Texas facilities continue to operate with air and water permits that are either out of date or have been disapproved by the EPA. The agency believes they are releasing a variety of metals and chemicals into the air and water that would, under the new regulations, no longer be permitted.” Flexible permits in Texas allow industries to release toxins and volatile organic compounds at double the rate of national standards.
For environmental groups, a tougher EPA is a welcome change. Attorney Cale Jaffe from the Southern Environmental Law Center told NPR: “Finally we‘ve got the rules that are beginning to require power companies to account for their global warming pollution. That‘s a historic turn of events.” And the regulations that took effect on January 2nd apply to new permits and expansions for power plants. The EPA announced in late December that it‘s planning to set standards for carbon dioxide emissions and pollution for all power plants and refineries this year, a fight that will bring more heated battles from incoming Congress members representing coal-mining states.
SOURCES:
National Public Radio [ http://www.npr.org/2011/01/03/132612887/epa-to-enforce-new-emission-rules-on-power-plants ]
Reuters [ http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BM2LZ20101223 ]
Shreveport Times [ http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20110102/NEWS05/101020340/Texas-EPA-fight-over-regulations-grows-fierce ]
New EPA Guide to Help Businesses Confront Climate Challenge
Contact: Marilyn Franklin, (202) 564-4355 / franklin.marilyn@epa.gov
EPA is releasing a new resource, A Business Guide to U.S. EPA Climate Partnership Programs, for businesses committed to addressing the risks and opportunities associated with climate change. The guide features profiles on 35 EPA climate-change related partnership programs, as well as a handy table so companies can look up programs most appropriate for their industry and business objectives. Each program profile defines the environmental value delivered by the program and the business case for participating, such as cost savings, operational efficiency, reduced business risk, new or expanded markets, enhanced reputation and brand protection.
The guide also describes the benefits of partnering with EPA, such as environmental performance benchmarking, public recognition, professional training and networking, and preparation for regulatory developments. There are currently more than 13,000 firms and other organizations participating in EPA climate-related partnership programs. Through participation, members are investing in energy efficiency, clean energy supply, and other practices and technologies for mitigating climate risks.
EPA developed the guide in consultation with Businesses for Social Responsibility (BSR), a nonprofit business association. BSR, which provides practical resources for businesses seeking sustainable solutions, is promoting the guide to its 250 members and other Global 1000 enterprises.
For copies of this guide and for more information about EPA Partnership Programs, visit: http://www.epa.gov/partners
For more information about BSR, visit: http://www.bsr.org