D.C. Watch

Clean Air Act Needs to Clean Up its Act

According to a recent report on NPR, over 420 coal-fired power plants in America lack pollution control equipment to handle hazardous emission, due in part to a legal loophole. According to the Clean Air Act (CAA) as amended in 1990, power plants constructed prior to 1970 (inception of the CAA) are not required to meet the same stringent emissions levels as new power plants as these changes were not economically feasible.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton administration tried closing this loophole by enforcing a long-ignored provision of the act, that requires plants to install advanced pollution controls if they modify or expand their plant. But changes on such large-scale does not happen overnight and plants across America to this day, continue to pollute the air with sulfur dioxide (over 70 percent of all coal-fired plants lacking sulfur reducing scrubbers), nitrogen oxide (over 90 percent of them lack equipment to contain nitrogen oxide) and suspended particulate matter (practically all plants lack suspended particulate removal capability), resulting in tens of thousands dying early due to lung and heart ailment and thousands more suffer from asthma.

This severe lack of regulation and foresight is indicative of the administration in office, although the US EPA claims to be an autonomous body, they are heavily politicized and influenced by the Whitehouse. During President Bush’s first term, the administration tried to lax regulations in favor of the industry and to this day refuses to ratify (other) significant anti-pollution initiatives like the Kyoto Protocol to curb (carbon dioxide) emission.

The regulation as it stands poses a challenge to our fundamental rights to access clean air. Unless the Clean Air Act cleans up it’s act, we are headed for a painfully long and smoggy future.

Picture Courtesy: alexvisani.com

Posted by Moderator on August 22nd, 2006 filed in Activism, Air Pollution, Bush, Carbon, EPA, Economics, Energy, Environmental Defense, Global Warming, NRDC, Sustainability Discuss now »