[Albany -- But Christie Whitman confirms Clear Skies initiative could hinder current lawsuits]

Passage of the Bush administration's Clear Skies Initiative would likely lead to a partial repeal of the federal Clean Air 
Act, curtailing New York's ability to sue power plants that don't reduce acid rain-producing pollution, the head of the 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency confirmed Friday.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the proposal would result in greater reductions of the pollutants most associated with acid rain -- nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury -- and do so faster than current clean air standards allow. 

The Clear Skies Initiative would also establish a nationwide cap on power plant emissions, Whitman said, making the part of  the Clean Air Act that governs mandated plant pollution controls redundant. That part, known as New Source Review, requires new plants and those that are upgraded to install cutting-edge pollution technology.

If Clear Skies passes, New Source Review "would be unnecessary because we would be getting better cuts, faster,'' Whitman said Friday at the University at Albany's Atmospheric Sciences Research Center on a nationwide tour to tout Bush's initiative. "It could actually be a hindrance,'' Whitman said of New Source Review. "You don't need to keep a bureaucracy in place just to have one.''

But environmentalists criticized any change in New Source Review, noting it is the basis of the lawsuits filed by 
several states, including New York, against power plants. "New Source Review is the best tool in the tool box for 
fighting acid rain,'' said Judith Enck, a policy advisor to state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who is leading the legal 
charge against power plants. "It is the fundamental foundation of our lawsuits.''

New York currently has lawsuits against two Erie County power plants and 17 facilities out of state. A change in New Source Review would not threaten these actions, Enck said, but it would force the attorney general to seek other legal grounds on which to sue power plants not meeting federal emissions standards.

Whitman said New Source Review would be repealed only for power plants, not other polluters such as oil refineries, 
cement kilns and steel plants. She said the initiative would remove 35 million more tons of the top three air pollutants 
that contribute to acid rain over the next decade than the Clean Air Act.

But some environmentalists say full federal enforcement of the Clean Air Act, which has yet to occur, would actually result in deeper emissions cuts than the Clear Skies Initiative. "You can't fix an implementation problem simply by changing the law,'' said John Stouffer, legislative director of the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter.

One of the few environmental groups to back Bush's initiative in New York is the Adirondack Council, an 18,000-member nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the 6 million acre Adirondack Park, which has suffered the worst acid rain damage in the nation. Council leaders joined Whitman at the news conference on Friday.

"Good science shows the deeper the cuts, the faster the recovery,'' said Bernard Melewski, the council's acting 
executive director. "The same science says the sooner we act, the better.''

More than 20 Adirondack lakes have posted mercury contamination warnings and 500 are too acidic to support 
native life, Melewski said. If acid rain continues at its current rate, about half of the park's 2,800 lakes will be dead by 2040, according to EPA estimates.

The Clear Skies Initiative is a "cap and trade'' plan that requires power plant owners to reduce emissions system-wide and rewards them with pollution "credits'' when they exceed federal standards. Utilities can either use these credits to lower emission standards at other power plants they own, or sell the credits to other companies.

This practice might reduce the nation's total air pollution, but it will not necessarily lower emissions in specific areas 
like the acid rain-prone Northeast, said Neil Woodworth, lead counsel for the Adirondack Mountain Club. And the loss of New Source Review will prevent states that don't benefit from the cap and trade program from taking action on their own behalf, he said.

"We may be cleaning up the nation's air on a macro scale, but we will be losing the ability to go after big offenders that are upwind of sensitive air sheds like New York,'' Woodworth said.

Whitman acknowledged the Clear Skies Initiative may be changed by Congress. That was good news to some environmentalists, who said they prefer legislation pending in the U.S. Senate that goes further in reducing emissions than Bush's proposal. They cited a bill sponsored by Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., that addresses the top three acid rain-producing pollutants as well as carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas emission.

"The caps being proposed (by Bush) don't meet best available technology standards,'' Stouffer said. "There are proposals out there in Congress that would achieve much steeper reductions more quickly.''