FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Neil Woodworth
Wednesday, March 26, 2003 (518) 449-3870 or 439-2864

The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) strongly opposes an attempt by the EPA to severely weaken a critical enforcement provision of the Clean Air Act. EPA has proposed regulations that significantly undermine the New Source Review (NSR) rules of the Clean Air Act. If adopted, the proposed regulations would essentially allow the oldest and dirtiest power plants to increase harmful emissions without ever having to install pollution control devices.

Sixty coal burning power plants operating in the Midwest upwind of New York produce approximately 84 percent of the nitrogen oxides and almost 90 percent of the sulfur dioxide produced in generating electric power. The new source review program is the most important acid rain enforcement provision in the Clean Air Act for New York, allowing our Attorney General to sue utilities that rebuild plants without installing scrubbers.

“The EPA’s proposed rules essentially repeal the new source review rule by creating two new loopholes that swallow the rule, allowing a utility owner to rebuild a plant and actually increase air pollution levels without adding scrubbers or pollution controls. We believe these rules violate the intent of Congress in enacting the Clean Air Act and will not survive a lawsuit” said Neil Woodworth, counsel to the Adirondack Mountain Club.

Congress created the NSR program in 1977. The utility industry at that time asked Congress to “grandfather” older coal burning generating plants from having to install scrubbers, arguing that most of these plants would be retired by 2000. The NSR rules were intended by Congress to ensure that if the plants were ever rebuilt to extend their service lives well beyond 2000, the latest air pollution reduction equipment would be installed at the time of reconstruction.

The EPA, in administering the NSR rules since 1977 created an exception for “routine maintenance” activities. Regular equipment maintenance, cleaning and service activities were considered to be routine maintenance. However, EPA’s proposed NSR rule changes alter the very narrow routine maintenance activity exception by creating two new loopholes that essentially swallow the original NSR rule.

The first new loophole allows for accounting gimmicks instead of sound scientific and engineering analysis. The EPA now proposes to replace the careful scrutiny of the nature and extent of the proposed generating plant modifications with a cost threshold below which modifications would escape EPA scrutiny. The cost-based exemption exempts any modification, no matter how much pollution increases as a result, so long as the modification costs less than a given amount of money. According to the draft regulations, the percentage of the cost of the plant permitted for this annual allowance could be as much as 20 percent. Furthermore, the EPA is considering allowing annual allowances to be aggregated over a multi-year period thereby inviting the utility industry to stage major reconstruction projects over multiple years to escape scrutiny and thereby avoid the need to install scrubbers.

As a supplement to the allowance loophole, the EPA proposes to allow grandfathered utilities to replace “like kind” power plant components. This proposed loophole greatly expands the meaning of “routine maintenance” to permit the replacement of major plant components like boilers, furnaces, coal pulverizers and turbo generating units. Essentially, EPA’s “like kind” replacement exemption allows a facility to replace anything, no matter how much additional pollution it will result in, as long as the new equipment is “like” the old equipment.

ADK will voice its opposition to the proposed rule changes at an EPA public hearing at the Albany Marriot Hotel on March 31, 2003. It is one of five hearings being held nationally on this important issue.

The Adirondack Mountain Club represents over 40,000 hikers, paddlers, skiers and backpackers.

The Devastating Effects of Acid Rain

• 41% of the lakes in the Adirondacks and 15% of the lakes in New England exhibit chronic and/or episodic acidification. 83% of these lakes are acidic due to atmospheric deposition.
• Acidic deposition has increased the concentration of toxic forms of aluminum in soil waters, lakes and streams.
• In the Catskill Mountain reservoirs that provide drinking water to New York City, as well as waters throughout the Northeast, elevated concentrations of aluminum and mercury in water and fish are attributable to surface water acidification
• Acid deposition is the major cause of red spruce decline at high elevations throughout the Northeast.
• Acidic deposition leaches cellular calcium from red spruce needles, which makes trees susceptible to freezing injury.
• Since the 1960s, more than one half of the large canopy red spruce in the Adirondack and Green Mountains and one quarter of large canopy red spruce in the White Mountains have died.
• Acidic deposition has accelerated the leaching of calcium of soils. At the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, the available calcium in forest soils has declined by 50% over the past 50 years.
• The acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) of our soils and waters has decreased over many decades of air pollution, making it progressively difficult for our natural resources to bounce back from acid deposition.
• Since the 1980s, no increases in ANC are evident in the Adirondacks and Catskills due to the historically higher loading of acid deposition in New York State.