EPA to Ease Plants' Air Pollution Rules

[ClintonTyree]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=11&u=/ap/20030824/ap_on_go_ot/clean_air_rules_3


WASHINGTON - In a victory for industrial plant operators, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) is preparing to issue a new rule within days to let thousands more facilities modernize without adding more pollution controls.



The new rule relaxes the agency's definition of "routine maintenance," a catch-phrase Congress adopted in its 1977 Clean Air Act amendments to describe the only reason an industry could modernize without having to install best-available pollution control technology.

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"This rule is desperately needed to make America's power plants, factories and refineries safe and reliable," said Jeffrey Marks, director of air quality policy for the National Association of Manufacturers (news - web sites).

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Environmentalists, Democrats and other critics contend the rule change is a giveaway to utilities and industry, allowing many of the nation's dirtiest coal-burning power plants and other facilities to release millions of tons of additional pollution into the air.

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"This is the single most destructive anti-clean air rule in the history of the Clean Air Act," said Vickie Patton, a senior attorney in Boulder, Colo., for New York-based Environmental Defense, an advocacy group.

[aquart]

1. What air does George plan to breathe in his old age?

Something privatized and bottled?

[lfairban]

2. Talk about killing your own people with poison gas.

Another case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[terryg11]

3. hardly a surprise, unfortunately

we knew Bush would be doing this shit