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Article location: http://eces.org/ec/pollution/air.shtml
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(03/11/2002) Study shows breathing air contaminated with pollutants from car and truck exhaust at levels commonly found in urban areas narrows blood vessels in even healthy people, possibly explaining why rate of heart attacks increases with exposure to air pollution. Even in healthy people, breathing air contaminated with pollutants found in car and truck exhaust causes blood vessels to constrict, according to the first study of its kind. The study fits in with other research that shows air pollution can cause not only breathing problems, but also heart problems. The findings may explain why people with cardiovascular disease seem to be particularly susceptible to poor air quality, researchers say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that air pollution contributed to 60,000 heart-related deaths in 1996.
"Our results are a clear demonstration that environmentally relevant concentrations of common air pollutants that can occur in urban settings adversely affects the blood vessels of healthy people," says study author Robert D. Brook, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "Breathing common urban air pollution, which is on the rise globally due to world-wide industrialization, clearly has an adverse impact on the proper functioning of blood vessels, of even the healthiest of individuals."
"There is a lot of epidemiological data saying that air pollution is associated with adverse respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes, but there is still a lack of understanding as to how the association occurs physiologically," Brook said, a specialist in the biology of blood vessels. "These findings suggest a possible reason why the rate of heart attacks and other cardiovascular events increases with exposure to air pollution for people with known heart and blood vessel disease."
Brook said the harmful pollution could not be seen or smelled, and people would not feel the effects. "You don't even know. You can't tell that you are inhaling it. You can breathe in these rather high levels of air pollution and be mostly unaware," Brook said.
To investigate the impacts of breathing smog, Brook and his team evaluated the effects of breathing particulate air pollution - tiny particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs - and ozone, a key ingredient of urban smog. Twenty-five healthy volunteers with an average age of 35 inhaled air with concentrations of particulate matter of 150 micrograms per cubic meter and 120 parts per billion of ozone for 2 hours. These concentrations are similar to those found in the air during rush-hour traffic in large cities, Brook noted.
"These come from the combustion of normal fossil fuel," Brook said. Cars, power plants, iron smelters and other industry all create ozone and fine particulate pollution.
The tiny particles of carbon and other material have even smaller bits of iron, manganese and zinc clinging to them. They are inhaled deep into the lungs and some studies suggest they may be absorbed directly into the bloodstream. These bits of metal may also damage healthy cells.
Brook said the body's immune system may mistake smog particles for bacterial or viral invaders, and attack. As white blood cell move in, they release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines that cause the blood vessels to constrict.
After two hours of breathing the polluted air, the blood vessels of the volunteers constricted between 2 percent and 4 percent on average, Brook and his team reported in the journal Circulation. Their vessels did not constrict when they breathed clean, filtered air. The researchers used ultrasound to measure the diameter of the brachial artery, which runs from the shoulder to the elbow.
"Although the degree of constriction in and of itself is unlikely to produce significant problems in healthy individuals, such a constriction could conceivably trigger cardiac events in those individuals who have or are at risk for heart disease," Brook said. He said his study fit in well with one published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which a team at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, found that long-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of death from lung cancer, heart attack, stroke, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
"We are hoping that this line of research will add some strength to well-known association studies," Brook said. "Now we can say 'gee, there is a clear linkage here between bad air and cardiopulmonary events."' (Sources)
(03/06/2002) New study indicates that 45% increase in atmospheric levels of nitrous oxide from burning of fossil fuels and agricultural fertilizers will significantly deplete Earth's protective ozone layer over the mid-latitudes where most people live, leading to a potential epidemic of skin cancer. See Ozone Depletion.
(03/06/2002) Yellowstone park rangers are forced to wear gas masks to prevent
headache and nausea caused by snowmobile exhaust as Bush administration -
ignoring the fact that there are no respirators or ear plugs to protect the
parks's bison, trumpeter swans, elk, and other wildlife - caters to the
snowmobile industry. See Population:
Recreation.
(03/05/2002) Major new study provides "compelling" evidence that air pollution in many U.S. cities raises the risk of cardiopulmonary diseases, including lung cancer, heart attack, stroke, asthma, pneumonia, emphysema and chronic bronchitis, as much as living with a smoker. Long-term exposure to the levels of air pollution common in many of America's metropolitan areas significantly increases the risk of dying from lung cancer and other lung and heart diseases, and is about as dangerous as living with a smoker, a study of a half-million people has found. The increased risk comes from what scientists call combustion-related fine particulate matter soot emitted by cars and trucks, coal-fired power plants and factories.
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"Elevated fine particulate air pollution exposures were associated with significant increases in lung cancer mortality," the researchers added.
"This means, over the long run, your lungs and heart are experiencing damage equal to what you would get if you were living with a smoker, even if you are not," says study co-author George D. Thurston.
Professor Arden Pope, a co-author of the study from Bingham Young University: "We found the risk of dying from lung cancer as well as heart disease in the most polluted cities was comparable to the risk associated with non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke over a long period."
Lung cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. For example, even with the latest drugs and treatments, only one in 10 people is alive five years after diagnosis - and in many parts of the UK, the survival rate is only half this or worse. As a result, although it is not the most common cancer in the U.K., it kills far more people than any other type.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms previous research and provides the strongest evidence yet of the health dangers of the pollution levels found in many big cities and even some smaller ones, according to the researchers from Brigham Young University and New York University. For example, someone living in heavily polluted Bakersfield or Rubidoux, California faces a risk 20% greater than someone living in Pueblo, Colorado.
For years, air pollution cleanup has focused on ways to reduce ozone, a gas that reduces respiratory function. Yet, more and more studies implicate microscopic particles that form haze as a serious health risk. While ozone levels are generally in decline nationwide, progress against particle pollution has been more modest. Significant sources include farm equipment, diesel trucks and buses and portable generators.
The most dangerous particles are the smallest specks, which can float in the air for weeks, circumnavigate the globe and bypass the body's defenses to lodge deep in the lungs. Those particles come primarily from fossil fuel combustion, and some are formed when emissions from power plants, factories and vehicles react with sunlight to form microscopic bits. For example, when huge power plants spew pollution into the air while burning coal, and sometimes diesel fuel, to provide low-cost electricity for many suburban areas, wind patterns carry it from places as far west as Ohio to cities as far east as New York and Washington. Unfortunately, these places already have air pollution problems due to vehicle exhaust and factories.
The study involved 500,000 adults who enrolled in 1982 in an American Cancer Society survey on cancer prevention. The researchers examined participants' health records through 1998 and analyzed data on annual air pollution averages in the more than 100 cities in which participants lived. The researchers first took into account other risk factors for heart and lung disease such as cigarettes, diet, weight and occupation.
Lung cancer death rates were compared with average pollution levels, as measured in micrograms per cubic meter of air. The researchers found that every time the level of particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter increased by 10 micrograms per cubic meter, there was approximately a 4%, 6% and 8% increased risk of death from all causes, cardiopulmonary disease, and lung cancer, respectively. Nationwide, as many as 30,100 deaths a year are related to power plant emissions, according to another study by Abt Associates, a private research organization that does work for the EPA. In 1998, an influential British government committee on the effects of air pollution suggested that 10,000 people a year might be dying in the U.K. as a result of particulate pollution.
Allen Dearry, a scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which funded the new study, called it "the best epidemiologic evidence that we have so far that that type of exposure is associated with lung cancer death."
"What makes this study significant is that it involved hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the country. And most importantly, it gave us nearly two decades of follow-up, during which time it continued to demonstrate a direct correlation between this fine particulate air pollution and the risk of death from heart and lung disease," said Dr. Joseph Cooke, associate director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center.
"This study is compelling because it involved hundreds of thousands of people in many cities across the United States who were followed for almost two decades," said Thurston, an NYU environmental scientist. Thurston said the lung cancer risks were virtually identical to those faced by nonsmokers who live with smokers and are exposed long-term to secondhand cigarette smoke.
Though doctors aren't exactly sure how the particles damage the lungs and heart, the American Lung Association says small particles are easily drawn into the alveoli, the smallest air sacs of the lungs. Because the lung has trouble clearing foreign matter from that deep within the system, the soot deposits remain.
"The tiny particles are best able to defeat defense mechanisms of our lungs," Thurston said. "The larger ones catch in our nose and throat and we're able to clear them out, but fine combustion particles can penetrate and bypass our defenses. Fine particles contain the highest concentration of toxic material, heavy metals, lead, arsenic and other cancer causing agents."
In the early 1980s, when the study began, some major cities had air pollution levels of 25 to 30 micrograms per cubic meter, which would confer a more than 20 percent increased risk of lung cancer mortality, said Pope. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set average exposure limits at 15 micrograms per cubic meter in 1997, when it tightened its standards to include fine particulate matter pollutants measuring less than 2.5 micrometers (about 1/28th the width of a human hair). But the rules have been held up by lawsuits brought by the power industry and by vehicle manufacturers and operators.
The EPA's 1997 regulations followed a study linking fine particulate pollution and lung cancer done on many of the same participants by Pope, an environmental epidemiologist at Brigham Young University. Pope said the new study doubles the follow-up time and does a better job of taking other risk factors into account, to address criticism from industry groups who challenged the earlier study and sued the EPA over the 1997 regulations. The Supreme Court upheld the tightened standards last year.
Thurston said annual fine-particulate pollutant averages have fallen since the early 1980s but as of 1999-2000 were still at or above the EPA limit in such metropolitan areas as New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles. He said the biggest sources of such pollution are coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and East, and diesel trucks and buses in the West.
Thurston said the study gives new impetus to efforts to clean up aging coal-fired power plants. The efforts to clean up city air stoke a political debate that revolves, in part, around huge power plants that continue to burn coal, and sometimes diesel fuel, to provide low-cost electricity for many suburban areas. When that pollution is spewed into air, Thurston says, wind patterns carry it from places as far west as Ohio to cities as far east as New York and Washington. Unfortunately, these places are already compromised by vehicle pollution.
While newer plants are subject to clean air emissions laws passed during the Clinton administration, Thurston said the older companies are getting away with environmental murder, thanks to a "grandfather" clause that exempts them from the new, higher standards.
The latest findings come as the Bush administration is considering industry-supported proposals for rolling back government legal action against dozens of aging "grandfathered" coal-fired power plants and refineries that violated the law by expanding without installing state of the art anti-pollution equipment. Power plants built before 1980 generate about half the nation's electricity but nearly all of the utility industry's unhealthy sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and soot, experts said.
Environmentalists, public health advocates and citizens groups have long contended that power plant emissions have contributed to an alarming rise in premature deaths and illness related to asthma, bronchitis and other diseases and have urged action to either close the plants or force them to install anti-pollution equipment. Brian P. Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago, said the study "is another nail in the coffin for these old coal-fired power plants."
"It makes no sense to weaken the Clean Air Act in light of this important new evidence. It raises urgency to moving forward to reduce fine particles," said A. Blakeman Early, a consultant to the American Lung Assn.
"This research dramatically underscores the urgent need for the EPA to limit the emission of these cancer-causing particles," said John Kirkwood, president and chief executive officer of the American Lung Association. "The scientific evidence keeps mounting. In the meantime, we are no closer to protecting people's health because the EPA has not acted."
The Bush administration has come under fire from environmentalists and congressional Democrats who contend that the president's energy and environmental policies have been heavily tilted in favor of industry supporters who contributed heavily to the Republicans in the 2000 election. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will begin hearings Thursday on the president's environmental policies, including testimony from EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman and a senior EPA regulatory enforcement officer who resigned last week to protest what he described as administration efforts to undermine tough enforcement of the Clean Air Act. [See next story below] (Sources)
(03/04/2001) Study links diesel exhaust to worsening asthma symptoms in children, suggests particulate matter from diesel engines could be an important causative factor in the 5- to 10-fold increase in asthma rates over last 50 years. See Environmental Health: Asthma.
(03/04/2002) Researchers finding strong evidence that air pollution greatly
aggravates and significantly contributes to the development of "hay
fever" and other allergies. See Environmental
Health: Asthma and Allergies.
(03/01/2002) Senior U.S. EPA official quits, writes scathing resignation letter slamming Bush administration for undermining Clean Air Act enforcement and using power plant lobbyists to write weaker air pollution rules. A top enforcement official for the Environmental Protection Agency has quit because of Bush administration efforts to undermine enforcement action against dozens of aging coal-fired power plants and refineries that pour 7 million tons of toxins into the air every year. Eric V. Schaeffer, director of the EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, said in his scathing resignation letter that he is tired of "fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules that we are trying to enforce" and accused the Bush administration of crippling agency enforcement efforts with budget cuts and undermining legal actions against power companies with "endless delays."
Schaeffer said Bush has cut 200 positions from the EPA enforcement staff and is undermining legal efforts to curb air pollution by nine major power companies that are responsible for one-fourth of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions.
In his letter, Schaeffer noted that the EPA is already "unable to fill key staff positions, not only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs, and the proposed budget cuts would leave us desperately short of the resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated corporate defendants we face."
Schaeffer said energy-industry lobbyists are helping to write Bush administration proposals to weaken air-pollution regulations for older coal power plants. Enforcing those regulations was Schaeffer's job. He said that Energy Department officials are treating the power industry as their "client" in pursuing drastic changes to enforcement policies aimed at eliminating millions of tons of unlawful air pollution.
In an interview after his resignation, Schaeffer said the problems he outlined in his resignation letter "reflect the views of just about all the civil servants working in enforcement" at the EPA.
"This is the kind of thing you can't say when you're in government, and it is something I really feel needs to be said," Schaeffer said.
"The energy industry is very tight with the Bush administration," Schaeffer said. "In my view they (industry lobbyists) are interfering. I've never seen that kind of political pressure applied to an enforcement issue."
"The big problem is the Department of Energy's been put in the front seat on these decisions," Schaeffer said. "Their client is the power industry and our perspective is this is an environmental enforcement matter and I don't think they have a place in those negotiations, but there they are."
Schaeffer said energy industry lobbyists are helping to write the administration's reinterpretation of the Clean Air Act. "I've seen lots of memos. We keep getting them from the lobbyists, which is kind of disconcerting," he said. "They're clearly part of the game."
Schaeffer said that if some of the proposals he has seen floated, and which have been under discussion at the EPA, are implemented, it would amount to a "rollback of the Clean Air Act."
"I decided we had hit a wall and it was going to be really hard to do much more in enforcement without a change in the climate we were working in," Schaeffer said. "I just wanted to bring some public attention to the issue."
Schaeffer, 47, began his career as an EPA lawyer in 1990 working in the administrator's office under President George Bush, the current president's father. Before that, he worked for Rep. Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island, a Republican who served from 1975 to 1991.
In August, Schaeffer received the Justice Department's John Marshall Award for exemplary public service for "interagency cooperation in support of litigation" from Attorney General John Ashcroft for his work in settling oil refinery-pollution cases.
The main issue in Schaeffer's resignation is enforcement of a provision of the 1990 Clean Air Act called "new source review." The Clean Air Act exempted certain older stationary sources of pollution - coal-burning power plants, for example - from emissions standards, but one provision in the act mandated that if those sources make significant improvements or expansions that result in additional chemical releases, they would be required to meet the act's standards. This rule went largely unenforced until the latter half of the Clinton administration, when the government sued dozens of power companies.
Starting in November 1999, in a program Schaeffer oversaw, the Clinton administration EPA used new source review to force older, more-polluting power companies to cut back emissions if they made large-scale improvements in their plants. Those power companies upgraded or expanded their facilities well beyond routine maintenance without installing new pollution control equipment as required by the Clean Air Act, the EPA and Justice Department say.
The Clinton EPA sued nine utilities. One of them - Tampa Electric - settled its suit and installed new pollution controls. Another, PSE&G of New Jersey, yielded last month, even though it was never formally sued. But most of the others have hesitated to settle because the Bush administration is working on changing the rule, Schaeffer said.
The energy industry has never liked the new source review requirement and, according to Schaeffer and another source at the EPA, non-compliance is widespread.
Schaeffer said signals from the White House that it would relax the rules, which would save industry billions of dollars in costly upgrades, had undermined his ability to file lawsuits and win settlements from polluters. The White House proposals, Schaeffer wrote, "would turn narrow exemptions into larger loopholes." He said the administration was further hurting the agency with its budget proposal to cut 200 staff positions below the level of last year.
Vice President Cheney's energy task force, responding to complaints from the energy industry, ordered a 90-day interagency review of the new source review enforcement policy in May 2001 to determine whether the provisions substantially impede power generation. The "90-day" review has now dragged on for nine months and produced sharp divisions. On one side are EPA officials who believe coal-fired plants that are more than 25 years old must install modern anti-pollution equipment to keep operating. On the other side are energy industry lobbyists and Energy Department and White House officials who believe utilities should be free to "update" their plants without installing modern pollution-control equipment.
The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utility companies formed last year to lobby against the lawsuits, has met several times with Bush administration officials to press for weaker guidelines. On July 23, 2001, for example, a 15-person delegation - including former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and representatives of Southern Co. and Duke Power Co. - met with Deputy Energy Secretary Francis S. Blake to discuss the issue, according to an Energy Department document.
A recently disclosed EPA document sharply criticized the Energy Department for recommending changes in how regulators decide what level of factory emissions would trigger controls and for allowing plants to avoid stricter controls for 15 years under some circumstances.
Schaeffer said the companies are responsible for pumping 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide - known to cause haze, acid rain and lung ailments - and 2 million tons of nitrogen oxide pollution into the atmosphere every year. He cited an EPA report to the Senate Environment Committee that estimated the health cost from these emissions at 10,800 premature deaths, about 5,400 incidents of chronic bronchitis, more than 5,100 hospital emergency cases involving respiratory problems and some 1.5 million lost workdays. "As the scale of pollution from these coal-fired smokestacks is immense, so is the damage to public health," Schaeffer wrote EPA Administrator Christie Whitman in his resignation letter. "Add to that severe damage to our natural resources, as acid rain attacks soils and plants and deposits nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay and other critical bodies of water."
"Fifteen months ago, it looked as though our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics. ... Yet today we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory," wrote Schaeffer.
Industry insiders said it is rare for an official of Schaeffer's stature to resign with such a candid critique. Schaeffer will go to work as a consultant for the Rockefeller Family Fund, which gives money to environmental and women's rights groups.
Schaeffer's is the most recent voice in a chorus of people worried that the Bush administration is on the verge of gutting the Clean Air Act. They include Gov. George E. Pataki, Republican of New York, who recently wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney warning that the administration's changes in the new source review program "must not have the practical effect of weakening the air quality protections provided by the existing N.S.R. provisions."
Environmentalists said Schaeffer is only bringing to the open what they had suspected all along. Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust and John Coequyt of Environmental Working Group said Schaeffer's letter is proof the administration had tilted its enforcement policies in favor of industry.
"What's it going to take for this administration to crack down on polluters? If this doesn't shake them up, what will?" asked John Coequyt, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group. "Eric Schaeffer is as dedicated a public servant as you can find. If there's no home for him at E.P.A. any more, it's a sure sign that this president is in full retreat from serious environmental protection. The health of millions of Americans will suffer for the man's departure."
"Anyone who has seen the pollution at Shenandoah National Park, the Smokies, Big Bend or Acadia knows we need to do more, not less, to clean up the air," said Joy Oakes, coordinator of the National Parks Conservation Association's Clean Air Campaign.
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said his group was distressed by the resignation. "All Americans should be alarmed by Mr. Schaeffer's letter of resignation," Pope said. "[It] confirms our fears that the Bush administration is preventing the nation's environmental cop from policing his beat.
"Among Mr. Schaeffer's chief concerns in his resignation letter was the Bush administration's pressure to weaken enforcement of New Source Review, an important Clean Air Act program that requires antiquated power plants and factories to install pollution control equipment when they expand," Pope continued.
"This Clean Air Act provision has been instrumental in regulating refineries and power plants," he said, noting that plants built between 1940 and 1970 emit more pollutants than modern facilities.
"The resignation of someone at Mr. Schaeffer's level underscores the fact that environmental enforcement is a very weak spot in the administration's approach to environmental policy," said Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice, a Washington environmental law firm.
The following is the full text of Schaeffer's resignation letter:
Christine Whitman
Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004
Dear Ms. Whitman:
I resign today from the Environmental Protection Agency after 12 years of service, the last five as Director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given, and leave with a deep admiration for the men and women of EPA who dedicate their lives to protecting the environment and the public health. Their faith in the Agency's mission is an inspiring example to those who still believe that government should stand for the public interest.
But I cannot leave without sharing my frustration about the fate of our enforcement actions against power companies that have violated the Clean Air Act. Between November of 1999 and December of 2000, EPA filed lawsuits against nine power companies for expanding their plants without obtaining New Source Review permits and the up-to-date pollution controls required by law. The companies named in our lawsuits emit an incredible 5 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year (a quarter of the emissions in the entire country) as well as 2 million tons of nitrogen oxide.
As the scale of pollution from these coal-fired smokestacks is immense, so is the damage to public health. Data supplied to the Senate Environment Committee by EPA last year estimate the annual health bill from 7 million tons of SO2 and NO2: more than 10,800 premature deaths; at least 5,400 incidents of chronic bronchitis; more than 5,100 hospital emergency visits; and over 1.5 million lost work days. Add to that severe damage to our natural resources, as acid rain attacks soils and plants and deposits nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay and other critical bodies of water.
Fifteen months ago, it looked as though our lawsuits were going to shrink these dismal statistics, when EPA publicly announced agreements with Cinergy and Vepco to reduce Sox and Nox emissions by a combined 750,000 tons per year. Settlements already lodged with two other companies - TECO and PSE&G - will eventually take another quarter million tons of Nox and Sox out of the air annually. If we get similar results from the nine companies with filed complaints, we are on track to reduce both pollutants by a combined 4.8 million tons per year. And that does not count the hundreds of thousands of additional tons that can be obtained from other companies with whom we have been negotiating.
Yet today, we seem about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We are in the ninth month of a "90 day review" to reexamine the law, and fighting a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce. It is hard to know which is worse, the endless delay or the repeated leaks by energy industry lobbyists of draft rule changes that would undermine lawsuits already filed. At their heart, these proposals would turn narrow exemptions into larger loopholes that would allow old "grandfathered" plants to be continually rebuilt (and emissions to increase) without modern pollution controls.
Our negotiating position is weakened further by the Administration's budget proposal to cut the civil enforcement program by more than 200 staff positions below the 2001 level. Already, we are unable to fill key staff positions, not only in air enforcement, but in other critical programs, and the proposed budget cuts would leave us desperately short of the resources needed to deal with the large, sophisticated corporate defendants we face. And it is completely unrealistic to expect underfunded state environmental programs, facing their own budget cuts, to take up the slack.
It is no longer possible to pretend that the ongoing debate with the White House and Department of Energy is not effecting our ability to negotiate settlements. Cinergy and Vepco have refused to sign the consent decrees they agreed to 15 months ago, hedging their bets while waiting for the Administration's Clean Air Act reform proposals. Other companies with whom we were close to settlement have walked away from the table. The momentum we obtained with agreements announced earlier has stopped, and we have filed no new lawsuits against utility companies since this Administration took office. We obviously cannot settle cases with defendants who think we are still rewriting the law.
The arguments against sustaining our enforcement actions don't hold up to scrutiny.
Were the complaints filed by the U.S. government based on conflicting or changing interpretations? The Justice Department doesn't think so. Its review of our enforcement actions found EPA's interpretation of the law to be reasonable and consistent. While the Justice Department has gamely insisted it will continue to prosecute existing cases, the confusion over where EPA is going with New Source Review has made settlement almost impossible, and protracted litigation inevitable.
What about the energy crisis? It stubbornly refuses to materialize, as experts predict a glut of power plants in some areas of the U.S. In any case, our settlements are flexible enough to provide for cleaner air while protecting consumers from rate shock.
The relative costs and benefits? EPA's regulatory impact analyses, reviewed by OMB, quantify health and environmental benefits of $7,300 per ton of SO2 reduced at a cost of less than $1,000 per ton. These cases should be supported by anyone who thinks cost-benefit analysis is a serious tool for decision-making, not a political game.
Is the law too complicated to understand? Most of the projects our cases targeted involved big expansion projects that pushed emission increases many times over the limits allowed by law.
Should we try to fix the problem by passing a new law? Assuming the Administration's bill survives a legislative odyssey in today's evenly divided Congress, it will send us right back where we started with new rules to write, which will then be delayed by industry challenges, and with fewer emissions reductions than we can get by enforcing today's law.
I believe you share the concerns I have expressed, and wish you well in your efforts to persuade the Administration to put our enforcement actions back on course. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and our greatest environmental President, said, "Compliance with the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor." By showing that powerful utility interests are not exempt from that principle, you will prove to EPA's staff that their faith in the Agency's mission is not in vain. And you will leave the American public with an environmental victory that will be felt for generations to come.
Sincerely,
Eric V. Schaeffer, Director
Office of Regulatory Enforcement
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