|
Home / Presidents Perspective - 2002 / Chicken Little is Alive and Well, And Living in Washington, D. C. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Chicken Little is Alive and Well, And Living in Washington, D. C. |
|
|
|
Written On: December 6, 2002 |
|
|
|
You probably remember the children’s story about Chicken Little, the barnyard hysteric, who after an acorn dropped on her head ran around yelling, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”
Well, Chicken Little is alive and well in Washington, D. C.
The controversy involves a 20-year old air quality regulation known as the New Source Review. It requires new plants to use the best available air pollution technology but exempts existing facilities because of the tremendous costs involved. However, if substantial improvements are made to an existing plant, the “best technology” requirement kicks in. As a safeguard against allowing older facilities to become chronic polluters, any plant that violates emission caps must meet the tighter pollution mandates.
But during the Clinton administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that almost any change to an existing plant triggered the New Source Review requirements. This made even small upgrades so expensive that it was cheaper to leave less efficient plants in operation, even when small and relatively inexpensive improvements could have reduced air pollution.
For example, DTE Energy Corp. tried to replace older, less efficient propeller blades in several steam turbines at its largest coal-fired power plant. The new blades would have generated 15 percent more power using the same amount of energy – more power, less pollution. But the Clinton administration threatened to invoke the New Source Review if the fan blades were installed, so the plan was scrapped.
Realizing that the Clinton guidelines were counter-productive, the Bush administration recently scrapped them. That sent environmentalist activists scurrying around the media “barnyard” yelling that the sky was falling.
An attorney for one environmental group claimed that the move “…puts Americans…at serious health risk by exempting thousands of power plants, refineries and other major industrial facilities from fundamental air pollution controls.”
Nonsense.
The way the New Source Review rule was enforced by the Clinton administration actually deterred companies from installing more efficient pollution technology in existing plants and added to air pollution.
The Bush administration’s move is a welcome return to common-sense air quality regulation.
|
|
|
|
|
