Air quality agency condemns EPA's new ruling

Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), a non-profit association of the air quality agencies of the eight Northeast states, condemned the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) final rule to allow power plants and other industrial facilities to modernize without any regard to reducing air pollution and protecting public health.
As a result of this action, significant power plant and industrial facility modifications that can lead to substantial increases in emissions may be undertaken without any government or public oversight.

The final "routine maintenance, repair and replacement" rule is one element of US EPA's overhaul of new source review (NSR) program. Under this provision, a facility will be allowed to make significant modifications without regard to the impact they have on air quality, environmental protection and public health. This new rule will exempt thousands of major air polluters from installing air pollution controls when they update, modify or add to an existing facility.
Ken Colburn, Executive Director of NESCAUM stated, "Clearly, EPA is putting public health on the auction block for the highest polluting bidder. EPA is revising air pollution rules to the lowest common denominator rather then encouraging the kind of new technologies and clean air advances we have made in the Northeast."

New source review is a 26-year old provision of the Clean Air Act that required companies to install modern pollution control technologies in new plants and in old plants when they made significant emissions-increasing modifications. Some facilities were exempted from this requirement or "grandfathered" when the rule was first implemented since they were expected to be retired -- and replaced with cleaner facilities and updated pollution controls.
But today, a large number of those old polluting facilities continue to operate and expand while avoiding any corresponding clean air upgrades. The new rule will allow the oldest and most polluting facilities to expand capacity, increase production and extend the life expectancy of the facility without spending a dollar on cleaning up the air they pollute.

The new NSR rule issued by US EPA will exempt nearly all sources from adding or upgrading pollution controls when they make major modifications. This will undermine every one of the existing enforcement actions against 51 power plant units that have illegally avoided complying with the Clean Air Act for decades.
The new NSR rule issued by USEPA will now allow facilities to avoid installing pollution controls when they replace equipment -- even if the upgrade increases pollution. Under this new rule, as long as a facility owner can show that the costs of modifying are below 20 % of the value of the facility as a whole, the modification would automatically qualify as routine maintenance -- and be exempt from installing any pollution controls -- regardless of the additional pollution that the facility would generate.

For example, an average coal fired power plant, which costs $ 1.5 bn to build, would be allowed to spend up to $ 300 mm every year to add to it's production capability without any regulatory check-on the change in emissions. In effect, a facility could almost rebuild itself over the course of five years, without ever spending a cent to protect public health from the corresponding air pollution. And all of this, while US EPA virtually ties states' hands from taking any local action to be more protective than the new rule.
The Northeast states believe that as a result of this action thousands of additional tons of pollutants that cause smog, fine particles, and other environmental hazards and public health will be needlessly added to the air. Older grandfathered facilities will continue to have an unfair economic advantage over new facilities with technologies that could radically reduce pollution. States -- especially in the Northeast -- will lose a valuable tool for forcing major polluters in upwind regions to reduce emissions that adversely affect public health and environment in the region.