The pollution drift

The Northeast will be directly affected if a plan by the Bush administration to ease rules for Midwest power plants goes through without significant reductions in the amount of pollutants the plants are allowed to produce. If Maine’s senators, who have been steadfast in their support for strengthening clean-air rules, have influence over the administration in this area, now is the time for them to use it.

At issue is something called New Source Review pollution standards, which coal plants in the Midwest, grandfathered under the Clean Air Act, must meet if they expand capacity and increase emissions. Power-plant lobbyists say the rules are so convoluted that they remove the incentive to increase efficiency and thus cut pollution. That may be, but weakening them would allow plants that have avoided for the last 30 years the standards imposed over much of the rest of the country. They would be able to continue to produce dirty power while polluting downwind neighbors in the Northeast.

Christine Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has been pushing for simultaneous cuts in power plant emissions to accompany any streamlining of New Source Review. She is opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. She is supported, however, by the administration’s memory of the public protest when President Bush indicated he might relax arsenic standards and backed down on promised carbon-dioxide rules. It is difficult to tell what the public reaction would be now that the president has such overwhelming support for his leadership in the war on terrorism.

But the problems with these coal-fired plants are certain. When she was governor of New Jersey, Ms. Whitman joined with governors throughout the northeast to urge the Clinton administration to reduce air pollution from these plants. Now she needs the vocal support of those governors and, critically, Republican members of Congress to persuade the current administration that New Source Review changes are the tradeoff for tougher emissions standards. Give away NSR now without insisting on new pollution caps and a major bargaining chip is gone.

The Northeast has not met air health standards in part because of the drift from the Midwest; relaxed rules for new emissions could make this situation worse unless they come with tough limits. Members of Congress should urge that these caps be included.