The Clean Power Act, a Senate attempt to bring some sanity to coal-plant regulation while encouraging new sources of power that do not cause the nation to collectively choke, is leagues better for the environment than the White House’s Clear Skies proposal and is especially important for the Northeast.

The Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, headed by Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont who wrote the Clean Power Act with Sen. Susan Collins, is expected to consider the proposal today. Sen. Olympia Snowe, an original co-sponsor of the legislation, led the charge last week, saying, “We must crack down on all four of the major pollutants released by coal-fired power plants: sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain and respiratory disease; nitrogen oxide, the primary cause of smog; carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most directly linked to global climate variabilities; and mercury, which poisons our lakes and rivers, causing fish to be unfit for human consumption.”

Instead of cracking down, the Bush administration’s plan would rollback current law, making the compliance time frame for “grandfathered” dirty power plants even longer. Though Clear Skies hasn’t been completed, its outline suggests it would cap emissions at millions of tons higher than the Clean Power Act, add further delays to the limits and, in some cases, impose pollution standards weaker than current levels. This is the heart of the debate over what is called new source review, the standards by which plants must upgrade when they add power capacity. Clear Skies would extend current deadlines for plants that have had 25 years to clean themselves up; the Clean Power Act would strengthen current law by establishing a clear date – Jan. 1, 2013, or at 40th year of a plant’s operation – as deadlines for cleaning up these grandfathered plants.

The effect of extending deadlines for Midwestern coal plants that do not yet meet 1970s standards would be felt especially in the Northeast, the downwind receptacle for the additional pollution. Many Northeastern states do not and cannot meet Clean Air Act standards while the plants operate under the more lenient standards, and this poses problems not only for air quality but economic development. Non-conforming states have a harder time siting new industries while the Midwest offers cheaper power because it is not meeting the same standards as everyone else.

The primary reason for requiring these plants to clean up is health – human and environmental. The Bush administration has been caught on the wrong side of the energy debate before; it now has a chance to contribute ideas to a far better proposal than the one it devised. As Sen. Collins remarked the other day, “It is irresponsible for power plants to exploit loopholes in the Clean Air Act and harm human health in the process. It’s time to do away with the loopholes.” Exactly.