Ways to Clean Up Our Air
Clean up coal-fired power plants
Old coal-fired power plants are among the biggest industrial polluters, especially in the eastern half of the United States. The toll of death, disease and environmental destruction caused by coal-fired power plant pollution continues to mount. An analysis released in 2004 attributed 24,000 premature deaths each year to power plant pollution. In addition, the research estimates that over 550,000 asthma attacks, 38,000 heart attacks and 12,000 hospital admissions are caused annually by power plant pollution.7
Cleaning up power plants does work. In 1998, the EPA required 13 eastern states to greatly reduce the tons of nitrogen oxides from their power plants and industries in order to prevent the spread of emissions across their borders. EPA examined what happened to ozone levels between 2002 and 2005, after power plants had installed the required equipment in 11 of the 13 states as mandated by May 31, 2004 (two additional states will proceed in 2007). EPA examined the results of these clean up measures in a study that controlled for changes in ozone levels due to weather. EPA found that before these measures were implemented, ozone levels dropped about one percent per year in most states. After 2002, ozone levels dropped about five percent per year on average in both 2002 and 2003.8
Unfortunately, actual ozone levels rose again in 2005 with that summer’s warmer weather and an increased demand for electricity, with actual levels dramatically higher than those in 2004. (Electricity production rose 7 percent in 2005 over 2004.)9 Even adjusting for weather, ozone levels were slightly elevated in 2005 over the year before, despite a reported 11 percent drop in nitrogen oxide emissions.10 Although the ozone levels remain lower than in 2002, the increased production of electricity threatens to push them still higher.
Although the measures in the late 1990s have helped reduce pollution, coal-fired power plants remain major sources of emissions that must be cleaned up. On March 10, 2005, EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule, or CAIR, that requires 28 states and the District of Columbia to further reduce power plant emissions by 2015. CAIR is similar to the approach EPA used to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions in the late 1990s. The Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to force the plants to clean up by requiring states to reduce the pollution that blows across state lines.
The Clean Air Interstate Rule targets the problem of regional pollution, especially from sources that may be hundreds of miles upwind. Under this rule, these 28 states and the District of Columbia are directing power plants and other sources to clean up emissions that contribute to ozone and particle pollution. Power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide also contribute to pollution problems nearer to the plants, so cleaner smokestacks mean less harm to people living in a widespread geographic area.
According to EPA, CAIR will help 450 counties in the eastern United States reduce ozone and particle pollution. EPA estimates that cleaning up these polluters will provide $85 billion to $100 billion in annual health benefits. When the clean up is finished in 2015, EPA estimates that emissions of sulfur dioxide, which are major sources of particle pollution in the eastern states, will be 57 percent lower than in 2003. Emissions of nitrogen oxide, a key ingredient in ozone, are expected to be 61 percent lower than in 2003.11
Despite these benefits, EPA could have and should have required power plants to reduce even more pollution and to make those cuts sooner than 2015. Several Northeastern states are considering adopting even more stringent requirements for their power plants in a program they call “CAIR Plus.” The American Lung Association repeatedly urged EPA to use this opportunity to clean up even more pollution, more quickly. The American Lung Association also supports efforts in Congress to strengthen the Clean Air Act to further clean up these heavy polluters by requiring a “third step” of additional emissions reductions to be achieved even faster than CAIR.
Courts tell EPA to close its loopholes for industrial pollution
Last year, the federal courts ruled that EPA could not follow up some of its more outrageous plans to gut Clean Air Act rules for polluting industries. These decisions came in legal challenges brought by the American Lung Association, its environmental and public health colleagues, and 14 states and the District of Columbia to enforce clear requirements of the Clean Air Act.
EPA’s rollbacks in this arena began formally in 2003, when EPA took the first two major actions that cut the legs out from under an important enforcement provision of the Clean Air Act, called New Source Review (NSR). NSR is a process designed to ensure that communities with unhealthful levels of air pollution don’t get more polluted when a new source of pollution comes to the community—such as a new industrial facility or an existing facility that is modified in ways that enable it to emit more pollution.
Back in 1999, EPA charged that many electricity-generating utilities had failed to comply with the NSR requirements because they increased emissions of hazardous pollutants at their coal-fired plants without taking the required steps to clean them up. EPA took dozens of these plants to court and began enforcement action against others. As a result of enforcing the law, several utilities began cleaning up some of the dirtiest plants in the nation.
Then in 2002 and 2003, the rules changed. In two sweeping new regulations, EPA rewrote the NSR provisions, providing huge loopholes to industry that allow polluters to significantly increase pollution from existing plants without having to clean up the pollution.
Under the most damaging set of changes, EPA greatly expanded the list of activities defined as “routine maintenance,” which were already exempted from the required clean up. EPA redefined “routine maintenance” to mean any project that cost less than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the entire plant, no matter how much additional pollution the project creates. Given that large plants may be worth billions, a company could reconstruct entire wings of its buildings and still have the work considered “routine maintenance.” By basing this definition on the cost of the plant rather than on how much pollution is created, the new definition would effectively exempt plants from having to install or upgrade their emissions reduction equipment.
In March 2006, the U.S. District Court of Appeals closed this loophole with a tight knot. The Court noted that unlike the EPA decision, the Clean Air Act stated that “any” changes that resulted in an increase in pollution had to be addressed, despite EPA’s arguments to the contrary:
“Only in a Humpty Dumpty world,” explained the Court, would “a clear word like ‘any’ not mean what Congress clearly intended it to mean. Indeed, EPA’s interpretation would produce a ‘strange,’ if not an ‘indeterminate,’ result: a law intended to limit increases in air pollution would allow sources operating below applicable emission limits to increase significantly the pollution they emit without government review.”12
Clean up of diesel locomotive, marine engines announced
In 2006, new rules took effect requiring cleaner highway diesel trucks, buses and diesel fuel. Beginning in 2010, similar requirements will bring cleaner heavy equipment and construction and agricultural diesel engines and their fuel. The last major category of new diesel engines, locomotives and marine sources, remained governed only under older, weaker requirements. EPA promised new emission standards in 2004, but had delayed issuing them.
Diesel locomotives and marine vessels, such as barges and freighters, contribute tons of pollution annually to communities nationwide. EPA predicted that without a strong federal emission standard by 2030, marine diesel engines and locomotives would account for more than one-fourth of the national mobile source emissions inventory of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and nearly one-half of the national mobile source emissions inventory of diesel particle pollution.13 Locomotive engines operate trains in cities and ports across the nation, providing long-haul, switch, and passenger-rail service.14 Marine diesel engines operate recreational and small fishing boats, barges, ferries, Great Lakes freighters, to marine auxiliary engines that operate on anything including onboard ocean-going vessels.15
On March 2, 2007, EPA announced its long-overdue proposal to cut pollution from locomotive and marine diesel engines. The multi-faceted proposal will require existing locomotives to be cleaned up when they are remanufactured beginning in 2008. From 2009 through 2014, new interim standards will be phased in to clean up new locomotives and marine engines. Finally, from 2014 to 2017, standards will be phased in requiring an 80 percent reduction of nitrogen oxide emissions and a 90 percent reduction of emissions of particle pollution from locomotive and marine engines. In addition, EPA is proposing new requirements to limit locomotive idling emissions.16
EPA projected that by 2030 this rule will prevent 1,500 premature deaths each year and will eliminate over 1,100 hospitalizations. Along with the other benefits of much lower pollution, EPA estimated that cleaning up these diesel engines will save the economy approximately $12 billion. The American Lung Association will push EPA to make these rules final before the end of 2007.17
Emerging Concerns
More air pollution from new power plants
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, as of January 2007, 159 new coal-fired power plants have been proposed nationwide that would generate 96 gigawatts of electricity, enough to meet the needs of 96 million homes. Sixteen new power plants are proposed in Illinois alone. Over 70 are proposed east of the Mississippi River, where increased electricity generation from coal plants already shows signs of increasing air pollution levels.18 In unregulated electricity markets, competing power systems are proposing duplicate facilities for the same customers, so not all of these are needed.
These new power plants could add significantly to the local air pollution burden for ozone and particulate pollution. Even if they use the best emissions reduction technology available—and current law does not ensure that—pollution levels are likely to rise in some locations. The Lung Association is working for legislation to ensure that emissions from all power plants are capped nationwide at levels needed to eliminate unhealthy levels of air pollution. New power plants would be required to obtain emissions reductions from old ones in order to meet the cap requirements. The Lung Association supports measures to conserve electricity use in order to minimize the number of new power plants that are needed.
Dirty outdoor wood boilers
As the price of energy rises, many homeowners are installing large outdoor incinerators that burn fuel to heat water. These outdoor wood boilers have increased in popularity, so that sales have more than doubled in recent years.19 Unfortunately, these devices are not yet equipped with pollution controls. Some owners are using these boilers to burn trash and other wastes including hazardous waste. In studies released in 2006, researchers found that these boilers produce dangerous amounts of air pollution, often in suburban areas where the soot and ash are just the visible part of the hazardous plumes.20 In early 2007, the EPA issued voluntary guidelines for the manufacturers to follow in the boilers manufactured for the 2007-2008 heating season.21 NESCAUM, the association of air quality agencies of the Northeast States, issued model state rules that would require even cleaner boilers if the states adopt the rules.22 EPA recommended that the states adopt the model NESCAUM rules. Some localities have already passed ordinances banning boilers.
Burning even seasoned wood contributes particle pollution and harmful gases both indoors and outdoors. The American Lung Association recommends against using outdoor wood boilers.
