In October 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would re-write its rules—New Source Review (NSR)—governing when outdated power plants must clean up. Expected changes could result in over 100,000 tons of additional pollution each year in just five Eastern states. This extra pollution will have a devastating impact on America’s national parks, which are already heavily damaged by haze and smog from power plant emissions.
Specific Changes to the Rule
Under the current rules, outdated power plants must install state-of-the-art emissions controls whenever they upgrade their facilities in a way that results in a significant increase in annual pollution. NSR ensures that outdated plants (those built before 1977) do not operate in perpetuity without modern pollution controls; if they modernize their plants in ways that increase pollution, they must also modernize their pollution controls.
Under EPA’s proposed NSR rules, a significant rise in annual pollution levels would no longer trigger the need to install state-of-the-art emissions controls. Only an increase in the hourly pollution rate would do so under the draft changes. A plant could modernize to expand its hours of operation, resulting in thousands of extra tons of pollution per year, but avoid installation of modern pollution controls so long as its hourly rate of pollution does not significantly increase.
Outdated Power Plants Biggest Park Polluters—Strong Regulations Needed
America's coal-fired electric generating plants are its largest industrial source of air pollution that harms both people and the national parks. The oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants do not comply with modern emissions standards. Hundreds of these "grandfathered" power plants—more than two-thirds of all plants operating today—are still using pollution control equipment that dates from the 1950s and 1960s and are emitting as much as 10 times more sulfur dioxide and four times more nitrogen oxides than modern plants.
Recognizing the dangers posed by these plants, Congress devised a number of tools in the Clean Air Act to clean them up. NSR was one of them and the other BART, specifically for the national parks. NSR requires that outdated power plants install modern emissions controls whenever they upgrade in ways that increase pollution and the BART (“Best Available Retrofit Technology”) program requires that outdated power plants install modern emissions controls to help meet the goal of returning national parks to pristine air quality.
Unfortunately, the BART program has languished for decades without being enforced and dozens of power plants have violated NSR by upgrading their plants and increasing pollution without installing modern emissions controls. As a result, America’s parks are as polluted as ever, and millions of Americans live in areas of the country that fail to meet minimum healthy air standards.
Assaults on Air Quality
The EPA recently completed another rulemaking process under the auspices of cleaning up outdated power plants with the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). CAIR creates a cap and trade system for power plant sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions and EPA has concluded that because of CAIR, BART and NSR rules are no longer necessary to clean up power plants and control emissions.
However, EPA analysis shows that even after full implementation of CAIR over 140 outdated power plants will continue to operate in the Eastern U.S. without modern emissions controls. Without BART and NSR, there are few, if any tools remaining to clean up these plants. By undermining these two congressionally mandated programs—BART and NSR—EPA is essentially guaranteeing regulatory immortality for dozens of high-polluting outdated power plants.
Enforcing NSR Without Changes Would Reduce Pollution in National Parks
An immediate impact from the EPA changes to the NSR rules is that it would undermine dozens of current enforcement cases brought by the federal government against grandfathered power plants accused of upgrading their facilities and increasing pollution, but failing to install modern pollution controls. Nearly all of these violators modernized their plants in ways that allowed them to increase operating hours without significantly increasing their hourly emissions rates, so the draft EPA rule change would excuse them from having to install modern pollution controls at all.
Without the NSR rule change and if all the plants currently in the enforcement process were made to install modern pollution controls, sulfur dioxide emissions would be reduced by more than 1.75 million tons-per-year and nitrogen oxides emissions by more than 628,000 tons-per-year, according to the EPA Inspector General. That amount of pollution is equal to about a third of all the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted by power plants in the entire southeastern U.S.—home to national parks like Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah and Acadia, named by NPCA as three of America’s five most polluted national parks in 2002 and 2004.
For More Information
For additional information about the EPA New Source Review rule changes and its impact on air quality in the national parks, please contact National Parks Conservation Association Clean Air Director Mark Wenzler at 800-628-7275.
