Clean Air
Clean Water
Superfund
Right to Know

Clean Air

Back in the 1970s when the Clean Air Act set strict rules, it did so only for "new" sources of pollution. Existing power plants, factories and so on were exempted from the rules and allowed to keep operating. The idea was that over time these old, dirty factories and power plants would close down and the air would become cleaner as new plants replaced old ones.

The New Source Review provision was targeted mainly at hundreds of aging, coal-fired plants that were exempted from the Clean Air Act's stringent requirements based on the expectation that they would soon be retired. But instead, many of those outdated, polluting plants that were "grandfathered" are still running strong. In fact, polluters keep these old facilities operating precisely because they were exempted from the new rules.

This summer the Bush administration signaled its intent to roll back the Clean Air Act with plans to relax rules that require a host of industries to strengthen pollution controls when they build new plants or expand old ones. This is directly contrary to what Congress intended when it passed this fundamental law aiming at protecting our air quality a quarter century ago.

The new Bush rules, through various complex definitional changes, will allow the utilities to upgrade their old plants without adding costly new anti-pollution equipment now required by law to control smog, acid rain and soot.

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Clean Water

This spring, the Bush administration rewrote a decades-old Clean Water Act regulation, for the first time allowing polluters to dump industrial waste directly into waterways. The rule change was prompted in an attempt to legalize mountaintop removal coal mining, where the mining industry blows the tops off mountains and dumps the countless tons of waste generated into nearby valleys and streams. The administration's decision will have nationwide impacts. It will not only legalize mountaintop removal "valley fills," but will allow any polluter to dump any type of industrial waste into waterways across the nation.

More recently, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman announced the EPA would "seek changes in a key Clean Water Act anti-pollution program to give states more flexibility in planning and executing the cleanup of more than 20,000 dirty rivers, lakes and estuaries." The proposed rules would stress "voluntary efforts" and possibly the establishment of a system in which states could trade pollution "credits." (Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2002)

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Superfund

The Superfund tax is a fee levied on polluting industries. It includes a tax on chemical and petroleum companies and a modest corporate environmental excise tax. The tax generated between $1.5 and $2 billion annually for cleanups, and the trust fund reached a high of $3.8 billion in 1996. Unfortunately, the Superfund tax lapsed in 1995 and Congress has failed to reauthorize it since. The trust fund is now dwindling and the pace of cleanups is declining dramatically. At the same time, more of the cleanup burden is falling on taxpayers' shoulders.

For the second year in a row, the Bush administration failed to demand reauthorization of the Superfund tax. This tax on polluting industries helps pay for the cleanup of the nation's most toxic waste sites, and was created with a core principle in mind: polluters, not taxpayers, should foot the bill for cleaning up their own mess.

Without revenue from the tax, the Superfund has dwindled and the pace of cleanups declined by half. While polluting industries save an estimated $4 million daily in the absence of this tax, American citizens are forced to pick up the tab for cleanups. Worse, the petroleum industry-which received an exemption from liability in return for paying the tax-is now receiving a double subsidy from the Bush administration.

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Right to Know

Congress enacted the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986 after a deadly cloud of methyl isocyanate leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Over 4,000 people were immediately killed and approximately 500,000 were injured. Shortly thereafter, there was a serious chemical release at a sister plant in West Virginia.

Section 313 requirements under EPCRCA - known as the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) - requires disclosure of a facility's releases of specified toxic substances to land, air and water, information which is then provided on-line to the public. The Toxic Release Inventory gives US communities the right to know what toxic chemicals are being released into the environment in which they live.

In the wake of September 11, the Bush administration has pushed for new limits on information disclosure. Recently, the administration proposed a sweeping right-to-know rollback as part of its homeland security legislation. Language in the administration's plan will shield any company that voluntarily provides information about a vulnerability to the government from Freedom of Information Act requirements. The proposal is vaguely worded and expansive, and could prevent the public from obtaining critical environmental information.

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