WASHINGTON - In a long-sought victory for the energy industry, the Bush administration announced yesterday sweeping changes to clean-air rules that it contends will help industrial plants make necessary renovations to reduce pollution.
The decision, perhaps the most significant environmental action to date by the Bush administration, was criticized by environmentalists. They say the changes will actually make it easier for industrial plants to increase their dirty emissions.
Administration officials strenuously disputed criticism that their decision would roll back the Clean Air Act rules that require industries to modernize their pollution controls when their plants undergo major expansions or upgrades.
They also rejected the notion that their decision would lead to more pollution, especially in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
On the contrary, officials said, the changes are likely to aid the environment by correcting flaws in the 30-year-old Clean Air Act.
Under the law, they argued, power plants, chemical plants and oil refineries are discouraged from making renovations that would reduce dirty emissions. Every time these industries try to renovate, officials say, they trigger costly and unwarranted legal scrutiny.
"These reforms are about making the Clean Air Act work effectively," said Christine Todd Whitman, administrator the Environmental Protection Agency.
Specifically, Whitman announced changes in how a provision of the Clean Air Act called "new-source review" would be enforced.
Some of the changes could take effect within weeks and require no congressional review or public comment, officials said. Others will require lengthy periods of public comment and might not take effect for a few years.
In general, the changes would make it easier for industrial facilities to sidestep new-source review. That provision requires older facilities, such as coal-fired plants, to upgrade their pollution controls whenever they undergo significant renovations.
Under the Clinton administration, the EPA brought dozens of lawsuits against aging coal plants, mostly in the Midwest, arguing that those plants had undergone renovations without modernizing pollution controls.
Yesterday, President Bush's EPA proposed ways for facilities to avoid the requirements of new-source review, in some cases for up to 10 years.
The announcement reflected Bush's broader thinking on the environment. He has often argued that once their legal burdens are eased, private companies could find on their own the cheapest and most efficient ways to cut pollution.
He has long expressed concern that too much regulation in the energy industry discourages the investments in technology that would maximize production of electricity for Americans.
Yesterday, he said his administration "is committed to clean air, and we're going to work vigorously to achieve clean air."
But the reaction from some influential members of Congress, as well as environmental groups, was fierce.
These critics said they were concerned that Bush's changes would allow power plants to pollute more. They also asserted that the EPA's action would make it harder for government regulators to do their jobs - specifically, forcing power plants to install modern anti-pollution technology through the threat of fines or lawsuits.
Bush's critics have long accused the White House of carrying out an environmental policy that reflects the interests of its allies in the energy industry, which heavily supported Bush's campaign for president.
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said, "Once again, clean air takes a back seat to the polluters and the special interests that seem to have such power in this administration."
Sen. James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called for a hearing to "examine the administration's decision-making process" that led to yesterday's announcement.
"This administration is intent on undoing more than 25 years of progress on clean air - the question is why?" Jeffords said. "This decision is a victory for outdated polluting power plants and a devastating defeat for public health and our environment. Why anyone would pick smog and soot over clean air is beyond comprehension."
Environmental groups said they would likely challenge the changes in court. In particular, they argued that the administration did not invite enough public comment before announcing the decision and that the action is inconsistent with how the Clean Air Act was written three decades ago.
"It is difficult to imagine a more aggressive assault on our clean air protections," said Rebecca Stanfield of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
"We hope and expect that many of these changes will be ruled illegal. But in the meantime, a lot of people will suffer unnecessarily from heart and lung disease, and a lot of environmental damage will be done."
Administration officials insisted that industrial pollution overall would decline under their plan. But they conceded that they lacked hard evidence.
"We don't have a specific analysis of that," said Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistant EPA administrator for air and radiation.
But studies of individual plants and other facilities, Holmstead said, have shown "significant reductions."
Administration officials praised a proposal made by Bush several months ago which, they said, could eventually replace new-source review and guarantee that pollution nationwide would decline in coming years. That proposal, which Congress would have to write into law, would set net nationwide limits on pollution by power plants over the next decade.
Critics have noted that that plan relies on a "cap and trade" system that allows some facilities to pay for the right to pollute more, so long as overall pollution in the country drops. That would mean, opponents say, that individual communities could be devastated by higher pollution levels if they were near a particularly dirty plant.
The administration did not go as far as it could have and therefore did not fully satisfy the utility industry. That industry has long contended that power plants were being unfairly sued by the EPA, which accused them of renovating without installing pollution controls.
Often, industry representatives argued, they were only carrying out routine maintenance that should not have triggered the requirements of new-source review. The industry failed to secure a clear statement from the administration that routine maintenance is exempt from new-source review.
Administration officials said they would spend several years hearing public comment before making such a determination.
"Resolving the routine maintenance issue is an issue long overdue," said Scott Segal, an attorney with the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an advocacy group for several large utility companies.
Segal said the administration "could have been more specific about what they were going to propose. That would have given us some more clarity."
But he called the announcement yesterday "a step in the right direction."
Merrylin Zaw-Mon, acting secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, complained that the changes could let power plants in the state - and larger plants in the Midwest whose air pollution is carried to the East Coast - boost emissions with little oversight.
"We are very concerned," said Zaw-Mon, who served as a top administrator in the Clinton EPA. "The foremost principle has to be that there are no emission increases."
Maryland, along with other Eastern states, joined in the lawsuits filed by the EPA under Clinton against Midwest power plants. After yesterday's announcement, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he "will pursue legal action in federal court to prevent the [Bush] Administration from gutting the Clean Air Act."
S. William Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, said the changes would "set the Clean Air program back a giant step."
Becker said his group, which represents regulators around the country, had no input into the administration's decision.
"We're the ones that have to implement these changes," he said, "and they have not heeded our recommendations. They have ignored us."