Should Americans spend nearly $1 billion per year to solve a problem that no longer exists? Because of the Environmental Protection Agency's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which is commonly called CSAPR, Americans will pay their share through their monthly utility bills, witness additional job losses nationwide, and be subjected to decreased electrical reliability.
Under the terms of CSAPR, power plants in 27 states were required as of Jan. 1 to make additional reductions to emissions, which EPA alleges contribute to ozone formation and fine particulate matter. However, the monitored air quality shows the mandated reductions are no longer needed to achieve the stated air quality objectives of that rule.
The unprecedented short time in which the EPA sought to require power plants to comply with the rule caused utility companies, state public utility commissions and state environmental agencies to scramble to assess the impact and evaluate options for meeting the new requirements. The EPA's rush to implement this rule did not allow some states and utility companies to even have a proper opportunity to comment on the rule. Additionally, the limits for several other states were drastically tightened between the proposed and the final rule, which ultimately imposes additional requirements upon which these states were also not given an opportunity to comment.
Many states, electricity providers and unions asked for reconsideration of this excessive regulation because of concerns over projected electricity shortages, job losses and increases in electricity rates expected to result from efforts required to meet these new requirements. The increased costs associated with the rule will be passed on to Americans already struggling to make ends meet during this ongoing recession. Potential job losses extend beyond power plants that may have to cutback operations or even shut down. Many coal-fired power plants will have to drastically reduce their use of locally mined coal. This will negatively impact employment of local coal miners and other ancillary jobs created to support the coal mining industry.
Two days before the rule would have taken effect, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit temporarily stayed the effectiveness of the rule, pending addressing the rule's merit later this year.
EPA was asked to reconsider CSAPR because it did not properly consider emission reductions already achieved by power plants and other industrial sources to meet pre-existing EPA regulations. For example, EPA failed to consider emission reductions resulting from state rules and programs that had been previously approved by the EPA.
Under the Clean Air Act, states are given the primary responsibility to meet air quality standards. Only after a state fails is the federal government supposed to step in. In the specific case of CSAPR, the federal government imposed a plan without states having the opportunity to develop any alternatives.
The federal plan does not reflect realistic conditions. For example, instead of using the most recent air quality data for CSAPR, EPA utilized data from 2005, an unusually hot summer across the East and Midwest. As a result, CSAPR seeks to improve air quality at monitors that are already achieving the air quality objectives of that rule and requires hefty emission reductions and expensive pollution control requirements to address air quality issues that no longer exist.
Further, actual monitored air quality through 2010 at EPA-approved monitoring stations shows CSAPR's air quality objectives are already being met in all areas other than isolated cases influenced by local sources. This fact demonstrates that CSAPR only piles further costs on industry, and subsequently American citizens, without regard for the successful, beneficial investments already being made to further reduce pollution.
How could EPA's projections be so wrong? In addition to improperly focusing on atypical 2005 air quality, EPA chose not to consider actual emission controls installed at power plants after 2004.
EPA should have taken a hard look at the science behind its CSAPR regulation and considered modifying or withdrawing the regulation. The extreme reductions called for by CSAPR, to be accomplished in a truncated timeframe, is a recipe for unnecessary negative impacts on state economies, workers and electricity consumers.
Thomas W. Easterly is the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management; Scott Nally is the director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency; Carlos Rubinstein is the commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; and Randy Huffman, cabinet secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
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