With the December 26 deadline fast approaching, members of the Charlotte City Council are asking for more information before deciding what — if anything — to do about officially urging North Carolina to join a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to overturn its recent gutting of the Clean Air Act. The County Commission is not expected to support the proposal.
Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon said that in discussions with fellow members on the City Council many had implied that they would like more information on the lawsuit before they “weigh in on this issue.” He said he would ask the office of the City Manager, Pam Syfert, to look into the matter and come up with a suggested course of action — if any.
Cannon said he plans to move on the issue even if no one else decides to join.
“I wanted to get the (city manager’s office) to come back with a staff opinion in terms of how they feel about this issue, and hopefully that’ll be something that can lend some guidance,” the Democrat said. “If I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d probably say there seems to be a majority of interest to want to move forward on doing something — the question becomes, what is that something?”
A few weeks ago we told you how the Bush administration’s EPA rule changes will allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices. (“It’ll Only Get Worse,” Nov. 19). In essence, under the new rules, a utility or factory could make tens of millions of dollars worth of improvements without being required to install pollution controls.
Plant owners are currently required to install pollution-control devices if they undertake anything more than “routine maintenance” on their plants. Industries have long argued that this standard is too vague and hinders substantial investment in cleaner, more efficient equipment. Bush’s new rule says that as much as 20 percent of the cost of replacing a plant’s essential production equipment — a boiler, generator or turbine — could be spent and the owner would still be exempt from installing any pollution controls.
The new rules constitute a sweeping and cost-saving victory for industries, allowing them to continue to emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere, and to save millions of dollars in pollution equipment costs, even if they increase the amounts of pollutants they emit. (North Carolina has 14 coal-fired power plants.) In response to these sweeping changes, several cities and 12 states in the Northeast filed a lawsuit against the EPA to try to block the Bush administration’s changes to the Clean Air Act. The deadline to join the lawsuit is December 26.
Local activists like Nancy C. Bryant, president of the Carolinas Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), lobbied City Council members and county commissioners to join the lawsuit to help protect Charlotte’s air quality. According to the American Lung Association, Charlotte is already 8th in the nation for dirty air. Moreover, many activists argued that one of the biggest threats to the Queen City’s air quality is pollution that drifts in from our neighbors, specifically coal-fired power plants to the south and west of us, all the more reason why Charlotte should get involved. The CCAC submitted a letter of resolution to NC Governor Mike Easley urging him to join in the lawsuit, and sent a copy of the letter to all the City Council members and County Commissioners to sign.
Although Councilman Cannon said he felt a majority of City Council members were in favor of throwing their support behind the letter, as of press time at least one fellow Democrat was having second thoughts. Councilwoman Susan Burgess said after speaking with City Attorney Mac McCarley, who told her the city would have to share in the legal costs of a lawsuit against the EPA, that she was going to officially ask the council to gather more information before the December 26 deadline.
“Whether or not we sign on the suit, we will reap the benefits of the suit, if they’re successful,” Burgess said. “So there’s really no reason to sign on to the suit. It would be expensive, and we could have some say in the way the suit progresses, but it probably would not change if we were there or not. We would have to share the legal expenses.”
Other members also felt the issue needs more consideration before they can take an official position.
“While I agree with the concerns regarding pollution coming from other states, I think we need to consider all avenues and the full context,” said Councilman John Tabor. “Before we take any action on this issue, we should consider that the EPA controls our fate with non-attainment in 2005. Much of that might be subjective. I would be concerned if Charlotte and North Carolina were seen as “suing’ the EPA at that time. It may be perception, but the results may be reality.”
The County Commission, by contrast, offered little support for joining the lawsuit. Some indicated they were in favor of the lawsuit personally, but none supported it in an official capacity.
“In my role as County Commissioner, I am reluctant to take any formal action with respect to this issue that has not been approved by a majority of the Board of County Commissioners,” said Parks Helms. “However, I would encourage the Attorney General to join in the lawsuit raising the issue of the impact of the “routine maintenance’ clause on the air quality of the entire Southeast region of the US, not just in North Carolina. While much of the debate revolves around “adversarial speculation,’ the consequences of failing to act at this time may ultimately prove to be devastating in terms of air quality for this region. I believe the emissions rules need to be based upon scientific evidence, not on slick lobbying or on favor-trading at any level of government — at the expense of the air that we breathe.
“As a practical matter, intervening in the pending lawsuit may result in some common sense compromises that will benefit both citizens and power generators,” Helms continued. “I never cease to be amazed at our inability to understand an issue such as this — that such far-reaching policies do not only affect bottom lines of corporations and price-to-earnings ratios for stockholders. These policies affect human beings now and for generations to come. “Routine maintenance’ won’t really matter if our air becomes too unhealthy to breathe — both for power generators and ordinary citizens.”
County Commissioner Bill James said that one of the biggest problems contributing to our air quality is a lack of political will. “The problem with most EPA legislation is that it provides exceptions and fails to clamp down on pollution. Proposals are designed to go around the edges of the problem instead of hitting the problem directly. Communities that still rely on coal and other hard burning fossil fuels generate pollution and that pollution drifts into our area. Government lacks the will to clean up the problem because of the business implications, including jobs at stake, if tough regulations were adopted.
As to whether I would vote to join a lawsuit against action, I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. If the disadvantages to our area outweigh the advantages I might.”
County Commissioner Dumont Clarke says Charlotte would be better served by focusing on local recommendations rather than national developments. “We can spend a lot of time getting involved in disputes that are national in nature, and over which we have limited impact, or we can put our time, energy, money and credibility into taking steps on the local level on which we have control,” Clarke says.
Specifically, Clarke says we should be focusing on the Breathe initiative, a set of air quality recommendations established by a group of stakeholders appointed by the Board of County Commissioners. The Breathe stakeholders came up with a list of 17 recommendations designed to address everything from utility and industrial pollution sources, area sources (ranging from barbecues to lawn mowers) and mobile sources (cars and trucks), which the group deemed to be the primary source of our dirty air.
Charged with implementing these recommendations is the Air Quality Commission (AQC), a citizen advisory board established in early 2003 by the County Commission. The AQC also played a major role in the county’s recent action — or inaction, if you will — regarding the EPA lawsuit. The county presented the AQC with the question as to whether the new EPA rule changes would have an adverse impact on Charlotte Mecklenburg’s air quality. They also posed the question of whether the county should consider a resolution to join in the lawsuit against the EPA.
“Environmental groups say it (EPA rule changes) will have a tremendously adverse impact,” says Steve Weber, an environmental lawyer and Chairman of the AQC. “The industry groups say it will help the environment, because it will allow them to do badly needed repairs. So after studying the issue listening to all sides, we concluded, “Who knows?’ Not only who knows, but you can’t know at this point. Ultimately, we felt like we need to focus less on the national issue — which will be litigated in any event — and focus more on the Breathe initiatives.”
“We figured that if the AQC and our own staff didn’t know, then it wasn’t appropriate for us to tell the state what to do,” said County Commissioner Ruth Samuelson, who is also chair of the Natural Resources Committee, which is responsible for the protection of Mecklenburg County’s natural areas.
Weber says the AQC is currently focusing on a game plan for how to implement the Breathe initiative, which is no easy task. “It comes down to funding, and getting a strategy in place to prioritize all the initiatives and decide where we’ll get the best bang for our buck. And just where do we get the cash? Do we go back to the County Commissioners? They’ve been for the Breathe initiative, but they’ve been reluctant, with the budget crunch, to say here’s the money for it.”
The latest development in all this is yet another proposal by the Bush administration to weaken the Clean Air Act even further. Last week, the Bush administration proposed that mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants should not be regulated in the same way as some of the most toxic air pollutants, reversing a stance on air pollution control taken by the Clinton administration in 2000. The EPA is suggesting that mercury emissions be removed from the most stringent regulations of the Clean Air Act that have been used to limit the most toxic air pollutants. The Bush proposal would make legally mandated mercury regulation fall under a less stringent section of the Clean Air Act that governs pollutants like those that cause smog and acid rain, which are not as toxic to humans. The administration says this would be a more efficient and faster way to reduce mercury in the environment.
This latest move was announced just days before a national environmental coalition called Clean The Air released a report titled Toxic Neighbors. The report took EPA toxic release inventory data from 2001, and looked at the toxic chemicals being released by power plants across the country. Their conclusions? “The data indicated NC has more air emissions of overall toxic chemicals than any other state in the country,” said Mark Edsell of NCPIRG. “And mercury is a portion of that, which is dangerous, widespread and largely preventable. We have fish consumption warnings across the state advising women and children to not eat fish because of the impact it can have on their health with mercury getting into their bloodstream. Right now, power plants are the single largest source of unregulated mercury in the country.
“We are disappointed that the EPA appears to be headed toward rolling back a key mercury provision of the Clean Air Act,” Edsell continued. “This means that power plants will no longer be required to install the maximum pollution controls at each and every plant and instead allows some plants to avoid making reductions. Second, the Agency subverts its previous determinations that under the Clean Air Act mercury could and should be reduced by 90 percent by 2008 and instead allows five to six more times the mercury to be emitted for a decade longer. The rule is incredibly bold in its failure to enforce the Clean Air Act and should be characterized as a huge gift to industry.”
John Schacht contributed research to this story. Contact Sam Boykin at sam.boykin@cln.com or 704-944-3623.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2003.
