The Adirondack Council

News Release

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John F. Sheehan
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Released, Monday, November 10, 2003

WASHINGTON, D.C. - With federal regulators refusing to enforce clean air rules and with New York's dirtiest power plant owners suing to overturn state power plant clean-up orders, the Adirondack Council today called on Congress to pass legislation that protects the Eastern United States from a new wave of air pollution.

"We are outraged that last week EPA announced its intention to stop enforcing the rules that required old power plants to upgrade their pollution control equipment when the plants are expanded or rebuilt," said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal. "We are equally upset that Governor Pataki's new rules for power plants are now the subject of a lawsuit from the owners of the state's two dirtiest coal-fired power plants. New York, New England and the rest of the East Coast are in much graver danger from acid rain now than we were just a year ago.

"The net effect is that our safety nets are being cut from beneath us," Houseal said. "New York may lose its ability to protect the Adirondacks from its own power plants, while the federal government is walking away from its responsibility to protect us from pollution increases at every plant in the nation.

"We are pleased that Attorney General Spitzer said he would continue to press his lawsuits against the offending power plants," Houseal said. "But even he told the New York Times this weekend that the litigation process would be slow and expensive.

"New York has little money to spare these days and the forests and waters of the Adirondack Park will suffer more harm at current acid rain levels," he said. "We need help from Congress and we need it now."

"Rather than expensive lawsuits, we need our Congressional leaders to act right now, and pass a bill that will reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from all of the nation's power plants. Otherwise, the damage to the environment and to human health will only continue to mount," Houseal explained.

The two developments Houseal mentioned were:

• Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would loosen its interpretation of when an older power plant would be required to install new emissions-control equipment. EPA said it would apply its new interpretation of the law to the old violations, allowing most of the past violators to escape federal prosecution. The move undermines more than four dozen lawsuits brought by NYS Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer and the EPA at the end of the Clinton Administration. Those suits were designed to require immediate clean-up at power plants that had violated the law.
  
  
• NRG Energy, owners of massive coal-fired power plants near Buffalo and Jamestown, sued the state in an effort to overturn new acid rain rules imposed by the Pataki Administration. The rules required all power plants in New York to cut their sulfur dioxide emissions 50 percent lower than federal standards and their nitrogen oxide emissions by 70 percent below federal standards. The suit was filed August 18, 2003, in State Supreme Court in Albany.

"Our Congressional delegation should be working with delegations from Maine to Georgia, all with the same goal in mind: 'Don't go home empty handed! Stop acid rain,'" he concluded.

The Adirondack Council's mission is to ensure the ecological integrity and natural character of the Adirondack Park. Founded in 1975, the Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization with 18,000 members and offices in Elizabethtown and Albany.