The Adirondack Council

News Release

ADIRONDACK COUNCIL PRAISES SENATE PANEL FOR PASSING 
NEW DRAFT OF CLEAN AIR BILL BY SEN. JEFFORDS OF VERMONT
Senate Committee Approves Bill by 10-9 Vote

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Thursday, June 27, 2002

For more information: John Sheehan -518-432-1770

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Adirondack Council today praised the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for passing a clean air bill proposed by Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont, saying the newly released draft would bring a swift end to acid rain in the Northeastern United States.

"The most important consideration in preventing further catastrophic acid rain damage to our forests and lakes is speed," said Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Bernard C. Melewski. "We need to start making deep cuts in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides as soon as possible to prevent the critical acidification of hundreds of additional Adirondack lakes and ponds. We’ve been debating the need for such a bill for too long. We need to act now."

Senator Jeffords, I-Vermont, is chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, where his bill was approved in today’s vote.

"There are some very good ideas in this bill that have been borrowed from New York’s state acid rain laws -- the first in the nation -- and from legislation proposed by New York’s Congressional delegation," Melewski said. "The ideas of a cap-and-trade pollution reduction plan, regional restrictions on pollution allowance trading, and year-round cuts in nitrogen oxides have worked very well in New York. They would vastly improve the effectiveness of the federal Clean Air Act.

"Senators Clinton and Schumer have already proposed legislation that would allow the EPA Administrator to require even deeper emissions reductions, if lake chemistry has not improved in the hardest-hit areas of the nation," he said. "The committee adopted a friendly amendment proposed by Senator Clinton today, adding the tougher standard. It would require EPA to measure the success of the program and make adjustments. Jeffords’s previous draft only gave EPA the discretion to measure and adjust, but did not require EPA to act."

Here are the basic details of the new legislation Jeffords’s Environment and Public Works Committee passed today:

1. Sulfur dioxide: 80 percent cut (in addition to the 50 percent cut required by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990). Down to 2.3 million tons By 2008. Trading allowed only within your region. Adopts the eastern and western cap idea proposed in the President’s Clear Skies Initiative -- a regional restriction on trading similar to New York’s. SOx levels west of the Mississippi would be about 275,000 tons; eastern states would be capped at 1.975 million tons. No trading between regions. Otherwise, you can buy and sell from and to anyone from your own region. This will reduce the potential for hot spots in the Midwest.

Safeguard: Objective Measurement of Progress

After 2008, EPA's Administrator can require deeper cuts from specific locations if there are places where the environment or public health are still being harmed. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, offered a friendly amendment (which was accepted) to the Jeffords bill that would set specific criteria for measuring whether the legislation works. In their Acid Rain Control Act (HR25/S588), Clinton and Schumer called for measurements of lake chemistry in the Adirondacks to determine the program’s progress.

2. Nitrogen Oxides would be capped at roughly 75 percent below 1997 levels, with a year-round program (not the summer-only, ozone program currently in place). By 2008, it would be down to 1.51 million tons. Trading would be allowed nationwide. The current Clean Air Act can’t stop acid rain damage in the Adirondacks, because it doesn’t require NOx cuts from September to May. The current laws governing NOx emissions are all aimed at ground-level ozone (smog), which only forms in hot weather. But NOx falling on the Northeast in winter is not absorbed by the forest because the ground is frozen and the trees are dormant. As a result, spring time brings "acid shock," when an entire winter’s snow -- full of nitric acid -- melts in a couple of weeks.

3. Mercury emissions would be capped at 5 tons per year, by 2008, which is about a 90 percent cut. No trading allowed. The only major change from his original language is the introduction of the idea that corporations can comply in an aggregate (ie., rather than each smokestack having a 90-percent cut requirement, the company's total emissions from all stacks would be capped at 90 percent below current levels).

4. Carbon dioxide emissions would be cut to 2.05 billion tons by 2008 (slightly above 1990 levels). Trading would be allowed. This is a slight relaxation of Jeffords’s original proposal, which called for carbon cuts down to 1.91 billion tons.

5. The grandfather clause for plants built before 1977 would be eliminated by 2013. Plants that reach 40 years of age before that date would have to comply with the same Best Available (pollution) Control Technology standard as a new plant. All others would have to meet BACT by 2013, or the age of 40, whichever is later.

6. Two final safeguards:

Like the current Clean Air Act, nothing in the bill would prohibit individual states from requiring deeper cuts from their own utility companies.

If EPA fails to implement and enforce regulations to carry out the objective of the bill by 2008, automatic cuts in the four pollutants would be required from every power company -- cuts equal to or greater than required if EPA does its job (SOx cut 95 percent; NOx cut 85 percent; mercury cut 90 percent; carbon cut 25 percent).

"The Jeffords bill would wipe out the damage that comes from acid rain in New York, Vermont and the rest of the Northeast," Melewski said. "Bills rarely make it through the legislative process unscathed. But we intend to press for the prompt consideration of this bill in the Senate and work with the House to craft a workable, speedy compromise that can pass both houses."

The Adirondack Council is an 18,000-member, privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the natural character and human communities of the Adirondack Park through research, education, advocacy and legal action.