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      Adirondack Council
 

      
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John F. Sheehan, Adirondack Council
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Released, Monday, March 31, 2003

ALBANY, NY -- The Adirondack Council, a leading organization in the fight against acid rain, today called on the Bush Administration to suspend the approval process for new regulations that could result in an increase in the smokestack emissions that are killing lakes and forest in the Adirondack Park.

The Council urged the Bush Administration to wait until Congress has approved legislation establishing a national cap on emissions sufficient to protect the Adirondacks, Catskills and other sensitive areas. Then, it can grant greater emissions flexibility to the power plant operators, with much less risk to the environment, the Council noted.

The Council reminded the Bush Administration that US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman was the first to propose such a plan, during her spring 2002 visit to the State University of New York at Albany.

"Congress now has before it at least three major proposals to reduce national emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides," said Bernard Melewski, Deputy Director and Counsel for the Adirondack Council. "All will solve the acid rain problem in the Northeast.

"Give Congress the time it needs. Suspend these proceedings until Congress acts to reduce power plant emissions," he said. "Put the considerable talent and energy of this Agency into negotiations that will result in a bill that will pass the House and the Senate and be signed by the President."

Melewski testified Monday morning (March 31) before the US Environmental Protection Agency at its hearing at the Marriot hotel on Wolf Road. The Albany hearing was one of five being held concurrently around the United States. His testimony is excerpted and summarized below.

Melewski explained that the New Source Review section of the Clean Air Act currently prevents older, coal fired power plants from increasing their emissions or power output unless they agree to meet the much tougher emissions standards imposed on brand new plants. The Bush Administration has proposed loosening the criteria for exemptions to the rules.

All of the legislation proposed in Congress to curb acid rain would require roughly 70 percent cuts in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury from power companies nationwide. Once all power companies are required to make deep cuts, minor changes at individual plants won't make much difference to air quality in the Adirondacks, he explained.

The acid rain damage in to the mountainous areas of the East Coast is the product of dozens of power plants' combined emissions, with pollutants traveling hundreds of miles before falling to the ground in the form of rain, snow, fog and dry particles. Lax, current emissions limits already provide sufficient flexibility to power plants, he said. Without tougher laws in place, more flexibility could simply result in more pollution, he explained.

"New York's Attorney General does not support the regulatory revisions that you propose-- but rather asserts that the result could be more, and not fewer, emissions from power plants around the country," Melewski said. "We have faith in his assessment and endorse his concerns today.

He reminded EPA that its own Administrator had proposed a better solution.

"Almost a year ago to the day, EPA Administrator Whitman came to Albany to promote the development of the ‘Clear Skies Initiative' by the Bush Administration," he said. "[She] was asked about rumors that the Administration intended to revise the current new source review requirements for existing power plants.

"The Administrator responded that she hoped that Congress would take up legislation like Clear Skies in the near future ... She asserted that after Congress took action to lower emissions, it might then make sense to take a look at the new source review regulations. Congress by its actions could make them ‘redundant,' she said, and the rules could be legitimate candidates for either modification or repeal.

"That was good advice. It is a shame that the Administration chose not to take it. Instead, as we say in the North Country, you put the ‘cart before the horse.' It is still a good plan, and one that the EPA can still follow by suspending additional action on this regulation until after Congress has the opportunity to act to reduce emissions."

Melewski noted that the Adirondack Park's forests are being destroyed by changes in soil chemistry, caused by acid precipitation. In parts of the Park's High Peaks regions, 80 percent of the spruce/fir forests have died. More than 500 of the Park's 2,800 lakes and ponds are too acidic to support their native life. The rest are subjected to "acid shock" each spring as the nitrogen- loaded snowpack melts, making otherwise healthy waters poisonous to their native life for weeks at a time, just as new life is emerging.

Native trout strains have been wiped out. Mercury, liberated and transformed by the chemical agents of acid rain, has accumulated at toxic levels in many of our game fish, making them inedible for humans and deadly to the native loon population.

Founded in 1975, 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.