The Adirondack Council

News Release

For more information:
Bernard Melewski - 518-432-1770

Released, Friday, August 8, 2003

ALBANY-- The Adirondack Council today praised State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and his legal team for their significant victory for clean air in a federal courtroom in Ohio yesterday. The Council predicted that other utilities may now seek to settle pending cases against them and that there will be a renewed interest by Congress in adopting federal acid rain legislation this year.

"Eliot Spitzer has proven to be an effective and committed partner in the effort to stop acid rain in New York State. The decision in the Ohio Edison case has rocked the utility world, and he and his team deserve all the credit and praise that we can give them," said Bernard Melewski, Deputy Director of the Adirondack Council.

From 1995 to 1997, an extensive study by the Adirondack Council of the sale of federal pollution allowances by New York utilities revealed extensive sales, especially by the then Long Island Lighting Company. Tens of thousands of pollution allowances issued by the federal government to New York plants, who did not need them were sold to plants upwind of New York, whose emissions were contributing to acid rain in the Adirondacks, Catskills and the Hudson Highlands. In June of 1997 alone, ten thousand tons of pollution allowances from New York were sold to the Ohio Edison Company, recently found to be in violation of the Clean Air Act by a federal judge.

"This victory in Ohio helps take the sting out of the loss last week in federal court in New York, said Melewski, where a federal appeals court overturned New York's law that kept our own utilities from selling pollution allowances to plants upwind of New York and giving companies like Ohio Edison the right to pollute. The court ruled that the federal program preempted any state effort to regulate the trading of federal pollution allowances.

"It is ironic that only a week after our state law was overturned, we learned that Ohio Edison, which was using pollution allowances from the Long Island Lighting Company, was violating the law. The Ohio decision confirms that the Governor and the State Legislature were right to make the attempt to control the flow of these allowances. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of allowances held by New York utilities are now free to enter the market.

"The final resolution of the acid rain problem rests with Congress," said Melewski. "The Ohio Edison plant in question emitted more acid-rain causing pollutants than all of New York State's plants combined, but it still produces only ten percent of the emissions in Ohio. This court victory will lead other companies to settle the cases against them and that is a great thing. But the final solution to acid rain has always rested with Congress. Eliot Spitzer has provided the kick in the pants that Congress needed to spur action in Washington this year."

On August 7, a federal judge for the Southern District Court of Ohio ruled in favor of New York's contention that the Ohio Edison Company had violated the Clean Air Act. The utility made major modifications over a number of years to one of its coal-fired facilities, which increased its energy output and its polluting emissions, without installing new pollution control equipment as the law required. Under the Clean Air Act, older power plants were "grandfathered" from installing modern pollution controls as long as they did not make major modifications to the plant. If they did, modern controls would have to be installed as if the plant was a "new source."

The judge has set a date in March of 2004, to decide what the company must now do to comply with the law and to set whatever penalties may be assessed against it. The States of Connecticut, and New Jersey joined New York and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as plaintiffs.

The Adirondack Council is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the natural character and ecological integrity of New York's six-million-acre Adirondack Park. The Council was founded in 1975 and has been a national leader in the fight against acid rain.