State Agencies Concerned About Power Plant Upgrades

Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:

Transcript

Recently, the Bush administration announced it will allow factories and power plants to make
large upgrades without having to install anti-pollution technology. But that business incentive
has state Environmental Protection Agencies worried about air quality. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Jenny Lawton has this report:


For the last 30 years, under the Clean Air Act, power plants and factories have been required to
install pollution control devices whenever they made major improvements to their infrastructure.


Under the new federal rule, a plant can make improvements worth up to 20-percent of its value
without installing smoke-stack scrubbers. The U.S. EPA says the Bush administration’s rule
means plants will be able to modernize.


But Illinois state EPA director Renee Cipriano says modernizing a plant doesn’t necessarily mean
it will be cleaner.


“The cost of a modification does not necessarily equal the impact to the environment. The two do
not equal each other.”


Cipriano says the change jeopardizes the standards set by the Clean Air Act. The Illinois EPA
and the state’s attorney general will file a petition to block the change. Twelve other states have
filed similar petitions.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.

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