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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (35542)	8/31/2005 10:28:18 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361250

That's true...and many of the political pundits keep reminding us that the Iraqi adventure was a "bet the presidency move" for Bush...It will be tough to re-write history...Now it's clear that Mr. Bush has to deal with a natural disaster that is more devastating than 9/11 just at the time when we are bogged down in a Middle Eastern Quagmire that we can't afford.

To: American Spirit who wrote (35542)	8/31/2005 10:32:23 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361250

New rules could allow plants to pollute more azcentral.com By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Aug. 31, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has drafted regulations that would ease pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants and could allow those that modernize to emit more pollution, rather than less. The language could undercut dozens of pending state and federal lawsuits aimed at forcing coal-fired plants to cut back emissions of harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, said lawyers who worked on the cases. The draft rules, obtained by the Washington Post from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, contradict the position taken by federal lawyers who have prosecuted polluting facilities in the past, and parallel industry's line of defense against those suits. The utilities, and the proposed new rules, take the position that decisions on whether a plant complies with the regulations after modernization should be based on how much pollution it could potentially emit per hour, rather than the current standard of how much it pollutes annually. advertisement Under the new standard, a modernized plant's total emissions could rise if the upgrade allowed it to operate longer hours. In court filings, the EPA estimated in 2002 that an hourly standard would allow eight plants in five states to generate legally as much as 100,000 tons a year of pollutants that would be illegal under the existing New Source Review rule. That equals about a third of their total emissions. EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said the administration believes the existing power plant rule is no longer necessary because of other regulatory initiatives. She said a newer and different regulation designed to cut pollution from eastern power plants, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, would achieve greater pollution reductions than the New Source Review modernization guidelines. "We are committed to permanent significant emissions reductions from power plants because what matters is environmental results, and we get far better results under the Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule, which cuts emissions by 70 percent," she said. That rule sets a long-term cap that would cut industry-wide emissions over the next decade and allow less-polluting plants to sell credits to dirtier facilities to reach the overall goal. But John Walke, NRDC's clean-air director, said, "This radical proposal is a 180-degree flip-flop from what the administration has been arguing in court. Instead of protecting public health, now EPA wants to protect the polluters. The proposal would completely sabotage clean-air law enforcement."