Clean Air Action Alert!
Senate To Vote to Block EPA's Clean Air Rollback

Within the next few days, and possibly as early as today (Thursday),
Senator John Edwards will offer an amendment that will stop EPA from
implementing new rules that would weaken enforcement of the Clean Air
Act on America's oldest and dirtiest power plants and refineries.  The
amendment will also require a National Academy of Sciences study on the
health impacts of the rollback signed by EPA on December 31.  This vote
is the most significant action on clean air that has been considered on
the floor of the Senate in years.  

 

TAKE ACTION: Call Senators Harkin and Grassley today at 202-224-3121 and
ask them to vote for the Edwards amendment to stop the rollback of the
Clean Air Act!!

Background:
 

Today, more than 140 million Americans live in areas where ozone smog
levels are high enough to cause health problems such as asthma attacks
and declining lung function.  Moreover, fine particle pollution known as
“soot” cuts short the lives of 30,000 Americans annually.  This is to
say nothing of the severe environmental impacts of air pollution,
including acid rain, mercury contamination and haze in our national
parks and wilderness areas.  

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration is taking giant steps backward on
air pollution. A coalition of oil, coal and utility lobbyists have waged
a campaign to persuade the Bush Administration to weaken the rules of
the Clean Air Act, especially the New Source Review program that
requires power plants, refineries and other industries to install
state-of-the-art pollution controls when they make major,
pollution-increasing plant modifications. Each year, this program has
kept more than a million tons of air pollution out of our skies.

EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman just signed a set of regulatory
changes that add up to the largest regulatory weakening of clean air
protections in the 30-year history of the Clean Air Act.  These rule
changes dramatically weaken the NSR program, and could allow pollution
increases from upwards of 17,000 facilities across the nation. On the
same day, she issued a proposal that would go even further, weakening
the NSR program to the point of uselessness. 

EPA took this action despite widespread opposition among the public,
more than one thousand medical doctors, forty-four U.S. Senators, and
more than one hundred members of Congress.  Moreover, EPA ignored more
than a dozen requests from Congress for detailed analysis of the rule
changes' impact on public health, and requests for public hearings and
opportunity to comment on the rule changes.

 

 

************************

Amber Hard

Iowa PIRG Advocate

1723 Grand

Des Moines, IA 50309

515-282-4193 (p) 515-282-4196 (f)

[log in to unmask]

www.iowapirg.org

 


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