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.
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Amber Hard
Iowa PIRG Advocate
1723 Grand
Des Moines, IA 50309
515-282-4193 (p) 515-282-4196 (f)
www.iowapirg.org