Families that live around coal-fired power plants can breathe a little easier today.
A federal appeals court blocked the Bush administration’s four-year effort to loosen emission rules for aging coal-fired power plants, unanimously ruling yesterday that the changes violated the Clean Air Act and that only Congress could authorize such revisions.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with officials from 14 states, including New York, California and Maryland, who contended that the rule changes — allowing older power plants, refineries and factories to upgrade their facilities without having to install the most advanced pollution controls — were illegal and could increase the amount of health-threatening pollution in the atmosphere.
At issue has been the administration’s regulatory policy called New Source Review. It’s a little complicated, but here’s the gist of it: When Clinton administration officials were in the process of writing Clear Air regulations during Clinton’s second term, they came up with a fairly straightforward standard — as plants made routine maintenance changes, they would be required to add pollution-control equipment. In time, all plants would complete the changes and cut emissions. Bush didn’t change the standards, he changed the definitions for routine maintenance changes.
The federal appeals court really wasn’t buying it.
“EPA’s approach would ostensibly require that the definition of ‘modification’ include a phrase such as ‘regardless of size, cost, frequency, effect,’ or other distinguishing characteristic,” Rogers wrote. “Only in a Humpty Dumpty world would Congress be required to use superfluous words while an agency could ignore an expansive word that Congress did use. We decline to adopt such a world-view.”
And, just to help preempt conservative cries about liberal activist judges, one of the three jurists who agreed to strike down the Bush administration’s approach in this case was Janice Rogers Brown. Yes, that Janice Rogers Brown.
When Bush administration lawyers can’t convince her on this, you know they’re wrong.