CLEAN AIR NOW—National Clean Air Advocate Emily Figdor and Clear the Air Campaign Director Angela Ledford released “Pollution on the Rise” on January 26, the morning of a Senate Environment and Public Works hearing on the “Clear Skies” bill.

The state PIRGs have stalled an attempt to open dozens of new legal loopholes for polluters of the nation’s air.

On March 9, in a victory for public health and the environment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee rejected the Bush administration’s “Clear Skies” bill by a nine to nine vote. The bill, one of the Bush administration’s top environmental priorities, would give energy companies big breaks, allowing more pollution from power plants into our air.

National Clean Air Advocate Emily Figdor expects the Bush administration to try to weaken the Clean Air Act through other measures: “Although the committee vote will stall the administration’s air pollution plan, we’re not out of the woods yet. The very afternoon of this vote, President Bush called on Congress to pass this bill.”

In the slow lead up to the vote, the Bush administration, the utility industry and its Senate allies attempted to ramp up support for the bill by tacking on several specific handouts to lure senate support. For example, the fi nal version of the bill extended special breaks to a coal mine in Montana—the home state of Committee member Sen. Max Baucus.

But in the end, Sen. Baucus and the six other Democrats on the Committee were joined by Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and James Jeffords (I-Vt.), in rejecting the bill.

After the vote, Sen. Jeffords, who has long championed clean air protections, said: “We must strive to build upon the success of the Clean Air Act, not gut it.”

The Road To Victory
The state PIRGs, along with a coalition of environmental and public health groups, have been working to defeat the Clear Skies bill since its first appearance in 2002.

Over the past three years, PIRG and the Clear the Air Campaign have released 14 reports, worked with key members of Congress, and helped collect more than 650,000 comments to the EPA in support of strong clean air protections.

Alternative To The Bush Bill
Thanks in part to that work, Jeffords and 18 bipartisan Senate cosponsors have introduced the PIRG-backed Clean Power Act, which would strengthen the Clean Air Act by setting tighter limits on power plant emissions of the pollutants that cause smog, respiratory disease, premature death, acid rain and global warming. Power plants are the largest industrial source of air pollution in the country.

The “Clear Skies” bill would delay reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants, as called for in the Clean Air Act, until well past 2018, and would repeal the New Source Review program requiring the oldest and dirtiest plants to eventually meet modern pollution standards.

It would force residents of heavily-polluted areas to wait longer for clean air than required by law, and repeal protections that require every power plant to reduce mercury to the maximum extent (about 90 percent) by 2008.