Leahy Blasts Administration’s
‘Pollution Pardons’ To Big Polluters;
Seeks Senate Hearings On White House Decision
To Drop New Clean Air Enforcement Cases

WASHINGTON (Thursday, Nov. 6) –– U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is seeking hearings by the panel on the Bush Administration’s order to enforcement staff and attorneys at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop any pending enforcement investigations against electric utilities and other industries that violated the New Source Review (NSR) provision of the Clean Air Act.

The assistant administrator for EPA’s enforcement office, J.P. Suarez, told EPA staff of the decision Wednesday morning.  The pullback will mean that EPA will no longer pursue pending enforcement actions against 50 power plants, refineries and other facilities that received a Notice of Violation (NOV) under the NSR rules in effect before the Bush Administration’s decision to loosen the rules by creating new loopholes for polluting industries.  Those loopholes allow plant owners to significantly change their plant operations and increase emissions without adopting pollution controls, effectively gutting a key part of the Clean Air Act and undermining several cases already in court.

“The White House’s policy is to coddle the big polluters, and the public be damned,” said Leahy. “Doling out pollution pardons may make some big political contributors happy, but the American people will pay the price by breathing dirtier air.”

At a July 2002 joint hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, Jeffrey Holmstead, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, responded to a direct question from Leahy by testifying that the NSR changes would not impact EPA enforcement cases.  Since that testimony, EPA has insisted that the NSR changes would only be prospective and would not diminish existing enforcement actions or affect the investigation of past violations.

“We now have smoking guns about their policy on behalf of these belching smokestacks,” Leahy said. “The Administration has been telling Congress one thing and doing exactly the opposite.  It’s past time for some accountability. Someone needs to come to the Senate and explain what is going to happen to the cases their policy is leaving in the lurch.”

Leahy is calling for a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine the impact the Administration’s decisions will have on the cases already referred to the Department of Justice by the EPA and on cases that are currently before federal courts.  His request, to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), also asks that the Justice Department report to the Judiciary Committee how much funding is needed to pursue the cases.  Leahy said the pending cases could reduce the emission of hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants into the air each year.

If a hearing is convened, Leahy said he will also ask Administration witnesses whether they will investigate and prosecute violations of the NSR rules that are still the law of the land in the majority of states, since the new loophole created by EPA in August will not take effect in most states for as long as three years.

[Click here to read the letter to Chairman Hatch requesting Congressional hearings]

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