Former EPA Officials Under Bush
Tell Leahy And Jeffords That White House
Is Going Easy On Big Polluters

… EPA Announces Doubling Of Mercury Exposure In Newborns

WASHINGTON (Fri., Feb. 6) – Former EPA officials who served under President Bush told Sen. Patrick Leahy and Sen. Jim Jeffords Friday that the Administration is inadequately enforcing the Clean Air Act, allowing coal-fired power plants and other big polluters to spew millions of tons of mercury and other deadly poisons into the air over Vermont and other states.

The testimony, during a policy forum on Capitol Hill that Jeffords and Leahy helped organize, came on the same day that the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates of newborns with unsafe mercury levels in their blood doubled to 630,000.  EPA also found that one in six pregnant women had mercury levels above EPA’s safe level.  Last December the Bush Administration announced a new emissions rule that Leahy and Jeffords said inadequately reduces mercury emissions from power plants, despite the EPA’s acknowledgement that mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants poses the greatest risk to clean air and public health.

Vermont’s senators were joined by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in questioning former directors of the Bush Administration’s EPA regulatory enforcement divisions and other expert witnesses about the impact of the Bush Administration’s lax enforcement of Clean Air Act regulations.  The senators were repeatedly told that the Bush Administration has inadequately enforced clean air regulations, including New Source Review (NSR) provisions which require out-of-date power plants to upgrade to meet decades-old clean air regulations. 

Jeffords and Leahy pointed to the Administration’s slow-paced prosecution of more than 50 NSR violations since President Bush took office as a prime example of the Administration stalling Clean Air Act regulations in an effort to appease powerful special interests. 

Jeffords, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said, “The public needs to know and has a right to know that the Bush Administration is not keeping the public’s health in mind.  The public needs to know that their voice is being drowned out by the owners of old, dirty power plants.”

Leahy, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and long the Senate’s leader on mercury pollution issues, said:  “The Bush Administration has used every one of its public relations tactics -- sneaking out bad news on Fridays and around holidays, obscuring the facts, and denying the truth – to try to keep the American people from noticing that they are riddling the Clean Air Act with huge new loopholes, while handing get out of court free cards to corporate polluters.  When it comes to pollution, this Administration seems to have a new slogan: Don’t Give A Hoot -- Pollute.”

A year and half ago, Jeffords and Leahy held a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Environment and Public Works Committee to get Administration officials to answer basic questions about how their changes to the Clean Air Act would affect public health, current lawsuits and EPA enforcement.  During that hearing few of the senators’ questions were answered. Friday, several of the witnesses questioned the Administration’s past testimony

Both Jeffords and Leahy have legislation pending before Congress to curb mercury and power plant emissions.  Jeffords’ Clean Power Act of 2003, a multi-pollutant bill cosponsored by Leahy, would reduce mercury pollution by 90 percent from electric utilities, along with three other pollutants -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide. 

Leahy’s Omnibus Mercury Emissions Reduction Act of 2003 would reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90 percent.  It is the only comprehensive legislation to reduce mercury pollution from all major sources, including commercial and industrial boilers, chlor-alkali plants and cement plants.  It also would require labeling of mercury-containing products to reduce mercury in the waste stream. 

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Related Links:

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy DPC Oversight Hearing On Bush Administration Enforcement Of The Clean Air Act February 6, 2004

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