EPA Chief: No Room For CO2 Limits In Power-Plant Permitting
The memo from EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson was the latest in a series of last-minute decisions that environmentalists say play to the benefit of industry in the last days of the Bush administration. They claimed it has the effect of undoing a recent EPA appeals court decision that could have set a precedent for any power plant or other emitter in the country.
At issue is an EPA appeals court decision last month that requires the EPA's Denver office to consider including carbon-dioxide emission limits as part of a permit for a proposed expansion of the Deseret Power Electric Cooperative's coal-fired power plant in Bonanza, Utah.
"I believe that a pollutant should not become subject to mandatory emissions limitations under the PSD program until the Administrator (or Congress) has decided that such pollutants should be directly controlled by regulation," Johnson wrote in the memo.
The Prevention of Significant Deterioration Program requires that new and upgraded power plants be subject to the best technology for controlling pollutants that they spew out in significant amounts.
Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman, said in an email that "the memo sets into policy what the agency has been doing for 30 years and provides clarity and consistency to the permitting process."
-By Siobhan Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6654; Siobhan.Hughes@dowjones.com
(Cassandra Sweet contributed to this report.)
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Publié le 18 Décembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones
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