Clearing the air.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Despite the cleanup efforts of the past three decades, air pollution remains a serious problem in the United States, cutting short the lives of 30,000 Americans each year and contributing to the rapid spread of asthma and other respiratory ailments.

Given the seriousness of the problem, one might think that the federal government would be hard at work to reduce exhaust, soot, greenhouse gases and toxic emissions that foul our nation's air. But Team Bush has taken the opposite approach, introducing proposed rules that would undermine efforts to clean up pollution from power plants, refineries and other industrial operations and that make no effort to regulate carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to global warming.

Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says the new proposal would enhance air quality. What it would really do is advance the administration's long-standing agenda of rolling back environmental protections and replacing them with weak-kneed plans based largely on voluntary compliance and riddled with the kind of loopholes that lobbyists dream of.

The proposed rules would allow some factories, refineries and other sources of industrial pollution to spew more pollutants into the air without triggering requirements for tougher pollution controls under what currently is known as the new source review provisions of the Clean Air Act. Other proposed changes would make it easier for some older coal-fired power plants to operate longer without being required to install new, more efficient controls.

Admittedly, the Clean Air Act, which was put in place in the brown-air days of the 1970s, has flaws. For example, while new factories and power plants must be equipped with state-of-the-art pollution controls, older plants have been allowed to continue operating without major upgrades. The original theory was that older plants eventually would be shut down because of inefficiencies and high maintenance costs. Instead, the grandfather clause gave utilities motivation for keeping their oldest, dirtiest facilities going.

Despite its problems, the Clean Air Act has had positive impacts because its goal is simple and straightforward: reduce air pollution. The Bush plan, however, makes no pretense of reducing emissions. It would allow companies to establish limits based on their highest emission levels in the past. In some cases, companies would be able to use past pollution reductions to offset new pollution increases. At best, the plan would preserve the status quo - the same status quo that is afflicting record numbers of Americans with asthma and respiratory problems and is contributing to global warming.

Meanwhile, Congress is considering an alternative proposal that would tighten existing controls on emissions responsible for respiratory illnesses and, for the first time, limit carbon dioxide emissions. Called the Clean Power Act, the bill also would strengthen protections against acid rain and add new limits on mercury.

The measure, which faces a committee vote today in the Senate, was introduced by Sens. Jim Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. The proposal would cut nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions (the sources of smog, lung-clogging particulates and acid rain) by 75 percent; mercury output by 90 percent; and carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent, reducing them to 1990 levels.

The measure also would attack pollution from the demand side by requiring substantive energy efficiency programs and providing new incentives for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

While the Jeffords-Lieberman legislation certainly needs further scrutiny, it has the obvious merit of seeking to reduce pollution and improve air quality - unlike the Bush plan, which no one should confuse with environmental protection.