Breathtaking disregard of the Clean Air Act

Kate Seelye writes in today’s New York Times about the Bush Administration’s decision to gut the Clean Air Act. After all, the poor downtrodden utility companies might have to actually invest a significant amount of money in the modernization of their physical assets. What a unique concept! As Seelye reports:

The current rule requires plant owners to install pollution-control devices if they undertake anything more than “routine maintenance” on their plants… The new rule says that as much as 20 percent of the cost of replacing a plant’s essential production equipment — a boiler, generator or turbine — could be spent and the owner would still be exempt from installing any pollution controls… such equipment can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes more than $1 billion, to replace. A utility or factory could thus make tens of millions of dollars worth of improvements without being required to install pollution controls.

I’m sure we’ll hear the energy industry continuing to cry to their best friend, Dick Cheney, that anything less than the 50% threshhold, which was the Administration’s first proposed interpretation of “routine maintenance”, will drive them to the poorhouse. Umm… guys… on this planet, an oil change in your car every 3000 miles is routine maintenance; replacing the engine and transmission, say, is NOT routine maintenance. Oh, and there doesn’t seem to be any limit on how many times they could use the 20% exemption. Let’s see… 20% x 5 equals…

In typical BushCo disdain for the public’s voice

Marianne Horinko, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, would probably sign the rule before Labor Day. It would go into effect shortly thereafter, without further review or public comment… Administration officials, including Ms. Horinko, declined to comment. [emphasis mine]

It seems, however, that the entire Justice Department hasn’t been compromised by Brother Ashcroft’s Holy Rolling: Further down in the article, Seelye mentions that some factions in Justice have continued to prosecute violators of the Clean Air Act despite the objections of the Man From Halliburton. Just recently

…the department won a landmark victory… in federal court against an Ohio Edison plant in Jefferson County, Ohio… That decision, which found that Ohio Edison violated the Clean Air Act when it failed to install pollution controls, could set a precedent for the other cases and puts the administration on a collision course with itself because of its new rule.

And coincidentally — or maybe not so coincidentally — Seelye neglects to mention that Ohio Edison is a wholly-owned unit of FirstEnergy. You remember them, don’t you: poorly-maintained power lines and the biggest blackout in US history?