Waiting to inhale

New England has spent the better part of a decade trying to clean up the region's dirtiest power plants. But the Bush administration is poised to erase that progress

by Sam Smith

On a warm summer day in New England, with the wind pushing sailboats around the bay, you can sit out on your front porch, sip a nice glass of lemonade, and inhale toxic levels of pollutants from power plants in Ohio.

Mmmm, sulfur dioxide.

The buzz-killing air quality results from a conspiracy between Mother Nature's prevalent wind patterns and the federal government's shortsighted air regulations: as wind pushes across the Midwest and Southeast, it picks up pollution from "grandfathered" coal- and oil-burning power plants -- plants built before the 1977 reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, which were granted a free pass from its emissions standards. The grandfather provision was based on the notion that those plants were so old they would probably be mothballed or upgraded -- thus forcing them to meet stiffer pollution regulations -- within five years or so. With their days presumably numbered, it was reasoned that the plants shouldn't be saddled with the cost of upgrading emission controls, which could have cost millions of dollars. But many of those old plants are still here, defying the predictions of lawmakers.

The pollution from grandfathered plants contributes to some of New England's most pressing environmental concerns: acid rain, global warming, and toxic mercury levels in rivers and ponds are all exacerbated by power-plant emissions. And though some experts estimate that about 40 percent of the region's air pollution comes from upwind plants, we can't just point a finger in the general direction of Michigan and wipe our hands clean.

In May 2000, the Harvard School of Public Health released a study titled "Estimated Public Health Impacts of Criteria Pollutant Air Emissions from the Salem Harbor and Brayton Point Power Plants," a two-year examination of pollution from local grandfathered power plants. What it found was disturbing. Two of Massachusetts's dirtiest coal- and oil-burning plants, Salem Harbor and Brayton Point, released enough toxins to cause 161 premature deaths, 1710 emergency-room visits, and 43,300 asthma attacks each year throughout New England. And that's just two plants. There are 16 grandfathered plants in the region: six in Massachusetts, six in Connecticut, three in New Hampshire, and one in Maine. Rhode Island hosts none of the bellowing monsters, but Brayton Point, the dirtiest plant in New England, sits right on its border.

There was a brighter side to this grimy story: New England's progress toward regulating dirty power plants, particularly the tough new emissions standards for Massachusetts's grandfathered plants that Governor Jane Swift announced in April. But now environmentalists and state lawmakers are bracing for a possible major setback to their clean-up efforts: the Bush administration's energy plan, released on May 17. Of paramount concern are its recommendations for reviewing the legitimacy of lawsuits brought by the state of New York against grandfathered plants in the Midwest and Southeast. The suits allege that these plants violated Clean Air Act regulations by upgrading their production capacity without upgrading their emission controls -- regulations also up for review under the Bush energy plan, which wants them evaluated with an eye toward their negative impact on domestic energy production. These initiatives could yank the rug out from under efforts to clean up New England, because no matter how clean power plants are here, dirty plants outside our borders can still ruin our air.

In other words, though state-level action is great as far as it goes, blanket federal action offers the only route to real progress. The Bush energy proposal may have environmental and state leaders in New England holding their breath, but not in anticipation of cleaner air.

IF THIS were a Hollywood movie, New England would be personified by a busty Julia Roberts crusading against -- well, against PG&E, the corporate villain in Erin Brockovich and the owner of the Salem Harbor and Brayton Point power plants.

"Every major clean-air battle has really started in New England," says Rob Sargent of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MassPIRG).

In April, Governor Jane Swift announced that grandfathered plants in Massachusetts would finally have to curb their emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide. These four pollutants pack a serious punch: sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide soot caused the deaths and health problems referenced in the Harvard study; mercury causes birth defects and brain damage; and carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas.

The other New England states don't match Massachusetts's new standards, but all are ahead of the national curve. Connecticut has its own set of regulations, which target sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. New Hampshire and Maine are busy crafting similar rules. Maine reached an agreement earlier this month with Wyman Station, the grandfathered oil-burning plant near Portland, to reduce emissions. And US Representative Tom Allen (D-Maine) has sponsored the Clean Power Act of 2001, which would close the grandfather loophole entirely.

Meanwhile, states outside the Northeast have been moving in the same direction. Although Massachusetts is the first state to regulate the four major toxins from power plants, similar legislation is pending in Illinois and North Carolina. Texas has already started reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. And it was New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer who filed the suit against 17 grandfathered plants in 1999.

It is this legal action -- which Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey joined (though the Garden State's involvement in the suit is coming back to haunt former New Jersey governor and current EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman) -- that the Bush energy plan recommends reviewing. The administration's stance signals that the suits could be quashed if they don't meet the president's vision of a hassle-free regulatory process for power plants.

The review is "the biggest threat to New England right now," says Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Washington, DC-based Clean Air Trust, a watchdog group formed in 1995 by former senators Edmund Muskie of Maine and Robert Stafford of Vermont. "This administration is considering granting immunity to big coal-fired plants in the Midwest and Southeast that violated the Clean Air Act. Even if, say, Massachusetts goes forward with plans to clean up its plants, this would allow big, dirty power companies to continue polluting and sending pollution to New England."

"One of many reasons why the New England states are working to clean up our plants," says Pete Didisheim of the Natural Resources Council, Maine's largest environmental group, "is to strengthen the region's ability to tell upwind states, `Look, we've done what we can to clean up our plants, and to the extent to which we continue to have dirty air, we need you to do the same thing.' But in the ideal world, you wouldn't have different parts of the country telling others how to act. You would have the federal government providing a level playing field, requiring power plants everywhere to clean up to the highest level of emission controls."

After all, when the wind is just right, close to half of New England's smog comes from the Midwest. State-level action can go only so far without coordination by the feds. And this, explains Didisheim, has been a guiding principle in the region.

With Bush reneging on his campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, however, there's little hope that blanket federal regulations are in the offing. And the proposed loosening of federal environmental standards has already begun to undermine state-level progress. Marc Violette of the New York attorney general's office says they had been ready to finalize two out-of-court settlements with power-plant defendants from the 1999 suit. But now that has been put on hold, he says. "I think it's safe to say the [two] utilities are intrigued by the possibility of a new regulatory dynamic in Washington."

A new regulatory dynamic -- plus the billions in subsidies the Bush administration has promised the coal industry -- affects more than just the utilities' outlook.

"In terms of legislative success, I'd say the prospects for moving forward are dim," Representative Allen of Maine acknowledges, saying that he's not optimistic about the Clean Power Act of 2001 coming to the floor for a vote. "So I'll keep trying to get more co-sponsors, try to get more press on this, try to work with outside groups who care about the environment."

BUT IT'S not all doom and gloom for environmentalists. Some foresee a silver lining to the Bush plan: the potential for backlash.

That potential became real last week. In his May 24 speech announcing his defection from the Republican Party, Vermont senator James Jeffords listed "energy and the environment" as an area where his views fundamentally oppose those of the Bush administration. "Certainly the more people know about the anti-environmental provisions of Bush's energy plan, the more alarmed they are," says the Clean Air Trust's O'Donnell. "Some of the outrageous environmental provisions in the plan I'm sure helped persuade Jeffords to the leave the party."

And Jeffords's feelings about the Bush energy plan may turn out to be shared in other parts of the nation. "If you add what's going on in New England to pending legislation in Illinois and North Carolina, it's starting to be not just a New England issue," says Conrad Schneider, a Maine representative of the Clean Air Task Force, a national organization that cleans up power plants. "It's happening in areas more coal-dependent and with dirtier plants than ours. Our view is, the momentum is building toward additional states' implementing regulations."

Utilities appear to have the same impression. "There's mandatory carbon capping in the long-term future," John Rowe, chief executive of Chicago utility Exelon Corporation, told the Wall Street Journal on May 10. With the writing on the wall, utilities are becoming concerned about the piecemeal approach of a state-by-state regulatory structure. As the Wall Street Journal reported, some utilities are working with environmental groups to fashion a multi-pollutant federal regulation that would mandate cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, despite Bush's disavowal of such measures.

Meanwhile, the way some New England utilities are retooling their business models to focus on energy efficiency indicates that they consider conservation a sound investment rather than a mere "personal virtue," as Vice-President Dick Cheney derisively characterized it last month.

Connecticut Light & Power, the largest utility in that state, has spent over $500 million since the 1980s on energy-efficiency programs. According to CLP's Philip Vece, the company has reduced the peak summer load among its customers by 450 megawatts -- effectively delaying the need to build another plant. CLP's efforts demonstrate that reducing power demand through conservation offers an effective alternative to the Bush administration's plans to increase supply by building new plants.

"Our environment has been spared thousands of tons of emissions," says Vece. "And our customers are saving nearly $150 million annually."

According to Conservation Law Foundation figures, combined energy-efficiency programs among New England utilities have cut 50 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the air and saved customers in the region about $3 billion since the 1980s.

And depending on how much stock one puts in polls, there's reason to believe folks don't agree with the direction of Bush's energy policies. According to a CBS News poll from early April, 61 percent of Americans feel it's more important to protect the environment than to produce energy, while 65 percent believe Bush puts energy production above the environment. A Sierra Club poll conducted by the Mellman Group earlier this month found that by a two-to-one margin, Americans would rather reduce demand than increase supply to solve an energy shortage.

"This isn't a problem of public opinion," says Representative Allen. "It's all about the leadership. The Bush administration completely fails to understand the power of millions of Americans working together to reduce energy consumption."

"The Bush administration has complete and utter faith in some yet-to-be-identified technology for space-based weapons," says MassPIRG's Sargent. "But they can't fund technology for energy efficiency and renewables, technology that has been proven and could be viable if [it] got half the subsidies some of these others get."

Just in research and development subsidies, the coal industry receives upwards of $100 million a year. Bush has promised about $2 billion more over the next 10 years. Instead, Allen argues, we should be funding research on alternative energy. "Can you imagine the change we could make if fuel cells were available for cars in 10 years and not 20?" he says. "We'd have cars running off water."

"I'm encouraged that there are at least some of the governors in New England, and virtually all of the New England delegation in Congress, [who] don't buy into the Bush plan," says Sargent. "I don't think the US public is buying into it. I think we're going to see a backlash here and from the rest of the world.

"We have to believe that or it would be very depressing."

Sam Smith is a freelance writer living in Portland, Maine. He can be reached at samssmith@hotmail.com.