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In recent months, the White House has been promoting the "Clear Skies" bill as a way to clean up power plant emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, soot-forming sulfur dioxide, and toxic mercury. These types of pollutants have been viewed as having a significantly negative impact on the world climate, global warming and the depletion of the Ozone layer. Critics of the bill argue that it would allow power plants to pollute more and longer than under the current Clean Air Act. Apparently, a recently discovered provision in the bill weakens current law for other industries as well, including pulp and paper mills,chemical plants, and oil refineries. According to various California environmental advocates, these types of industrial plants could "opt in" to the bill and "opt out" of existing requirements to reduce their emissions of toxic air pollutants. Many of these pollutants have been scientifically linked to cause cancer, birth defects, and other serious health problems.
The "Clear Skies" bill (S.131), as written, may exempt as many as 58,000 industrial boilers, commercial and institutional boilers, and process heaters used at industrial facilities such as pulp and paper mills, oil refineries, and chemical plants from a 2004 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that requires these units to reduce their toxic emissions to the maximum extent possible by 2007. In addition, the bill exempts these industrial plants from other major Clean Air Act requirements, including New Source Review and visibility protections for national parks and wilderness areas. Today, many industrial boilers and process heaters emit a wide variety of toxic air pollutants, depending on the fuel burned, including arsenic, benzene, chromium, hydrogen chloride, and lead.
This bill could exempt as many as 782 industrial facilities in California from the Clean Air Act’s mandate of deep reductions in toxic pollution. The industries covered by the loophole emitted approximately 5.3 million pounds of toxic air pollutants into California’s air in 2003. If passed, it is conceivable that the provision in the bill would allow many industries to continue to emit harmful chemicals into California’s air.
Gordon & Rees has one of the largest environmental and toxic tort practices in the Western United States. The firm counts toxicologists, epidemiologists, and former OSHA inspectors among its attorneys.
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