Ontario Premier to fight Bush plans for coal stations

- Ontario wants to convince American lawmakers to fight President George Bush's plans to loosen American environmental protections, Premier Dalton McGuinty said recently.

"The Bush administration is severely weakening pollution controls for coal-fired generation," McGuinty said before travelling to a two-day visit to Washington.

McGuinty met with the National Governors' Association, members of Congress as well as officials from the Environmental Protection Agency during their meetings in the U.S. capital.

Ontario is worried about a plan to allow American companies to retrofit old coal-burning plants built before 1971 without having to install new pollution control technologies.

McGuinty said that means five years from now the U.S. "could still have in place 1971 emission control standards" at the coal-burning electricity generators.

That's "unacceptable," McGuinty said.

He plans to meet with American officials to discuss the future of 440 coal-burning electricity plants in the United States that McGuinty claims are responsible for about 50 per cent of the smog in Ontario.

"It's one thing for us to clean up our air here in the province of Ontario," said McGuinty.

"It's another thing for us to clean up all of the air that is drifting up here."

However, McGuinty would not agree that electricity hungry Ontario should refuse to buy power from the United States if it's still being produced by the old, coal-fired generators.

"It's an issue of real concern to us and I'll keep pushing," said McGuinty.

The Liberal government campaigned on a promise to close Ontario's five coal-fired electricity stations by 2007, but now says it won't shut them until the province has enough new generation capacity to replace the power the old plants currently provide.