Court sides with Bush on Clear Air Act ruling

A U.S. appeals court has sided with the administration of President George W. Bush, upholding its revisions of the Clean Air Act to allow plant operators to modernize without installing expensive new pollution control equipment. The ruling turned back challenges to the revisions by New York, California and 11 other states.

Representatives of the electric power industry, which had strongly supported the new regulations, hailed the ruling as a victory. The new rules require owners of older plants to upgrade emission-control equipment to standards for new plants only if they make substantial improvements. Plant owners and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have consistently disagreed over how to differentiate between routine maintenance and large-scale upgrades.

Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistant EPA administrator for air and radiation, said the court "recognized the value of common-sense reforms" included in the new rules. Holmstead said the panel "simply did not buy" the argument made by the states and other critics that allowing its provisions to remain intact would cause "environmental devastation."

The ruling was issued in a unanimous opinion by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington. But the court also said that the EPA, in issuing the rules, had exceeded its authority in several areas.

Still, representatives of the states and environmental groups said they found enough to their liking in the 73-page opinion to claim successes.

Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, said in an interview that the ruling was "a win for us." "Anybody who cares about the quality of air" can see the case as "a victory for enforcement and continued aggressive action to limit the violations of the Clean Air Act by power companies," Spitzer said.

The revisions addressed in the court ruling have been under legal assault since they were completed in late 2002. The states, along with a dozen environmental groups, challenged some areas of the revisions, arguing that they reflected an administration that was too cozy with industry and that allowing plant operators more latitude would leave the air dirtier. Industry groups challenged other parts of the regulations as too onerous, warning that they would require plant operators to spend billions of dollars in upgrades and pass the costs on to consumers.

The ruling is likely to have an impact in other cases still pending in courts around the country involving the administration's rules on emission controls. The ruling also sets up a possible Supreme Court review on the issue because of at least one other ruling last week involving Duke Energy.

David McIntosh, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the challengers, said: "The polluter-friendly loopholes that the court struck down would have led to more asthma attacks, more hospitalizations and more sick days."