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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Administration Contradicts Itself on Environmental Enforcement

The Bush administration has caught some flack recently for its poor record of enforcing environmental regulations and for the timidity with which it pursues prosecution of the nation's worst polluters. A Sept. 30 Washington Post article reported, "The number of environmental prosecutions plummeted from 919 in 2001 to 584 last year."

With that in mind, it was refreshing to see EPA negotiate a big environmental settlement which will go a long way in reducing air pollution. On Oct. 9, EPA reached a settlement with American Electric Power (AEP) in which the utility agreed to pay a $15 million civil penalty and "to undertake approximately $4.6 billion worth of pollution control measures at its existing plants over the next decade," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Unfortunately, there is a seedy underbelly to the settlement. According to today's Washington Post, EPA pushed to include a waiver which will grant AEP a get-out-of-jail-free card for future violations.

Buried in paragraph 133 of the [settlement] ... is a section that assures AEP that the government will not pursue any action stemming from the "modification" of these plants between now and Dec. 31, 2018...

The administration has repeatedly questioned the value of enforcing the current rules, and the settlement guarantees that AEP will not face federal prosecution if its activities over the next decade trigger this sort of federal review.

After the Sept. 30 Post article on the administration's lax enforcement efforts, EPA officials rushed to the agency's defense. EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock said, "My regular meetings with the enforcement office have left me with the impression they are doing a really good job." The head of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Granta Nakayama, said the agency is going for quality, not quantity, by focusing on polluters who leave a "big environmental footprint" and on "chronic offenders who are out of compliance," according to BNA news service (subscription).

But if the AEP settlement is any indication, Nakayama is just blowing hot air. According to NRDC, "The Columbus, Ohio-based AEP owns 25 coal-fired electric plants in the United States, and was the number one industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide pollution in the country, based on 2004 data." If that's not a big environmental footprint, what is?

Reg•Watch Update: "EPA's Lax Enforcement Fouls Water Too"