Bush and the toxic smog saga

It boils down to your basic business philosophy. Maybe you believe the invisible free hand of the market will bring equitable standards of living to all critters on the planet.

Maybe you think the care of forests is best handled by the timber industry. Perhaps you trust that, if left to themselves, the planet’s worst polluters (coal-burning power plants) will clean up their act.

The Bush administration believes. That’s why we have a Healthy Forests Initiative that gives power over the nation’s last old-growth forests to the logging industry. Ditto the Clear Skies Initiative, which on its face sounds swell but actually rolls back environmental policy more than three decades.

So, surprise, there’s a huge disparity between what Bush says about his air quality initiative (expected to come in Congress this fall) and the complaints of some 1,200 community and environmental groups who oppose it.

Bush pitches the plan as one that would reduce allowable discharges of mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide pollution from coal-burning power plants. He says it’s an improvement on the Clean Air Act of 1970.

“By taking this action, … we’ll have more affordable energy, more jobs and cleaner skies,” the president said in a Fox News report.

In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan that may have actually reduced mercury, sulfur and nitrogen emissions in a reasonable time frame. Since its inception though, the law has become much more industry friendly, with clever loopholes that make it possible for ancient, coal-burning plants to continue pumping tons of gluppity-glup into the air.

One such plant, ironically, is the Detroit Edison plant in Monroe, Mich., which burns 20 million tons of coal annually. Because the plant was built before the 1970s, when standards set by the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review provisions kicked in, its outdated systems were grandfathered in.

It was thought that when such plants made major renovations, they would have to submit to new rules. But the Michigan plant continues to pump pollutants into the air unchecked. Annually, according to the Web site of parent company, DTE Energy, the toxic muck released into the air includes 1,100 pounds of ammonia; 370 pounds of arsenic; 9,600 pounds of barium; 7,500,500 pounds of hydrogen chloride; 620 pounds of mercury and 650,000 pounds of sulfuric acid.

Hundreds of deaths are attributed to the plant’s pollutants annually, along with thousands of asthma attacks. Under the Clean Air Act, the plant would have had to reduce, say, sulfur emissions by 90 percent by 2020. Clear Skies doesn’t force emission reduction—instead, it gives plants an out by allowing them to purchase what you could call pollution rights credits from other, cleaner plants.

And what about forcing the plant to upgrade when it finally gets too dilapidated to run efficiently? Getting the plant to comply with the New Source Review provision would be costly. It might cut into profits. So, heck, says Bush & Co., let’s throw that out altogether.

“The rules created too many hurdles,” Bush said during a speech in Monroe. He said that utilities should be able to make “routine repairs” without “enormous costs and endless disputes.”

“It makes sense to change the regulations. … We trust the people in this plant to make the right decision.”

Bush believes. Do you?

In other free-market news, Kathleen “K.C.” Campbell, the java genius at Copa Coffee on Sparks Boulevard, says business isn’t good. Last spring, I wrote a column about K.C. [“Friendly Coffee Warrior,” May 8] and her fight against the big boys. Three Starbucks have opened in east Sparks in the past year or so.

Sadly, K.C. is calling it quits after this batch of coffee runs out, she says. She’s not sure what the future holds. She’ll probably try to get her casino job back.

There it is, readers. You wanted Starbucks. You got it and almost nothing but it. Everywhere.