Oregon’s Attorney General Hardy Myers recently joined eight other state attorneys general in a lawsuit against the federal government’s
Environmental Protection Agency. The attorneys say the agency has failed to combat global warming because it has not adopted strong pollution standards for newly constructed power plants across the country.
In a statement released late last month, Myers said “global warming is a reality. It is unfortunate that Oregon and other states must turn to the courts to convince the federal government that clean air is a national priority. Adhering to the Clean Air Act is not optional.”
The lawsuit is in response to Clean Air Act regulation revisions established Feb. 27. The regulations are revisited every eight years.
Enacted in 1970 by Congress, the act created new standards for the pollutants of “stationary and mobile sources,” including power plants, to protect citizens from airborne contaminants known to be hazardous to health.
Stephanie Soden, executive assistant to Oregon’s attorney general, said scientific data shows that carbon dioxide “clearly contributes to global warming,” but she said there are still folks who believe otherwise.
“There is a level of disagreement, you would say, from the attorney generals from nine states … and the federal government because we do believe that under the Clean Air Act there are standards that should be met,” she said.
The EPA previously said it doesn’t have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide because its guidelines do not define it as “air pollution,” and because the science supporting global warming is “unsettled,” according to the Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research and education organization.
“Under the Clean Air Act, emissions of certain toxins must be regulated, and that includes carbon dioxide,” Soden said. “The rules that we’re disputing by the EPA have to do with new power plants and really coal-fired plants constructed” in the future.
Soden said the issue being disputed is the EPA’s role in addressing coal-burning power plants on a national level, not necessarily the state level.
“There is just one coal fire plant in Oregon, so this doesn’t really apply,” Soden said. “It’s just new construction of plants.”
The one coal-fired plant in Oregon, Boardman Coal Plant, is located in Morrow County and operated by Portland General Electric. Construction on the plant began in 1976, one year before the harsher amendments to the Clean Air Act were created. The plant has recently been targeted as a contributor to air and water pollution in the Columbia River Gorge. It has been closed and under repair since October, and PGE recently announced it would delay the reopening of the plant, which was scheduled for the end of April.
According to the Clean Air Act, regulators should consider “improvements in non-regulatory strategies and technologies for preventing or reducing multiple air pollutants, including … carbon dioxide, from stationary sources, including fossil fuel power plants” when reviewing the Pollution Prevention and Emissions Control portion of the Clean Air Act. The act also prioritizes “pollutants which pose a significant risk to human health and the environment.”
Three prominent environmental organizations have also filed a related petition.
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