Pa. right to sue over new clean-air rules

Ah, Pittsburgh – the dying foliage, the trash-strewn streets, the air that reeks of car… Ah, Pittsburgh – the dying foliage, the trash-strewn streets, the air that reeks of car exhaust and the slight tang of ozone.

While some might complain about Pittsburgh’s air quality – sixth worst in the country, according to the hotly contested Surface Transportation Policy Project – the city has improved air quality and is no longer the “Smoky City” it once was.

And we should keep on this track.

Pennsylvania, along with 11 other states, a few cities and a coalition of environmental organizations, filed a lawsuit to reverse the changes to the Clean Air Act that were finalized Oct. 27, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Originally, the Clean Air Act mandated that major polluters – factories, power plants, anything that spews a great deal of smoke – clean up their act or face sizable fines. Exceptions were made for polluters with older facilities, grandfathering them so that they didn’t have to change immediately. Instead, they could implement these changes when they modernized their factories.

The new rules state that, should the modernizations cost less than 20 percent of what a new facility would, the new equipment doesn’t have to meet clean air standards. These facilities are, in essence, grandfathered ad nauseum – until the pollution actually makes us nauseous, asthmatic and diseased, that is.

The Environmental Protection Agency signed off on these rule changes – did no one tell them what “protection” means? Protecting the environment should be about sewing up these loopholes. About 540 power plants, which provide about 51 percent of the nation’s power, would qualify as grandfathered.

The rules previously in place worked – Pittsburgh may still have poor air quality, but there’s less pollution than there was. People no longer practice the uniquely Pittsburgh custom of changing their shirts midday because of soot.

To top off this smog-o-rific policy change, President Bush has appointed Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt to head the EPA. Leavitt’s appointment was stalled in the Senate – Democrats there said his refusal to answer direct questions, and preference for ambiguous aphorisms slowed the process – so we can only speculate as to what his policies will be.

But his past shows a shady environmental record. While Leavitt’s supporters cite his record of reducing urban sprawl and keeping nuclear waste out of Utah, his detractors cite his secret meetings with the Interior Department to remove protections for wilderness areas, and his highway project running through wetlands around the Great Salt Lake.

It looks like it’s going to be a smoky future.