Clean Air Task Force

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New Source Review

The Clean Air Act's New Source Review provisions require power plants and other large facilities to meet modern pollution control standards whenever they make physical or operational changes that cause them to emit additional air pollution. EPA issued rules in 2002 and 2003 that would undermine the important air quality protections provided by the NSR program. The Clean Air Task Force has sued the Agency to prevent these rollbacks from taking effect.

Enforcing NSR

After a long investigation found that many old coal-fired power plants were not complying with NSR, EPA initiated a broad enforcement action in 1999. In conjunction with the Clean Air Task Force, other environmental groups and a variety of states, EPA sued numerous power companies for rebuilding their aging plants without installing modern pollution controls. Several of the lawsuits have been settled as power companies have agreed to reduce annual emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by approximately one million tons. The Clean Air Task Force represents a collection of citizen groups in the two largest enforcement cases.

October 2003 NSR Rule

Under the Clean Air Act's NSR provisions, a facility must install modern pollution controls when it makes a physical or operational changes that result in additional air pollution. EPA's October 2003 Rule attempted to excuse power plants and other major emitters from having to upgrade their pollution controls as long as the changes in question cost less than 20% of the replacement value of the facility. That would have amounted to an enormous loophole. On March 17, 2006, the Clean Air Task Force, other citizen groups, and numerous state and local governments, won an unanimous decision from the DC Circuit that permanently invalidates the exemption.

December 2002 NSR Rule

EPA's December 2002 Rule created new methods for calculating baseline emissions and post-change emissions, allowed the use of "plantwide applicability limits," and carved specific exemptions for "pollution control projects" and "clean units" -- all of which can be used by industrial facilities and power plants to avoid New Source Review while making phyiscal or operational changes.

CATF represented several environmental groups in a challenge to the December 2002 Rule's legality. On June 24, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down several aspects of the rule and reaffirmed the program's focus on actual emissions (rather than potential emissions).