April 29, 2013- by John Blair, valley watch.net editor
Today, in 6-2 decision and an opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the US Supreme Court gave EPA the go ahead to implement the conditions of its Cross State Air Pollution Rule and that is good news for the tri-state region of Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois.Under the Cross State Air Pollution Rule or CSAPR as it is known, 28 states covering most of the east except for New England are required to create a new State Implementation Plan or SIP that calls for reduced pollution of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide mostly from more than 1000 coal fired power plants that generate electricity.
It is unclear just how the CSAPR rule will affect the massive Rockport power plant since it’s owner, American Electric Power recently signed a consent decree allowing it to avoid placing scrubbers on that facility until 2028. Graphic ©2013 BlairPhotoEVV
The rule was originally designed to force “upwind” states to reduce their pollution to the point that “downwind” states can achieve the health based National Ambient Air Quality Standards for both ozone and fine particles.
Valley Watch has long fought for cleaner, safer air in the tri-state community and we applaud the fact that we can now move forward with implementation of CSAPR. It will be interesting to see just how much air quality improves over the next few years as increasing numbers of coal plants are mothballed or retired due to this and other rules, including one on air toxics that are going to be implemented.
The implementation of this EPA rule was delayed for a very long period of time due to the spending of huge sums of money by corporate funded interest groups to block this important good health initiative.