Joint Economic Committee letterhead document, June 2002

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GOVERNMENT REFORM Congress of ©niteb States Ol«l 532-1084

JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE of jR-eprefientatibES I SSaHfjuTjton. SC 20515-3214 1

June 26,2002

The Honorable Christine Todd Whitman Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Whitman:

I am writing to express my deep concern over the Administration’s plan to weaken the New Source Review (NSR) regulations under die Clean Air Act, I respectfully ask you to withhold your approval from any new proposal that would weaken the air quality protections and pollution clean-up measures required by NSR.

The NSR program requires that the nation’s approximately 17,000 power plants, oil refineries and other major industrial facilities install up-to-date pollution control devices whenever plant modifications significantly increase air emissions. In the years since it was enacted, NSR has been responsible for eliminating and preventing the release of millions of tons- of harmful pollutants into the air, thereby protecting regional and national air quality and public health.

More than 140 million Americans already live in areas with unhealthy air. I am well aware of the need to increase existing power generation edacity to avoid energy shortages and unnecessary price increases, but I strongly believe that both short and long-term energy resource plans can be implemented without risking the health of the American public. I appreciate your 1 statement on CNN’s Crossfire program (February 26,2001) on this subject: “I asked our people i to go back and to give me the environmental clean air regulations -- because it's clean air that 1 we're talking about -- that were hampering the ability of the utilities in California to provide power and we couldn't find any.”

Several communities in New York’s 14’*' Congressional District, which I represent, are particularly at stake if clean air regulations are weakened. According to a recent study by the EPA, more toxic chemicals pumped into the air in Queens than in the four other boroughs combined. For the year 2000, Queens power plants sent 509,870 pounds of toxins into the environment based on self-reported data. The data reveals that the top 3 worst polluters in Queens are power plants and that air pollution accounts for virtually all of the emissions

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