EDL and Supreme Court Bitchslap Duke Energy and Bush
It’s about time that the Court System grew a set of balls and started forcing government agencies such as the EPA to enforce laws properly, and rolled back changes and exemptions to those laws that the Bush Administration put in place to benefit their supporters. The Supreme Court ruled favor of Environmental Defense, et al. in their case agains Duke Energy Corporation, which means that industrial smokestacks and power plants must meet today’s cost-effective pollution control standards when facilities are updated.
The article by the Environmental Defense states, “Bush administration relaxed the rules to allow plants to avoid installing state-of-the-art pollution equipment if the price of the upgrade was less than 20 percent of the total cost of replacing the facility. Such modifications were to be considered “routine maintenance” under the EPA rules that were overturned. This high threshold would have allowed thousands of plants to expand operations — and dramatically increase air pollution — without upgrading pollution controls.”
This court ruling will help make our air a bit cleaner, we hope. Unfortunately it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the damage the Bush Administration has already done.
Technorati Tags: Environmental Defense, Clean Air Act, Duke Energy, Coal Fired Power Plants
