Maine Audubon Perspective

Leading the Charge

For Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe, New Year’s Eve 2002 may have been less memorable for the chance to welcome a new year than it was for the necessity of trying to protect Maine’s people and wildlife from toxic air pollution. That day, December 31, President Bush’s administration posted in the Federal Register the controversial new rules it has proposed for the U.S. Clean Air Act. That’s why it also was the day that Maine’s attorney general and his counterparts in eight other northeastern states filed a legal challenge to the new rules.

When the proposed new rules were announced in November, Rowe stated that “Maine’s people will be the biggest losers” if the new rules allow additional air pollution to stream from the middle of the nation and across the Northeast. He next announced that Maine would join every other New England state, as well as New York, New Jersey and Maryland, in responding aggressively to the proposed alteration of the Clean Air Act. The nine states are challenging in the U.S. Court of Appeals rules changes they contend are in violation of the act and significant enough to require the action of Congress—which, with significant leadership in different years by Maine Senators Muskie and Mitchell, has enacted and re-enacted the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970.

In Maine, an outpouring of articles, editorials and opinion columns from environmental, health and news organizations including Maine Audubon have expressed the belief that the Bush administration—responding to lobbying by the oil, gas, electric and coal industries—has made a short-sighted, poorly informed decision to weaken the Clean Air Act. The new rules, announced through the Environmental Protection Agency, for the New Source Review (NSR) provision of the Clean Air Act create significant loopholes that would allow the oldest and dirtiest power plants in the nation to forgo upgrades of their outdated anti-pollution equipment. Further proposals by the Bush administration are poised to gut the NSR by eliminating cleanup requirements for these facilities.

Made with no congressional input or oversight, these changes are especially harmful to people and wildlife in Maine. Geography, weather and bad luck place Maine downwind from major, outdated coal-burning power plants to Maine's west and south. These power plants have been "grandfathered" into the current Clean Air Act, and in the absence of the NSR, will be allowed to increase the disproportionately high levels of pollutants spewing from their stacks and traveling eastward on the jet stream. Wind and rain bring power-plant pollutants, including mercury, directly overhead and into our water. An estimated 70 percent of Maine's air pollution blows in from out of state.

And that means more mercury pollution is threatening Maine, which already has the dubious distinction of having the highest documented levels of mercury in its lakes and ponds compared to any other state in the nation. In addition to the mercury coming from outside the state, incinerators, industrial facilities and sewage treatment plants within Maine are also sources of mercury pollution.

Yet Maine has reason to be proud: its citizens, environmental groups, congressional delegates and state legislators have led the nation in fighting to learn about and curb mercury pollution. (See pages 8-10.)
The Bush administration's decision to weaken the Clean Air Act undermines Maine's important accomplishments to curb mercury pollution over the last decade; it seriously threatens the health of Mainers and the state's fish and wildlife. Our state needs a strong Clean Air Act to strengthen, not weaken, the many efforts already underway to curb mercury pollution here in Maine.

Governor Baldacci and Maine's bipartisan congressional delegation have and must continue to stand united against this threat to Maine's air quality and environment. In fact, Senators Snowe and Collins both voted January 22 in favor of a senate amendment to the Clean Air Act that would retain the NSR provision. The management did not pass, although a weaker amendment calling for further study did. Maine Audubon has thanked the senators for defending Maine’s skies, waters and wildlife. In the months ahead, we count on Maine’s leaders to continue fighting to curb mercury emissions and to defend the nation’s important environmental laws.

Kevin P. Carley, executive director