Port Arthur activist testifies against easing clean air laws

July 16, 2002, 11:35PM

By KAREN MASTERSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A Port Arthur activist told senators Tuesday that if the Bush administration's plan to relax clean air standards is not stopped, the children in his poor community will grow sicker with breathing and skin disorders.

"The new (administration) proposal is really a death sentence for already sick industrial neighborhoods," Hilton Kelley said during a five-hour joint hearing of two Senate committees.

As high temperatures in the nation's capital cooked pollutants into ozone, senators heard testimony for and against President Bush's plan to change the way the Clean Clear Act is enforced.

A key provision of the act -- new source review -- currently requires oil refineries, utilities and other industries to install anti-pollution technologies when they expand production capacity or for some other reason increase emissions. Bush's plan would, under certain conditions, exempt oil refineries from the law.

Kelley said Port Arthur and other communities along the Gulf Coast -- where nearly half the nation's crude oil is processed -- already suffer from serious health problems so that the rest of the nation can have cheap gasoline.

Invoking his anti-pollution organization's mantra, Kelley told senators "enough is enough," and asked that they stop Bush's proposed plan from taking effect later this year.

But the plan had its defenders on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., accused the president's critics of creating a "sickly odor of campaign rhetoric."

And Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said: "We heard two very good presidential speeches today," referring to passionate statements against the Bush plan made by Democratic Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Joseph Biden of Delaware. "You can't run one of the most industrial nations in the world on windmills," Inhofe added.

Republicans said the Bush plan will clarify what they called a confusing and ill-conceived law. They said industries are discouraged from meeting other environmental standards, such as reducing sulfur in motor fuels, out of fear that the modifications would trigger new source review requirements.

"New source review is a nightmare that does little to protect the environment," said Sen. Robert Smith, R-N.H., the highest ranking Republican on the environment committee.

But environmentalists say the changes would gut a law that only recently has been used to curb industrial emissions.

In 1998, the Clinton administration began aggressively enforcing the new source review provision, forcing refineries and utility plants into multimillion dollar settlements for failing to reduce levels of pollutants.

Jeffrey Holmstead, an assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said senators and the media fail to understand the Bush plan. He said changes to the Clean Air Act are needed to free refineries from multiple layers of regulations that often stop them from upgrading with pollution-control technologies.

Those comments triggered skepticism and frustration from several senators, who said the administration's logic was hard to follow. They asked Holmstead how the Bush plan would improve air quality, when refineries would be required to upgrade facilities only after they've exceeded pollution levels higher than any two-year period in the previous 10 years. Premcor Refining Inc., for example, which has a large refinery in Port Arthur, said it has decreased emissions by 40 percent since 1995.

"It defies common sense to me," said Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. He said he was skeptical of Holmstead's assertion that air quality would improve, because EPA documents indicate that other agency officials believe the change "would substantially diminish the scope of the (new source review) program."

Holmstead responded that Edwards "suffers from the same misimpression" as Lieberman. "There's been a great deal of misunderstanding about what we're doing," he said, adding that upgrade requirements once the new source review is triggered will be more stringent under the Bush plan.

Kelley worried that the 10-year rollback would allow Premcor -- which processes 240,000 barrels of crude a day at its Port Arthur plant -- to go ahead with a plan to emit another 500 tons of pollutants a year, without any environmental upgrades.

That would represent an increase of about 4 percent, which a Premcor official said was necessary in order for the plant to meet federal sulfur reduction requirements in gasoline and diesel fuels.

Holmstead and Kelley were among 11 panelists to testify Tuesday, including state attorneys general, nationally renowned environmentalists and industry representatives.

Environmentalists from Texas and other states heavily polluted by the petrochemical industry have complained that Congress and the media have been too focused on the Bush administration's plan to ease restrictions on power plants. They said the administration's plan to go easier on the nation's aging oil refineries is equally as troubling.

Tuesday's hearing was largely academic. The Bush administration shows no signs of backing off of its plan to ease new source review requirements.

And Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has no plans at this time to introduce legislation that would stop the changes from taking effect.

Instead, he's focused on pushing his bill to curb power plant emissions. "It's a question of how much we can get done," Jeffords said of the few months remaining in the current congressional session.

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