The US Environmental Protection Agency wants to ease toxic air pollution standards to allow US oil refineries, chemical plants and other industries to boost emissions, according to a leaked draft circulated by an environmental group Monday.

The EPA s draft rules would amend the Clean Air Act to allow refineries, hazardous waste incinerators, chemical plants and steel mills to emit more toxic air emissions without triggering expensive pollution-reduction rules, according to documents released by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Emissions of 188 toxins including benzene, asbestos, chlorine and formaldehyde could rise by up to 50,000 pounds a year if the proposal is adopted, the NRDC said.

Officials at seven of 10 regional EPA offices have warned agency headquarters that changing the so-called maximum achievable control technology rules, or MACT, "would be detrimental to the environment and undermine the intent of the MACT program," according to a leaked EPA memo also released by the NRDC. According to the letter from EPA regional offices dated Dec. 13, 2005, a majority of regional officials say the proposal would allow industry to "virtually avoid regulation and greatly complicate any enforcement against them."

"This proposal is indefensible," said John Walke, an attorney at the NRDC. "No wonder even some of the EPA s own experts are outraged by this secretly hatched plan." An EPA spokeswoman declined to comment on the draft proposal because it would be "like asking us how a cake tastes when we have not even put the batter in the oven."

Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said the proposal was good because it gives industry incentives to reduce their emissions. "Without the proposal, powerful disincentives would exist to make these reductions," Slaughter said in a statement.

The proposal is being pursued at the EPA by William Wehrum, the acting head of EPA s air office, the NRDC said. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday is scheduled to consider the nomination of Wehrum, who has been criticized by environmentalists as too industry-friendly. The MACT program, added to the Clean Air Act in 1995, requires plants that exceed agency-set emission levels to install expensive scrubbers and other "best-available" pollution-reduction technology to reduce emissions by 95 percent or more.

Under the proposal, an industrial plant could go from being a "major" emissions source to a less-regulated "area" source by cutting its emissions to fall below a certain polluting threshold, which is 10 tons per year of a single pollutant or 25 tons per year of any combined pollutants. Under existing rules, an oil refinery that emitted 100 tons of toxins a year would have to slash levels to five tons a year.

But the revision would allow the same refinery to later increase toxic emissions to just below the 25-ton agency threshold and still escape controls, the NRDC said.
(Planet Ark, 04/04/2006)