Complete list of press releases

(16 September 2003 — Washington) Environmental Defense today praised Representatives Charles Bass (R-NH), Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Jim Davis (D-FL) for introducing a bill that would cut and/or cap four major pollutants from power plants: sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), mercury and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

“The introduction of this bill by moderates representing very different regions of the country demonstrates a major positive shift in the politics of climate change,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Joseph Goffman.  “This bill sends a clear signal that the administration’s Clear Skies plan falls far short of the mark in every area.” 

“These three centrist politicians are demonstrating the same type of leadership on climate change that Senators McCain and Lieberman have in the Senate.  These Representatives and their counterparts in the Senate are showing a path toward doing what it takes to tackle climate change,” said Elizabeth Thompson, Environmental Defense legislative director.

“By including a net cap on emissions of mercury, SO2, NOx and CO₂ - and embracing emissions trading - this bill has the potential to create a market for pollution clean up that will produce superior environmental results and real cost savings,” said Goffman. 

The Bass-Cooper-Davis bill remains a work in progress.  Before Environmental Defense can support this bill, the group will be working for significant changes in the bill’s language amending the Clean Air Act, a much more ambitious carbon dioxide emissions reduction target, and legislative language that guarantees the environmental integrity of the carbon dioxide emissions credit trading system.

(16 September 2003 - New York) Environmental Defense today applauded the formation and funding of the Clean Ferry Emissions Reduction Initiative for New York Harbor.  The initiative, which today was awarded a major federal grant, will identify and put into place clean fuels and best available retrofit technologies to cut pollution from diesel-powered ferries in New York Harbor.  

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“Diesel emissions contain more than 40 cancer-causing compounds, and since 9/11 the number of diesel ferries in New York Harbor has almost doubled,” said Environmental Defense Living Cities program director Andy Darrell (pictured, right).  “By putting enough funding on the table to clean up virtually every private ferry in the Harbor, it looks like smooth sailing toward healthier air for New York Harbor.  New York is now poised to lead the country and the world in developing clean diesel technology for marine applications.”

Though ferries are an integral part of the city’s transportation network, they have an Achilles heal - dirty emissions with serious impacts on health and the environment.  This project will clean emissions from more than 40 diesel-powered ferries or 85% of the total ferries in New York Harbor.  At this time, none of the ferries in the Harbor are equipped with pollution controls.  By using retrofits and cleaner fuels like ultra low sulfur diesel, this project could reduce emissions by 75 to 90%. 

“The sponsors and participants in this project should be commended for stepping forward now to protect public health,” said Darrell.  “Close to half of Americans live in areas where the air is unsafe to breathe.  This project will point the way toward cleaner air for New York’s waterfront and for port cities around the country.” 

Every resident of New York City breathes air that fails to meet basic air quality standards, and diesel is a major source of that pollution.  In New York County, 80% of the added cancer risk from poor air quality is due to mobile sources, and for many compounds, diesel is the main culprit.  Diesel emissions are linked to childhood asthma, decreased lung function and other respiratory illnesses. 

A leader in urban air issues, Environmental Defense has provided expertise for the project about the best available technologies to reduce diesel emissions from ferries.  For additional information about the project and other air quality work by Environmental Defense in New York City and across the nation please visit http://www.environmentaldefense.org/go/airquality.

(11 September, 2003 - San Luis Obispo, CA)  Immortalized by Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, the endangered red-legged frog will be getting a helping hand from one of America’s most prominent wine companies.  California’s Robert Mondavi has finalized a Safe Harbor conservation agreement with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USF&W) that will enhance habitat of the famous frog and two rare birds on the company’s Cuesta Ridge Vineyard near Paso Robles, CA.

First developed by Environmental Defense in 1995 to ease the restrictions and regulations often associated with hosting rare and endangered species, Safe Harbor agreements represent a new breed of conservation tool that makes habitat enhancement easier and more attractive for landowners.  Environmental Defense assisted Robert Mondavi in crafting and submitting the agreement.  A similar agreement between USF&W and Paramount Farming Company in Bakersfield, CA to help the San Joaquin kit fox was approved this spring.

“Not only will this agreement benefit these rare species in California, but having the cooperation of a well-known company like Robert Mondavi will continue to help us show that habitat conservation can be good business,” said Michael Bean, chair of the Environmental Defense wildlife program and a leading authority on the Endangered Species Act. “We commend Mondavi’s enthusiasm and cooperation.”

The Robert Mondavi company is the first in its industry to pursue a Safe Harbor agreement.  Two other Safe Harbor agreements are in effect in California.  This agreement entails riparian restoration along a seasonal stream on the property to benefit the frog and the least Bell’s vireo and southwestern willow flycatcher. 

“We are committed to making high quality wine using natural farming methods and recognized the role that we could play at Cuesta Ridge in enhancing our natural resources and providing needed habitat,” said R. Michael Mondavi, Chairman of Robert Mondavi.  “Safe Harbor presents a win-win solution for landowners and rare species.  Environmental Defense understands that removing bureaucratic obstacles to conservation is critically important to businesses, and their innovative, incentive-based approach is a model landowners can embrace.”
 
Turning farmers and forest landowners from adversaries into allies for conserving rare species is the object of a unique conservation effort by Environmental Defense.  As part of its new Center for Conservation Incentives, the organization maintains a virtual library of information about incentives for private conservation now available on-line at http://www.environmentaldefense.org/go/incentiveslibrary.  The library includes the most extensive information on Safe Harbor agreements.

Safe Harbor agreements have already been struck with several hundred landowners on more than two million acres of land nationwide.  The Safe Harbor concept is responsible for the reintroduction of the Hawaiian goose (the state’s official bird) to the island of Molokai, after an absence of more than two centuries, and the return of the northern aplomado falcon, North America’s rarest falcon, as a breeding bird in Texas after an absence of several decades.

(10 September 2003 — Washington)  Cinergy Corporation, working in cooperation with Environmental Defense, today pledged to voluntarily take actions stabilizing its greenhouse gas emissions at 5% below 2000 levels in 2010 through 2012.

Cinergy is the first predominantly coal-burning electric utility in the US to announce publicly its intention to make absolute reductions of its greenhouse gas emissions.  To achieve this goal, the Cincinnati-based company is partnering with Environmental Defense, a national advocacy group, to develop a program to cut greenhouse gas emissions from Cinergy’s fossil fuel-powered electrical plants in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

“Cinergy’s action to control global warming is the type of corporate leadership that will help break the paralysis in Washington on this issue,” said Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp.  “Cinergy is showing that utilities can produce power and profits, while protecting the planet and achieving the emissions reductions required by the McCain/Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. 

To cut the greenhouse gas emissions, Cinergy will undertake a combination of internal actions and investments in emissions reduction projects.  Cinergy has committed to spend $21 million over the period 2004 through 2010 to help accomplish its goal.  Cinergy and Environmental Defense are working together to design the programs needed to achieve the pollution reductions.

(28 August 2003 — Washington, DC)  Environmental Defense blasted today’s announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not characterize carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, as a pollutant according to Clean Air Act standards.

“Refusing to call greenhouse gas emissions a pollutant is like refusing to say that smoking causes lung cancer.  The Earth is round.  Elvis is dead.  Climate change is happening.  It’s time to stop the denial and start focusing on solutions,” said Melissa Carey, climate policy specialist with Environmental Defense. 

Environmental Defense hailed Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) for their continued efforts to achieve real cuts in greenhouse gas pollution.  On August 1, 2003, the Senate unanimously agreed to guarantee a debate and vote on their Climate Stewardship Act, which is the first proposal for a comprehensive, national policy to cut the heat-trapping gases that are disrupting the Earth’s climate.  

“This is the United States—we don’t shrink from challenges, we create solutions.  We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again, on climate change.  The public knows this, Senators McCain and Lieberman know this, and so too should the Bush Administration,” said Carey.

Senators McCain and Lieberman are leaders, and states from California to Oklahoma to Maine are already acting to reduce greenhouse gases.  In addition, poll after poll confirm that a growing majority of Americans supports mandatory action on climate change. 

“Sometime before Christmas, Senators will have a chance to halt the waffling and delay on climate change and participate in a real debate about the only thing that counts on climate policy — getting greenhouse gas pollution to go down, not up,” said Carey.

(28 August 2003 — Washington, DC)  Environmental Defense praised the federal Export-Import Bank for rejecting the controversial Camisea project this morning in a 2-1 vote, marking the first time that the Bank has ever rejected a final application on environmental grounds.  The Camisea project in Peru is one of the world’s most controversial and high-risk projects and clearly violates the Export-Import Bank’s Environmental Guidelines.  The Board rejected guarantees for roughly $200 million in loans to the project. 

“This was an important test, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank made a difficult, historic, and courageous decision,” said Environmental Defense social scientist Aaron Goldzimer.  “This vote reaffirms the Bank’s international leadership on export credits and the environment.  Despite tremendous pressure, a majority of the Bank’s Board of Directors decided to protect the credibility of its Environmental Guidelines.” 

The $1.5 billion Camisea project extends from a Reserve for the protection of nomadic indigenous peoples through some of the most pristine forest regions of the Amazon to one of the most important marine reserves in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Evidence already exists that contractors at the project, which has already begun construction, have contacted and threatened isolated indigenous peoples, many of whom lack immunity to common illnesses.  Local people have reported drastic declines in the fish and game they depend on for food, and local water supplies have been polluted because of the project’s poor erosion control.  The project also involves the construction of a fractionation plant and export loading facility immediately adjacent to the Paracas National Reserve, which is a sanctuary for rare or endangered species like the Humboldt penguin, marine otter, and sea turtles. 

Only one other project, China’s Three Gorges dam, has been turned down on environmental grounds in the history of the Ex-Im Bank, but that was only a Letter of Intent and not a final application. 

“It did not have to turn out this way,” said Goldzimer.  “Local Peruvian citizen groups and indigenous federations tried to work with the project companies and the Peruvian Government to address the project’s problems.  But the Government and the companies were inflexible.  Hopefully they will take this opportunity to improve the project so that it can contribute to the sustainable development of Peru.”

(August 27, 2003 - Boulder, CO)  Today the Bush administration finalized sweeping exemptions to the Clean Air Act that will allow thousands of power plants and industrial facilities nationwide to increase air pollution by evading long-standing clean air safeguards.  The final rules categorically declare as “routine” changes at industrial facilities involving millions of dollars in equipment replacement and leading to substantially higher levels of air pollution.  The action constitutes one of the most far-reaching anti-clean air measures in the history of the Clean Air Act.  The facilities affected include thousands of power plants, refineries, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities.

“Today’s action will result in more harmful air pollution in our neighborhoods and communities, more harmful air pollution for our families and children, and less accountability for some of the biggest polluters in America,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Vickie Patton. “The Bush administration is systematically dismantling vital, cost-effective clean air measures that have protected American families from the harmful effects of industrial air pollution for a quarter century.”

EPA’s final action comes immediately after an August 25, 2003 General Accounting Office report found that EPA has relied on select, incomplete information provided by major air polluters to justify its rollbacks to the Clean Air Act’s new source review program.  

“Only a few weeks ago, the EPA’s own enforcement actions illustrated how important the law has been in protecting people from harmful air pollution - a federal judge held that Ohio Edison violated the Clean Air Act when it spent over $100 million to rebuild a plant and significantly increase air pollution, all without upgrading its pollution control equipment,” said Patton. “The rules being finalized today would make that pollution increase legal, and leave the public with no recourse to protect itself.”  

Environmental Defense today released an analysis showing that the equipment replacement activities recently held unlawful in EPA’s Clean Air Act enforcement case against Ohio Edison would not exceed the new cost thresholds EPA is establishing under today’s rule changes.   On August 7, 2003, a federal district court judge held that Ohio Edison violated the Clean Air Act by failing to modernize pollution control technology when it made massive changes at the W.H. Sammis power plant in Ohio that led to significant air pollution increases.  The total cost of the projects exceeded $100 million and included, for example, a $22 million project at one electric generating unit to replace the economizer, reheating equipment, front ash hopper tubes, low pressure turbine rotors, burners, coal pipes, pulverizers, and combustion controls. 

The traditional “new source review” program adopted in the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments has long required old, high-polluting sources such as power plants to prevent pollution increases that would worsen unhealthy air quality in urban centers or adversely impact national parks.  Today, the EPA finalized new rules that would broadly exclude existing industrial sources from the long-standing requirement to modernize pollution controls by imposing an arbitrary economic test that would exempt major pollution-increasing activity from clean air protections.

(27 August 2003 — Raleigh, NC)  More than 100 of North Carolina’s leading scientists have endorsed a report recently released by Environmental Defense that calls for stronger conservation measures to protect the state’s environment.  “Horizon 2100: Aggressive Conservation for North Carolina’s Future” outlines the healthy and prosperous future for North Carolina’s environment that would result from proactive conservation and contrasts that vision with the impoverished environment that will likely result from continuation of sprawling development, casually managed growth and limited conservation.

The report is the result of a year-long effort by nine of the state’s top conservation scientists to document the critical role that aggressive conservation can play in preserving, restoring and maintaining natural systems.  The report is available at www.environmentaldefense.org/go/nchorizon.

“We have been flooded with e-mails from conservation experts across the state who have read the report and support its vision for a healthy environment and the steps that North Carolina must take to truly conserve the function of its natural systems,” said David McNaught, senior policy analyst with Environmental Defense in North Carolina.  “A healthy environment will help ensure a prosperous future for North Carolina.  Innovative conservation planning now can help the state chart its course for the next 100 years.”

“Without aggressive conservation, North Carolina will likely experience profound and perhaps irrevocable ecological losses over the next three to four decades,” said Charles Peterson, vice chair of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.  “Environmental conservation programs should be focused on long-term outcomes and attentive to inevitable realities.  Otherwise, the current trajectories of population growth and land use change will result in a North Carolina that is far less healthy, vital and prosperous than that which is attainable.”

(August 22, 2003 - Boulder, CO)  The Bush administration is preparing to finalize some of the most far-reaching anti-clean air measures in the history of the Clean Air Act.  According to government records, on August 1, 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency submitted sweeping rollbacks to the Clean Air Act’s “new source review” for final White House review.  If finalized, the changes would allow thousands of power plants, pulp and paper mills, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities nationwide to substantially increase air pollution in surrounding communities without having to meet long-standing clean air safeguards.

“This is the single most destructive anti-clean air rule in the history of the Clean Air Act,” said Environmental Defense senior attorney Vickie Patton. “The Bush administration is preparing to eliminate vital, cost-effective clean air measures that have protected Americans from the harmful effects of industrial air pollution for a quarter century.”

EPA data indicates that even without the impending rollbacks, large pollution sources such as power plants release about 11.4 million tons of harmful sulfur dioxide and 5.2 million tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides each year, comprising 62% and 21% of the national totals for these contaminants. 

“This decision will mean more pollution in our cities and communities, more pollution for our families and children and less accountability and responsibility for America’s largest polluters,” Patton said.  “Americans want polluters to clean up their act, but the Bush administration is helping them do the exact opposite.”

The traditional “new source review” program adopted in the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments has long required old, high-polluting sources such as power plants to prevent pollution increases that would worsen unhealthy air quality in urban centers or adversely impact national parks.  By contrast, the administration’s initiative would allow virtually all air pollution increases from old, high-polluting sources to go unregulated.  Specifically, the EPA is preparing to finalize new rules that would broadly exclude existing industrial sources from the long-standing requirement to modernize pollution controls by imposing an arbitrary economic test that would exempt major pollution-increasing activity from clean air protections.

(20 August 2003 - Raleigh, N.C.)  Several North Carolina environmental groups today expressed strong disappointment after Gov. Mike Easley signed into law a bill that weakens regulations to protect water quality and rare species in Swift Creek, a stream in the upper Tar River basin.  Last year, after a lengthy rulemaking process, the state Environmental Management Commission adopted rules that would have limited development along the entire river.  The bill signed by Gov. Easley modifies those rules by suspending downstream regulations.  Environmental groups had encouraged the governor to veto the bill and thereby ensure that protections remained in place for the entire creek.

“Governor Easley has signed a watered down bill,” said Environmental Defense attorney Daniel Whittle.  “Three years ago the governor pledged to protect water quality in all 17 river basins.  Unfortunately, this law does just the opposite and leaves a significant portion of Swift Creek subject to unrestricted development.”
 
“Swift Creek is among the highest quality streams in the state and has been relatively free of the pollution and excessive development that have plagued watersheds throughout North Carolina, particularly in urban areas,” said Heather Jacobs, the Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper.  “Upstream populations of mussels and other at-risk species depend in part on maintaining clean water in downstream portions of the creek.”

“Runoff from development and other sources is the number one cause of water pollution in North Carolina,” said Elizabeth Ouzts, director of N.C. Public Interest Research Group.  “The bill that Governor Easley signed into law yesterday fails to protect one of the state’s most precious streams from runoff pollution.  Worse still, controls for the downstream portion will disappear altogether unless the General Assembly adopts new protective legislation next year.”

(11 August 2003 —Washington)  Environmental Defense today filed legal and administrative actions against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect public health from dangerous diesel air pollution.  Diesel engine exhaust is among the most dangerous and pervasive sources of air pollution and is widely recognized as a probable human carcinogen.   EPA has established rigorous emission standards for diesel trucks and buses, but none to protect the public from stationary diesel engine pollution, such as electrical generators.  Environmental Defense is taking action to ensure that stationary diesel engines also are required to meet protective emission standards.

“EPA’s diesel double standard is a hazard to public health; the agency must address this dangerous diesel loophole,” said Dr. John Balbus, Environmental Defense health program director.  “Environmental Defense is taking legal action today because diesel air pollution makes the biggest contribution to cancer risk of any toxic air contaminant.” 

“We can protect public health through sensible, cost-effective measures that address the hazardous high-polluting diesel generators that have long been overlooked,” said Vickie Patton, Environmental Defense senior attorney. 

Stationary diesel engines include generators increasingly providing prime and backup sources of electrical power.  California estimates there are more than 16,000 stationary and portable diesel-fueled engines in the state and that 11,300 of these are used for backup power.  An Environmental Defense California study found that in the South Coast, San Diego, San Joaquin, and Sacramento areas alone, 150,000 children attend school in zones with high pollution risk due to the operation of backup diesel generators.  Northeastern states recently estimated that there are 33,678 stationary diesel generators in the eight-state Northeast region. 

(7 August 2003 — Washington) Environmental Defense today blasted a lawsuit filed late yesterday by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) against the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  By suing the White House office, CEI hopes to force the White House to formally retract reports that reiterate the broad conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences on global warming.

Environmental Defense called the lawsuit desperate.  “The Earth is round, Elvis is dead, and yes, climate change is happening,” said Melissa Carey, Environmental Defense climate change policy specialist. “There is a sea of evidence pointing to the reality of global warming.  If the conclusions of the world’s scientific community, as affirmed by the United States’ own National Academy of Sciences, aren’t fit for publication, what is?  It’s time to face the facts and move on to a plan of action.  Responsible nations and corporations have already done so.”

“It’s interesting that this suit comes just at the Senate prepares to take up the issue of climate change in the fall when it will vote on the McCain Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act.  Unfortunately, the scientific reality of global warming won’t be changed by legal maneuvering, and pretending the problem doesn’t exist does not make it go away.  Global climate change needs real solutions, not frivolous lawsuits,” said Steve Cochran, Environmental Defense director of strategic communications.

CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE * AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION * CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION * EARTHJUSTICE * ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE * NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL * SOUTHERN ALLIANCE FOR CLEAN ENERGY * SOUTHERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER *
U.S. PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP

For Immediate Release: August 1, 2003   Press Contact: Cat Lazaroff, 202-667-4500 x213

EPA?s Smog Proposal Falls Short of Protecting the Public
Stronger measures needed to reduce ozone pollution

Washington DC?The latest federal proposal promising to help clear up the nation?s smog and soot problems will fall far short of its goal, environmental groups said today. A coalition of groups is submitting formal comments later today criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency?s (EPA) proposed ?options? for implementing the 1997 8-hour ozone standard. The groups said the EPA proposal would actually weaken protections against smog.

Despite increasing evidence that long term exposure to lower levels of ozone can cause dangerous and sometimes permanent lung problems, the EPA is proposing to give polluted metropolitan areas more time and more loopholes to avoid taking the steps needed to protect public health.

?What we need is clean air, but what the EPA is offering is more delays and more opportunities to game the system,? said Ann Weeks, Legal Director at CATF. ?EPA was given the task of implementing strong new ozone standards, and they?ve come back with proposals that would leave the public breathing more smog?not less.?

In 1997, EPA put in place a more protective 8-hour ozone standards after scientific evidence demonstrated that the existing 1-hour ozone standard (in place since 1979) does not sufficiently protect children, asthmatics, and those active outdoors from the adverse health effects caused by ozone smog. These health effects?which result not only from exposure to high levels of ozone over shorter time periods, but also from longer exposure to lower levels of ozone?include decreased lung function, respiratory ailments, asthma attacks, hospital admissions and emergency room visits for respiratory problems, inflammation of the lungs, and possible long-term lung damage.

The EPA has finally published a proposal to implement the 8-hour ozone standards. Unfortunately, the proposal would create more problems than it would solve. Here are some of the weaknesses cited by the environmental coalition in comments to be submitted later today:

(31 July, 2003 — Washington, D.C.)  Environmental Defense today praised the leadership and hard work of Senators McCain, Lieberman and their staffs for securing the opportunity of a direct vote on S. 139, the Climate Stewardship Act.  When it is voted on in the fall, this bipartisan bill will be the first ever vote on the floor of either house of Congress for or against a full market-based approach to lowering greenhouse gas emissions across the country.

“The vote on the Climate Stewardship Act will be the litmus test for Senators on global warming,” said legislative director Elizabeth Thompson.  “Americans have a right to know where their Senators stand on the issue.  Senator McCain, Senator Lieberman, and their staffs, have done great work to ensure that right.” 

Environmental Defense is strongly backing the Act and has launched an advertising campaign in support of the legislation, and has also been coordinating a petition campaign in support of the bill that has generated more than 130,000 citizen co-sponsors.

(31 July, 2003 — Washington, D.C.)    Environmental Defense today criticized a proposed deal in the U.S. Senate that would result in an energy policy favoring fossil fuels over renewable energy, lacking any real conservation measures, and failing to deal meaningfully with climate change.

“Finding environmentally friendly provisions in this bill is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Knowing what is in the House energy package, the conference process could only make it worse,” said Environmental Defense legislative director Elizabeth Thompson.  “This debate has been more painful than a root canal, and these last minute backroom deals will result in a bill that does virtually nothing to promote innovation, conservation or energy security.  America needs, and deserves a more open and full debate, and a better policy.”