The Bush administration announced on November 22 that it is rolling back protections to limit air pollution from factories, refineries and power plants as part of a long-expected overhaul of EPA’s New Source Review program.

Specifically, EPA issued a final rule that:

• Allows plants to avoid pollution-control upgrades in specific equipment by meeting plant-wide targets for pollution reduction. This plant-wide applicability limit (PAL) “will last 10 years, allowing pollution decreases that occurred nine years ago to purportedly ‘offset’ actual and significant pollution increases today, thereby avoiding cleanup today,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

• Exempts plants from updating pollution controls if government has reviewed those controls during the last 10 years.

• Allows facilities to set a high “pollution baseline." NSR requires cleanup actions if a change at a facility results in significant pollution increases (e.g., 40 tons per year), which is determined through a baseline comparison, as NRDC points out. EPA’s rule allows a facility to base its pollution baseline on the highest amount of emissions released over a two-year period within the last 10 years.

EPA also issued a proposed rule that would expand the definition of “routine maintenance” -- which is exempt from NSR -- allowing older facilities to make more extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution equipment required of a “new source.”

In writing the Clean Air Act, Congress exempted older plants from compliance with new emissions standards because it was generally thought they would be phased out -- an assumption that turned out to be wrong. Yet instead of pushing these plants to clean up their act, the Bush administration seems intent on giving them a permanent free pass.