With the feds having fallen down on the job, the California state Senate stepped in yesterday to keep up the fight against air pollution. The state Senate voted to add New Source Review rules to the state’s clean-air regulations — the same type of rules that the Bush administration did away with on a national level in December 2002. The federal rules had required older power plants and factories to install state-of-the-art pollution controls if they made upgrades that would boost production. The decision by the Bush team to loosen the rules set off a firestorm of protest in the environmental community and spurred lawsuits from nine northeastern states concerned that the changes would harm public health. The California bill will now go to the state Assembly.
