More bad news from the Bush administration: The U.S. EPA is planning to relax Clinton-era interpretations of the Clean Air Act by allowing owners of aging coal-fired power plants to upgrade their facilities without installing pollution controls. The policy change is bound to be unpopular with environmentalists, as well as with many Northeast states, which cannot meet federal clean-air standards because of pollution drifting toward them from coal-burning power plants in the Midwest and the South. The EPA proposals do not require congressional approval and cannot be blocked without the passage of new legislation — an unlikely scenario, given the Republican-controlled House and President Bush’s veto power.
