The Bush administration has decided to stop investigating 70 power plants suspected of violating clean air standards, and will consider dropping 13 other cases that were referred to the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post. This follows EPA’s recent decision to substantially weaken its New Source Review (NSR) program, which governs power-plant emissions. Under this change, plants can perform more extensive upgrades without having to install the latest anti-pollution controls (as they were previously required to do) -- even if upgrades result in new emissions. Specifically, anti-pollution controls must be added only if upgrades within a single year exceed 20 percent of the value of all equipment used to produce electricity. Upgrades below this high threshold are now considered “routine maintenance,” which is exempt from NSR. In 1999, the Clinton administration uncovered evidence that the previous “routine maintenance” standard was being widely abused, and moved to compel compliance by launching a host of lawsuits. The Bush administration half-heartedly committed to move forward with these lawsuits, most of which are still pending, but has now decided not to initiate new litigation even where violations are found. Instead, past violations are being judged by the new, weaker standard -- even though it was not the law at the time. “I don’t know of anything like this in 30 years,” an EPA enforcement lawyer told the New York Times, adding, “If you say, ‘I’m not going to enforce the law at all,’ that is doing rulemaking without a rulemaking process.” EPA had already notified roughly two dozen plants under investigation that it had uncovered environmental violations, an agency official told the Times. However, these cases will now be dropped. “Just weeks ago, we were assured that the administration would continue to prosecute polluters who violated clean air rules in the past,” said Sen. James Jeffords (I-VT), the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee. “Now they're saying let’s just pretend nothing bad ever happened. That is like saying, ‘Let’s pretend that the thousands of lives shortened by increased pollution from those illegal activities don’t matter.’ The combined effect of the change in rules and the evisceration of enforcement cripples the Clean Air Act.” This rollback originated with the Cheney energy task force. In March 2001, a lobbyist for utility-giant Southern Co. -- which was being sued by the Justice Department for illegally upgrading 10 of its plants -- e-mailed a Department of Energy official suggesting changes to NSR for inclusion in the administration’s energy plan. The Cheney task force responded by calling for a review of the program, along with ongoing NSR enforcement actions, which included the litigation against Southern Co., the leading polluter among utilities. (Southern Co. forked over $3.4 million in campaign contributions for the 2000 and 2002 elections, with 70 percent going to Republicans.) Needless to say, the subsequent changes to NSR have severely undercut the Clinton-initiated lawsuits, recently forcing the Justice Department to backpedal in the middle of a case against a Baldwin, Ill., plant owned by Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. “In light of EPA’s change of position as to its interpretation of the Clean Air Act,” the Justice Department stated, “the United States does not rely on any prior statements it has made to this Court that a very narrow construction of the ‘routine maintenance’ exemption is required by the Clean Air Act itself.”