Attorneys general from 12 states and the District of Columbia recently filed a lawsuit challenging a major rollback of the nation’s clean air standards that will allow increased pollution from the oldest and dirtiest power plants. A coalition of conservation and public health organizations has filed suit as well. Under the rule changes, plants can upgrade their facilities without having to install the latest anti-pollution controls (as they were previously required to do under EPA’s New Source Review program) even if it results in new emissions. Anti-pollution controls must be added only if upgrades exceed 20 percent of the value of all equipment used to produce electricity, an extremely high threshold. This loophole will result in at least 20,000 premature deaths per year, 400,000 asthma attacks, and 12,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, according to the Clean Air Task Force. “This is an attack on the Clean Air Act by the Bush Administration,” said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. “The President is taking the nation in the wrong direction on environmental policy. We should not be relaxing emission control standards when air pollution continues to cause such devastating health and environmental problems.” New York and several other states previously filed a lawsuit challenging yet another Bush rollback, issued Dec. 31, 2002, that similarly opens loopholes to allow air pollution from industrial facilities. Just days before the lawsuits were announced, the non-partisan National Academy of Public Administration endorsed a study showing that the Bush administration’s rule changes could lead to a nearly 1.4 million-ton rise in air pollution in 12 states. The study was sponsored by the Environmental Integrity Project and the Council of State Governments/Eastern Regional Conference. Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office released a report that concluded the rule changes also could limit public access to emissions data and make it more difficult to uncover abuses by industrial facilities. “Overall, the final rule could result in less assurance that the public will have access to data on facility changes and the emissions they create, as well as input on decisions about undertaking these changes in the first place and controlling their emissions,” according to GAO. “Less information would make it more difficult for the public to monitor local emissions and health risks, as well as compliance with NSR.”