There's Something in the Air

Two things that happened in the cyberspace that is connected to The Mercury got me thinking yesterday.

(Yes, I know EVERYTHING is connected on the Internet, but I'm referring to the things directly connected.)

The first is that people commented on yesterday's blog post in this here Digital Notebook, which many of you know lives in The Mercury's Town Square blogging community.


And both comments observed that one reason Congress can never agree on anything is because of how much money is contributed to their campaigns by special interest groups.

The second thing that happened was I was admiring the Pinterest board the freight train we call police reporter Brandie Kessler has populated for the region's "Most Wanted" and how effective it has become and helping people help police to catch those who need to be caught.

How do these things come together? Why in my Mercury e-mail in-box of course.

Because that's where a press release from the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund landed.

They are affiliated with the same folks who went to court to insist, gasp, that the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Limerick nuclear generating station just might have a long-term environmental impact.

But I digress.

What brought all these things together is that the folks at NRDC took a look at information gathered by Open Secrets and matched it up with the voting records of members of Congress, specifically how they voted on environmental issues.

And what they come up with uses the same mechanism as the Pinterest board and highlights how money affects politics. It's kismet I tell you!

And amid 193 House members and 39 Senators rated as "Dirty Air Villains" are a few local faces.

Before we get to that, the NRDC analysis came across some interesting trends. It found that House members who took more than $100,000 in career "polluter campaign contributions voted against clean air laws nearly twice as many times as those who accepted less than $100,000 from dirty industries."

"In the Senate, members taking more than $500,000 in career career polluter campaign contributions voted against clean air laws three times as often as those taking less, on average," NRDC proclaimed.

And of the 292 NRDC identifies as "Dirty Air Villains," 73 of them represent people living in cities and towns rated by the American Lung Association to be among the 25 most-polluted metro areas in the United States for air pollution.

Charles Dent

(I wrote about our ranking -- 10th -- in this post back in April; and last month I wrote in this blog post about how Pennsylvania ranks third for breathing air pollution specifically from coal-fire power plants; and on Sept. 2, I wrote about a recent court decision that torpedoed the EPA's attempt to get a handle on that power plant pollution.)

So enough background, on to the "villains:"

Joseph Pitts

1. Coming in as the region's number one for volume is U.S. Rep. Charles Dent, R-14th Dist., who has received $423,009 in career campaign contributions from industries the NRDC has declared "dirty" and has also cast what the group calls 13 "dirty votes," against a number of pieces of legislation listed.

(In fact, the analysis is based on 13 "major clean air vlotes in the House and four in the Senate. Members who voted against all 13 are designated "Dirty Air Villains" by the group. All four of the area Congressmen listed on the list cast the same 13 votes.)

Michael Fitzpatrick

2. The second rank, in terms of contributions accepted, belongs to U.S. Rep Joe Pitts, R-16th Dist., who has accepted $243,498 in career campaign contributions.

Patrick Meehan

3. Michael Fitzpatrick, R-8th Dist., holds the number three spot, coming in at $144,542 in contributions from polluting industries. His district is essentially all of Bucks County and a tiny little part of Montgomery County that includes Willow Grove.

4. Last but not least is Patrick Meehan, R-7th Dist., who has to date collected $109,900 on campaign contributions from polluting industries. His district includes Royersford, parts of Upper Providence, Audubon and Eagleville.

In addition to the rankings I provided, NRDC reports that the greater Philadelphia area, which includes all but Dent's district, also rank 16th worse for ozone pollution and 10th worst for year-round particulate pollution.

Allyson Schwartz

Also making the list of "villains is U.S. Sen. Patrick Toomey.

Pennsylvania's four (yes only four) "Clean Air Heroes," according to this ranking, include Allyson Schwartz, D-13th Dist., Chaka Fattah, D-2nd Dist., Robert Brady, D-1st Dist. and Mike Doyle, D-14th Dist.

All 193 "Dirty Air Villains" in the House are Republican. In the Senate, 37 Republicans and two Democrats "voted down the line against clean air. All 99 "Clean Air heroes" in the House are Democrats, while in the Senate, 41 of the "heroes" are democrats and two are Independent, according to NRDC Action Fund.

Everyone is Downwind of Somebody

Ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded the authority granted by Congress, a three-judge appeals court in Washington, D.C. has thrown out rules meant to deal with pollution that crosses state lines.

Like the water and air it defiles, pollution simply has no respect for state boundary lines. It literally goes where the wind blows without any care for photo IDs or toll booths. Willy nilly.

But we are a nation of states, at times united (although not very much lately) and so we have granted each of these states sovereignty over their areas.

And there's the rub.

What do you do with pollution produced in Ohio, but which then drifts into Pennsylvania?

As I wrote about on Aug. 3, Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation for air pollution from coal fired power plants.

And as I wrote about on April 29, a report by the American Lung Association Pennsylvania's air pollution from particle pollution and ozone is better than it has ever been in the last 12 years, it remains among the nation's worst.


In attempting to deal with this cross-state conundrum, the EPA did something unusual for government, they tried to approach it in the most cost-effective manner.

This is how The New York Times explained it:

"Rather than apportion the reductions according to the amount of pollution that each upwind state was contributing, the E.P.A. was seeking to require cleanup according to the cost of the reductions, so that the work would get done in the places where the cost of capturing a ton of sulfur or nitrogen oxides was the lowest. The agency was seeking to create a trading system in which the states could buy and sell pollution credits, with the actual work being done in the places where it was easiest to do it.

But the court said that under this scheme, the agency had improperly required states “to reduce their emissions by more than their own significant contribution to a downwind state’s non-attainment,” according to the opinion, written by Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and joined by Judge Thomas B. Griffith.  "

I can understand the logic of both positions.

The court says its unfair to make states clean up more pollution than they created, even if they are being paid for it through credits; and the EPA was saying the easiest and most efficient way to clean up pollution is at the source, and we created a trading system to try to make it fair.

Who should be responsible for the pollution once it leaves
the smokestack?

The folks who sued to stop it are, of course, those who would have had to bear the cost, several power companies and the mid-west and southern states in which they are located. Let's call them the sending states.

Supporting the EPA rule were those receiving that pollution, mostly along the mid-Atlantic east coast.

The larger philosophical question here has to do with capitalism in general. When you make a can of soup, the consumer buys the can of soup just for the soup, but gets the can as well. Who should have to pay for the disposal or re-use of the can?

Under the current system, it's the buyer and there's a certain logic to that. You can't carry a handful of soup home to east.

But as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said when he spoke at The Hill School in 2007.

"Nature is the infrastructure of our community, the air we breath, the water we drink, the shared resources," and without it, long-term prosperity is not possible, he told The Hill School audience that September.

It is a "false choice," Kennedy said, to be forced to choose between a clean environment and a thriving economy. "Good environmental policy is 100 percent good economic policy if we measure the economy the way we should: by how many people have good paying jobs and value the assets of their community."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at The Hill in 2007

The pattern now, he said, is best described as "liquidating the planet's resources to make a few people rich. Environmental injury is deficit spending, converting our natural resources to cash for a few years of pollution-based prosperity and our children will pay for our joy ride," said Kennedy.

Calling himself a die-hard free marketer, Kennedy said the country instead lives under "a highly subsidized, monopoly driven system."

He said if polluters were required to pay the "full cost of bringing their product to market," including dealing with the waste they produce, the public "would no longer be forced to pay their production costs."

"You show me a polluter, and I'll show you a subsidy," said Kennedy, son of the slain former U.S. Attorney General and presidential candidate.

"Polluters are escaping the discipline of the free market because the free market eliminates waste and pollution is waste," he said. "In a true free market, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbor rich, but what we have now are people who are making themselves rich by poisoning the rest of us."

I have long been attracted to this idea. The idea that companies and utilities create pollution, and we the taxpayers become responsible for cleaning it up.

Consider the diseases, the cases of asthma and heart disease, that are exacerbated by air pollution. Who pays for that? The consumer and the taxpayer.

The Superfund law and efforts like those in which the EPA was engaged in the current case, are efforts to put the cost on the polluters, but it is an up-hill battle.

Some argue that if the companies had to shoulder the cost, they would pass this on to consumers, making everything from electricity to, yes, cans of soup more expensive.

I agree.

Who pays for this child's asthma treatments?

I also think that would then be a motivation to be less wasteful, to make our energy cleaner and more efficient and to make us more cognizant of the true cost of things we now rarely considered.

But such change won't come easily and now, without definitive action by Congress *cough-cough* the EPA will have to try again to create a rule within the vague outlines of the law Congress wrote and which leaves room for challenge from those who benefit from the status quo.

In the meantime, it is estimated 34,000 people a year will die prematurely as a result of that pollution.

Did anyone factor in that cost I wonder?

Pennsylvania Wins Bronze for Pollution

The Cromby coal-fired power plant outside Phoenixville.

This is one of those times when coming in third is almost as bad as coming in first.

According to data analyzed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Pennsylvania is the 3rd worst state in the nation when it comes to exposing residents to toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Pennsylvania ranked 3rd among all states in industrial mercury air pollution from power plants with more than 3,960 pounds emitted in 2010.

As Digital Notebook reported in April, air pollution is
one of the primary causes of childhood asthma.

That accounts for 64 percent of state mercury air pollution and 6 percent of U.S. electric sector mercury pollution.  

When looking beyond just mercury pollution, we still win the bronze.

Pennsylvania’s electric sector ranked third in overall industrial toxic air pollution in 2010, emitting nearly 31.5 million pounds of harmful chemicals. 

This accounted for 78 percent of state pollution and about 10 percent of toxic pollution from all U.S. power plants, according to the NRDC analysis. 

The data was taken from the federal Toxic Release Inventory, a list of emissions made by polluters to the Environmental Protection Agency, which in turn makes it public.

The good news is, as bad as it is, it's getting better.

On the national level, the report found a 19 percent decrease nationally in all air toxics emitted from power plants in 2010, the most recent data available, compared to 2009 levels. 

"The welcomed drop, which also includes a four percent decrease in mercury emissions, results from two key factors. One is the increasing use by power companies of natural gas, which has become cheaper and is cleaner burning than coal; the other is the installation of state-of-the-art pollution controls by many plants--in anticipation of new health protections issued by the Environmental Protection Agency," the environmental advocacy organization reported.

“Toxic pollution is already being reduced as a result of EPA’s health-protecting standards,” said John Walke, NRDC’s clean air director. “Thanks to the agency’s latest safeguards, millions of children and their families in the states hardest hit by toxic air pollution from power plants will be able to breathe easier.’’

James "What heat wave?" Inhofe

“But these protections are threatened,” Walke said, “because polluters are intent on persuading future Congresses or presidential administrations to repeal them.”

Finalized in 2011, EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics standards will cut mercury air pollution by 79 percent from 2010 levels, beginning in 2015.

NRDC reported that one senator from Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, opposed attempts by Oklahoma Republican and climate-change denier Sen. James Inhofe to repeal the standards.

Pat "Let's not be too hasty about clean air" Toomey

Sen. Pat Toomey supported Inhofe's attempt to gut the regulations, they said. 

In an earlier assault on the EPA’s new standards, the House passed a bill to gut them last year; but a similar measure in June failed in the Senate.

In the second edition of “Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States,” NRDC also found that coal- and oil-fired power plants still contribute nearly half (44 percent) of all the toxic air pollution reported to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

NRDC: Electric sector pollution by state

Compared to 2010 levels, the standard will reduce mercury pollution from 34 tons to seven tons, a 79 percent reduction, by 2015. Sulfur dioxide pollution will be reduced from 5,140,000 tons in 2010 to 1,900,000 tons in 2015, a 63 percent reduction. 

Another dangerous acid gas, hydrochloric acid, will be reduced from 106,000 tons in 2010 to 5,500 tons in 2015, a 95 percent reduction.

With those and other pollution reductions resulting from the standard, as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks, 5,700 hospital visits, 4,700 heart attacks, and 2,800 cases of chronic bronchitis will be avoided in 2016. 

The public health improvements are also estimated to save $37 billion to $90 billion in health costs, and prevent up to 540,000 missed work or “sick” days each year.

Despite the overall reductions in total emissions, 18 of the Toxic 20 from 2009 remain in the 2010 list released today, although several states have made significant improvements highlighted in the report.

Most of the worst polluting plants are in the western part of the state

The states on the "Toxic 20" list (from worst to best) are:

1. Kentucky

2. Ohio

3. Pennsylvania

4. Indiana

5. West Virginia

6. Florida

7. Michigan

8. North Carolina

9. Georgia

10. Texas

11. Tennessee

12. Virginia

13. South Carolina

14. Alabama

15. Missouri

16. Illinois

17. Mississippi

18. Wisconsin

19. Maryland

20. Delaware 

This NRDC chart provides more information on the "Toxic 20"

For the full methodology, see the analysis “Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States,” which can be found here: http://www.nrdc.org/air/toxic-power-presentation.asp.

Of course all of this raises an interesting question.

Since we all like electricity, and we complain about air pollution from coal, and we complain about water pollution from fracking for gas and we complain about radioactivity from nuclear, and we complain about how dams for hydro-electricity blog fish migrations just where exactly do we expect it to come from?

Personally,  I would love it if our energy could come from solar and wind, but is that realistic?

What do you think?