U.S. Congress and air standards

The Bush Administration has made things much easier on America's industrial air polluters. New, relaxed Environmental Protection Agency rules allow companies to massively update power plants, refineries and other facilities without installing the costly but readily available modern pollution-control equipment, as formerly required.

The rules, if allowed to stand, will make it possible for polluting equipment to stay in use for decades. This change would mark a huge, if short-sighted, victory for industry, and a sad defeat for public health and the environment.

It also would be a retreat from an important principle upheld more than 30 years by Republican and Democratic administrations alike: It may be economically impossible to require existing industrial units, even ones that pollute hideously, to retrofit to new clean-air standards. But when those units are to be substantially replaced, as opposed to merely maintained, they should be brought up to par.

Otherwise, immense amounts of unacceptable pollution will continue indefinitely which is what will happen if these new standards are not reversed. ...

-- The News-Press, Fort Myers, Florida