Delawareans voice disdain for proposed repeal of Clean Power Plan

Health officials say cases of asthma, lung disease and premature deaths will increase in Delaware if federal officials repeal the nation’s Clean Power Plan.

“Revoking the Clean Power Plan gives power plants a license to pollute,” said Kevin Stewart, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of the Mid-Atlantic. “This action puts children and other vulnerable populations in harm’s way due to air pollution and climate change. This is unacceptable.”

Stewart joined about 100 people on Monday at the Chase Center on the Riverfront for a public meeting hosted by the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to seek input on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan.

Steward estimated that without a Clean Power Plan forcing polluters to cut back emissions, by 2030 the nation could see an estimated 90,000 more pediatric asthma attacks and 4,500 more premature deaths each year.

“We must emphasize that the populations potentially at risk from exposure to air pollution are not a few people in fragile health, but, in the Mid-Atlantic, they are groups containing hundreds of thousands or even millions of individuals,” Stewart said. Those vulnerable populations – infants, children, senior citizens, as well as people with asthma, lung diseases, heart diseases and diabetes – encompass nearly half of the First State’s residents, he said.

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State officials said they scheduled Monday's meeting because the EPA declined to schedule any public hearings outside of the one held in late November in West Virginia.

“DNREC believes the future of the [Clean Power Plan] is important, and that decisions should not be rushed without fully considering public input,” DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin said.

The Clean Power Plan, adopted in 2015, was the result of a 2009 EPA finding that greenhouse gas pollution threatens public health and leads to changes in the climate. The plan has been on hold because of a court challenge by more than two dozen states.

The plan requires a 32-percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions nationwide by 2030. It mandates specific reduction goals for pollution in each state, and each state’s plans for meeting those goals is due in September 2018.

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President Donald Trump in March signed an executive order directing the EPA to review, and possibly repeal the plan. The EPA issued a notice on Oct. 16 outlining its intent to repeal the Clean Power Plan.

Most of the speakers on Monday opposed repealing the plan, but David Stevenson of the Delaware-based think tank Caesar Rodney Institute said the loss of the federal Clean Power Plan will not hurt Delaware’s efforts to curb emissions, which are already well underway. He also said that the plan was illegal in the first place – a claim he said is supported by the Supreme Court’s stay on the plan’s implementation.

“The illegal basis of this is the EPA has the authority to regulate individual sources, for example, an individual power plant,” Stevenson said. “They don’t have the authority to take over the electric grid and do things outside of individual sources, and that’s what this did.”

Stevenson, one of more than a dozen speakers on Monday, said the plan also relies on outdated science and economic impact estimates.

“Things are not as bad as a lot of folks are saying,” he said. “I want to see something that is legal. This plan wasn’t.”

Delaware’s elected officials said they fully support the Clean Power Plan’s goals, and heavily criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the mandate.

“Moving ahead with the Clean Power Plan is of particular importance to Delaware, given EPA’s failure to address emissions from power plants that impact Delaware’s air quality,” Gov. John Carney said. Delaware wants the EPA to act on air pollution wafting from smokestacks in West Virginia and Pennsylvania eastward into the First State.

Years before the Clean Power Plan was developed, Delaware began its own attack on regional air pollution. It became one of nine East Coast states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Carney said has already led to a 40 percent drop in emissions since it began in 2009.

“But Delaware and a handful of other willing states cannot and should not be expected to tackle carbon pollution alone,” Carney said. “The rest of the country must follow Delaware’s lead and be part of the solution rather than making the problem worse. The Clean Power Plan is a very good plan in response to the risks climate change impacts impose for our country.”

U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said it is vital to fight the impacts of climate change, something the Clean Power Plan aimed to do.

“We are at the end of America’s tailpipe. It’s not fair,” Carper said. “Make no mistake, the scientific evidence is clear. Climate change is real and a growing threat to all Americans, especially Delawareans living in the lowest-lying state in the nation.”

Carper pointed to sea level rise seen along Delaware’s coast, particularly at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Sussex County. He also said the proposed repeal is “not just irresponsible – it’s irrational.”

The deadline to submit comments on the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan is Jan. 16. To submit comments online, go to www.regulations.gov, select “Repeal of Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units,” and click the “Comment Now” button. Comments also can be emailed to a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov, including Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355 in the subject line. Mail comments to EPA Docket Center, Room 3334, EPA WJC West Building, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20004, Attn: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2017-0355.

Contact reporter Maddy Lauria at (302) 345-0608, mlauria@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @MaddyinMilford.