CO2 rules still in the air

By Phoebe Sweet

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.

Conspicuously absent from a draft air permit Nevada's Environmental Protection Division approved this week were two words: carbon dioxide.

Although the large coal-burning power plant proposed for eastern Nevada will emit 10 million tons of the stuff - a greenhouse gas the division has the right to limit under state law - carbon is not even a consideration. Officials have said it will take months, maybe years, to cobble together regulations.

Meanwhile, both a final air permit for the largest of the three plants proposed for rural Nevada and a draft permit for a smaller plant are imminent.

As the air quality regulatory process marches forward in Nevada - sans regulation - other states are taking steps to call carbon out as an air pollutant that contributes to global warming and puts their residents at risk. Think rising seas in Massachusetts, wildfires in California, a swirling dust bowl in Kansas.

Massachusetts (and petitioners that included 11 other states) in April won a case before the Supreme Court that held greenhouse gases are air pollutants and the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate emissions of them.

California, which has some of the strictest regulations in the world, last year gave the state's environmental agency the authority to severely reduce man-made greenhouse gases and is fighting the federal government over the right to limit tailpipe emissions. And regulators recently proposed rules that would prohibit California utilities from buying electricity from most coal-burning power plants in neighboring states.

Most recently, the secretary of the Kansas Health and Environment Department denied a permit for a 1,400-megawatt coal plant expansion on the basis that global warming, caused by carbon pollution, is bad for the health of residents and the environment.

Nevada, with its three coal plant air permits poised for approval, could be the next to take a stand against global warming - if the state's public officials and environmental stewards muster the political will.

"The White House is undermining state efforts on global warming, but states are moving forward without them," said Bruce Nilles, an attorney with the Sierra Club in the Midwest. "That's the decision your governor is going to have to make: Is his legacy going to be that he accelerated global warming? That he increased the drought risk in the state?"

Nilles said the awesome responsibility of halting America's contribution to global warming will rest with state officials, elected and appointed, because they make regulatory and permitting decisions that can affect the state for decades to come.

So far, the march toward approval of permits that will allow more than 31 million tons of new carbon dioxide pollution in Nevada each year for the next 50 years seems inevitable.

Despite the lawsuits that environmentalists say they certainly will file once the permits are approved, Gov. Jim Gibbons and the state's Republican Party strongly favor coal, which they say is an inexpensive means of meeting Nevada's growing power needs. The governor's office did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment on whether Gibbons thinks lawsuits against the state will be successful or why the state can't wait for carbon legislation before approving coal plants.

The State Environmental Commission is unwilling to push through carbon regulations without months' more study. Further, when a coalition of environmental groups asked the commission in September to put approval of coal plant air permits on hold until it could create regulations limiting carbon emissions, the commission declined. It chose instead to wait for an advisory committee to weigh in on whether climate change affects Nevada and what to do about it if it does, and then allow the state time to painstakingly create new regulations.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Division, which reports to the governor, says its hands are tied by state law.

Dante Pistone, a spokesman for the division , said the state usually takes its lead from the federal government on pollution control regulations, but federal rules are on the horizon at best.

The state attorney general's office says Nevada, like the federal government, can regulate carbon dioxide but doesn't.

At present, the agency is negotiating deals with the three developers to install pollution control technology "when commercially viable." What that phrase means and whether those deals are enforceable remain to be seen. Environmentalists have pushed the division to open the negotiation process and the division said Friday it would allow them to review and comment on the agreements.

This week, Pistone said the Kansas decision to deny a permit to Sunflower Electric Power - which would have sold 85 percent of the power from the proposed plant to customers outside Kansas - will have "no bearing on our permitting process. We have a very definite regulatory process we have to follow in Nevada."

Melissa Subbotin, Gibbons' press secretary, echoed that sentiment Wednesday. "Those decisions will not affect our decision-making process," she said, adding that the Environmental Protection Division will follow Nevada and federal law when issuing permits.

Nevada law and federal law currently don't include carbon dioxide limits.

And although the legality of the Kansas decision is up for debate - Sunflower Electric Power has said it will appeal the decision and coal supporters are crying partisan politics - environmentalists say Nevada has all the authority it needs to say no to coal.

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