Candidate Review - Former Governor Howard Dean - The Environment

This is from a speech Dean made in San Francisco, July 31, 2003.

"We will finally make the EPA a cabinet-level agency with a Secretary, not an Administrator, who will have not just the symbolic support of the Administration, but the actual support as well. And we?ll ensure that the agencies created to oversee our precious environmental and natural resources aren?t co-opted by the very forces they?re supposed to be guarding against.

We?ll place tighter controls on air pollution immediately. New legislation will reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, mercury and carbon dioxide. We?ll strengthen New Source Review requirements to undo the damage done by the Bush Administration. And I?ll ask Congress to close the loophole in federal law that allows old, polluting power plants to continue to foul our air."

And from the section of his website detailing his position on air pollution.

"To reduce these health threats, one of the first actions Dean will take as President is to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, mercury, and carbon dioxide by fully enforcing the Clean Air Act and seeking new legislation to further strengthen that law. (In contrast, President Bush has dramatically weakened clean air safeguards and proposed so-called ?Clear Skies? legislation that would actually allow more power plant pollution than current law. Bush also refuses to curb carbon emissions that cause global warming despite his pledge to do so in the 2000 campaign.) A Dean administration will also protect our health by directing the EPA to accelerate adoption of health-based standards for other toxic air pollutants.

Dean will also faithfully enforce the Clean Air Act?s provisions to clean up disproportionately high pollution from older power plants and other industrial facilities. The Bush administration has violated the Clean Air Act and created a huge new regulatory loophole allowing power companies to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in rebuilding old power plants without installing modern pollution controls. "