Doing the sums, based on current US EPA numbers for the cost of premature deaths, the proposed Poolbeg Incinerator could cost Ireland up to $2.5 Billion per year.
The United States EPA claims that by 2014 a new law titled "CSAPR" will prevent 13,000-34,000 pollution-related premature deaths, and yield between $120 billion and $280 billion in health and environmental benefits annually. [See full article in The Economist, Oct 15th 2011 | ATLANTA |New rules on power-plant emissions invite a host of lawsuits].
This law is opposed by "power companies", a title misused by incineration companies such as Covanta. Covanta is most likely giving lots of cash to politicians to buy off this US law. In Ireland its reported that Covanta has bought influence with Environment Minister Hogan at The K Club golf course, FG's Galway Tent. In the Irish context 'cross-state' becomes 'cross-border' or 'transatlantic'. Even before the Poolbeg waste-to-toxins factory is built, illegal pollution from repeated-lawbreaker Covanta already crosses the Atlantic from Covanta incinerators to pollute Irish air.
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| INCINERATOR DIOXINS ALREADY POLLUTE IRELAND |
About 340,000 people die prematurely each year in Europe from air pollution. EU laws are less ambitious on particle pollution than in capitalist America. In 2007 FF's Environment Minister did not contest the question expressed in The Dail by TD Quinn that the proposed incinerator could cause up to 300 premature deaths per year in Dublin. All such costs will be transferred to Ireland's taxpayers and their farcical hospitals. This observation was presented to the Bord Pleanala Hearing in 2007, and totally ignored, a Financial Regulator Best Available Trick. One director on Bord Pleanala's executive board is an "ex" employee of DCC's English spin-consultant RPS, the outfit which apparently hijacked an Engineers Ireland 'report' to spin for incineration; in other reports it was ruled that RPS and DCC "massaged" information on incineration to mislead the public (Judge McKechnie, 2009). Bord Pleanala's current chairman has been transferred from Ireland's crony-rich EPA, a facade of non-regulation also laced with "ex" incineration industry stalwarts.
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THERE is nothing like a broad new federal regulation to make Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem like a simple dispute over a traffic ticket. As of October 11th no fewer than 36 separate entities—states, cities, power companies, trade associations—had petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to review or stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). Eight entities have intervened on the EPA’s behalf. More could jump into the fray in the next month.
The rule at the centre of this scrum requires power plants in 28 states—everything from Texas eastwards, except Delaware and the six New England states, and including Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kansas—to reduce emissions that contribute to ozone and fine-particle pollution in other states. (Other states’ emissions do not have enough of an effect on air-quality in neighbouring states to trigger a reduction.) The rule is scheduled to take effect from January 1st 2012. By 2014 these states’ sulphur-dioxide emissions must be 27% of what they were in 2005, while nitrogen-oxide levels must fall to 46% of their 2005 levels.
CSAPR replaces the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), issued in March 2005, and also the subject of lengthy litigation before the same court, which found in it “more than several fatal flaws”. The court left CAIR’s provisions in place, but ordered the EPA to come up with a better rule: hence CSAPR. The EPA claims that by 2014 CSAPR will prevent 13,000-34,000 pollution-related premature deaths, and yield between $120 billion and $280 billion in health and environmental benefits annually. Those benefits, the EPA insists, outweigh the costs of implementation; though there may be rate changes for consumers, these should be “well within the range of normal electricity price fluctuations”.
