WASHINGTON (AP) – An independent study requested by Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency advised lawmakers to stop exempting older factories, refineries and power plants from having to install state-of-the-art air pollution controls.

A panel of the National Academy of Public Administration, an independent advisory organization chartered by Congress, said in a report Monday that too many older coal-fired power plants whose emissions contribute to acid rain, smog and asthma are being nursed along through maintenance rather than retired.

“The problem is (that) from the very beginning the program has become very dysfunctional,” Donald Kettl, a University of Wisconsin professor who chaired the panel, said at a news conference. “Congress never intended for these exemptions to the clean air requirements to be grandfathered in indefinitely.”

In 1977, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to require that new power plants, refineries and factories have the latest pollution controls. If Congress acted on the academy’s advice, older plants also would have to install new controls or close within 10 years.

In December, the Bush administration changed EPA regulations to grant companies greater flexibility to expand or modernize older plants without installing new pollution controls for a decade.

The administration also said that plants with numerous pollution sources may increase pollution from some sources as long as overall, plant-wide air emissions don’t rise. Companies also were given greater leeway to calculate their pollution levels in a way that reduces the likelihood that new pollution controls will be required.

Though the academy’s panel wrapped up its study before the new regulations were issued, several panel members described the changes as a move in the wrong direction, toward less regulation and insubstantial improvement.

In its study, the panel said the new method for calculating pollution levels “will only broaden the loopholes and aggravate the problems identified by the panel that have allowed many older, more polluting facilities to avoid … installing modern equipment.”

EPA officials said they agreed the exemptions for older plants should be removed from the law, which has been interpreted differently by each administration, often with years of debate and lawsuits devoted to topics such as what is the definition of maintenance.

“We think the best way to end the grandfathering is through a cap-and-trade system,” Jeff Holmstead, EPA’s assistant administrator in charge of air quality.

Holmstead plugged President Bush’s “Clear Skies” bill, a market-based air pollution reduction plan that would replace some regulations with broad caps on three major pollutants. To ease the cost, utilities could sell or trade unused pollution allowances.

Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., would scrap the entire program and replace it with the president’s plan, spokesman Mike Catanzaro said. Inhofe “looks at it as a failed program of the past … (that) should be replaced with a nationwide cap-and-trade system,” he said.

However, no new legislative proposals on air pollution appear to enjoy enough support in the Senate to win enactment.

Because they were built before 1977, more than 80 percent of the 1,100 coal-burning power plants in the United States are exempted from requirements that their pollution controls be state of the art, according to EPA.

In 1999, those plants generated 1.8 trillion kilowatt hours a year – nearly half of all the electricity used in the United States. By 2010, EPA projects that number will grow to 1.9 trillion kilowatt hours a year.

On the Net:

NAPA: http://www.napawash.org

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/air/nsr-review

AP-ES-04-21-03 1931EDT