• Encouraging business investment and job creation in local communities by increasing funding to continue brownfields clean-up.

• Using market forces to protect public health and support economic growth through the President's Clear Skies Initiative and the related Clean Air Interstate Rule and Clean Air Mercury Rule.

Protecting America

• Improving lab coordination and expanding research for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) homeland security decontamination program.

Implementing a new water security monitoring pilot program in five major cities and providing emergency training to the operators of large drinking water systems.

Making Government More Effective

Providing competitive grants to States and Tribes for projects that can demonstrate environmental and public health benefits.

• Establishing more stringent accountability measures and reforms for the Alaska Native Villages Program to address systemic financial and programmatic deficiencies.

MEETING PRESIDENTIAL GOALS-Continued

Agency-specific Goals

• Preventing the emission of an estimated 1,200 tons of particulate matter annually by supporting diesel engine retrofits, rebuilds and replacements, anti-idling measures, clean fuel infrastructure projects, and other activities.

• Working with partners to clean up contaminated sediments at approximately six sites in the Great Lakes region, two to three more sites than in 2005.

PROMOTING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AND OWNERSHIP

Brownfields Clean-up

Vibrant, healthy communities encourage business investment and job creation. However, many communities' revitalization efforts are hindered by abandoned industrial properties that blight the landscape and pose the threat of contamination. The EPA's Brownfields programs help States, Tribes, and local communities redevelop these sites and make them productive, vital parts of the neighborhood. Brownfields grants support revitalization efforts by funding environmental assessment, cleanup, and job training activities, eventually allowing the property to be used for business, parks, or housing. From 1995 through mid-2004, program participants have reported that more than 6,000 brownfields sites have been assessed and over 2,100 properties have been made ready for reuse. The President's Budget provides $210 million, $46 million more than 2005, funding brownfields work at about 600 sites.

EPA Brownfields Grant Spurs Redevelopment in Minnesota

The city of Virginia, Minnesota has a long history of iron ore and taconite mining that has created potential contamination and redevelopment issues in some areas. To help address these problems, the city used an EPA Brownfields grant to assess a former mine waste dumping site known as the Oneida Addition property. The city found minimal contamination that was easily addressed, spurring developer interest. The city eventually sold a portion of the property to a firm that constructed an Alzheimer's patient care unit and assisted living complex. This redevelopment provided a needed care and retirement facility and leveraged $12 million in clean-up and redevelopment funding, as well as 115 new jobs.

Often the most cost-effective way to protect the environment and public health while encouraging economic growth lies with market forces. The Acid Rain program, enacted in 1990, is a highly successful illustration of the value of flexible solutions. With a compliance rate of nearly 100 percent, the Acid Rain program reduced the electric power industry's nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 37 and 32 percent, respectively, from 1990 levels. In recognition of the program's

PROMOTING ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AND OWNERSHIP-Continued

accomplishments, the Administration proposed the Clear Skies Act. The Clear Skies legislation expands the Acid Rain program to dramatically reduce nationwide power plant emissions of SO2, NOx, and, for the first time ever, mercury emissions from power plants.

Pollutant Emissions Decline
Under Clear Skies

Emissions (units as specified)

12

10

8

6

SO2 (millions of tons)

NOx (millions of tons)

Mercury (tens of tons)

While significant progress has been made under the existing Clean Air Act, further health benefits could be achieved faster, with more certainty, and at less cost to consumers through Clear Skies. Clear Skies would reduce SO2, NOx, and mercury emissions by nearly 70 percent. The legislation would set national caps on these three pollutants and distribute allowances to emitters that total the cap amounts. Clear Skies would encourage innovation and the deployment of cleaner, more cost effective technologies by requiring that the emissions caps decline over time and allowing emitters the flexibility to choose whether to reduce their emissions or purchase allowances from other sources. By 2020, Clear Skies could result in the avoidance of up to 14,000 premature deaths annually, virtual elimination of chronic acidity in northeastern lakes, and noticeable air visibility improvements in a large portion of the Midwest and East.

4

2

0

2000

Source: EPA.

2010

2020

Clear Skies was submitted to the Congress in 2002 and the Administration continues to promote its enactment. Although the legislation is the strongly preferred solution, the Administration is pursuing a regulatory path that would achieve many of the same health and clean air benefits. EPA has proposed the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which uses a market-based system to reduce SO and NOx emissions by up to 70 percent, the steepest emissions cuts in more than a decade. CAIR, together with EPA's clean diesel rules and other clean air programs, will ultimately bring 278 additional counties into compliance with the ozone and particulate matter National Ambient Air Quality standards. This will result in cleaner air for the Nation as a whole, and especially for the 120 million people currently living in those counties.

EPA also has proposed the Clean Air Mercury Rule, which will require the first ever reduction of mercury emissions from power plants. Reductions will be obtained by using one of two approaches. One approach requires coal-fired power plants to install currently available pollution controls known as "maximum achievable control technologies." The second, more flexible approach, sets a mandatory cap on the total mercury emissions allowed from coal-burning power plants nationwide. This approach would reduce mercury emissions by nearly 70 percent from current levels. Altogether, the Clean Air rules, like the Clear Skies legislation, would create a multi-pollutant strategy to improve air quality throughout the United States. The proven, market-based approach of emissions caps and allowance trading will make emissions reductions further, faster, cheaper, and more effective than current Clean Air Act regulations.