Transcript of Press Conference Announcing Settlement in United States Et Al vs. American Elec...(gun today and their perseverance anddili...),Health

At this point I'll turn the podium over to Granta and then we will be available to take questions.

MR. NAKAYAMA: Well, thank you, Ron.

As Ron stated, today EPA and the Department of Justice are announcing the single largest environmental settlement in our nation's history. This is truly an historic day for clean air in the United States and a day that demonstrates the tremendous public good that can be accomplished through enforcement of our environmental laws.

As many of you know, this settlement is part of EPA's initiative to enforce the new source review provisions of the Clean Air Act at coal-fired power plants. Today's settlement with AEP is the fourteenth in the initiative and is by far the largest.

This settlement is the largest environmental settlement ever, as measured by the value of the injunctive relief. To meet its settlement obligations, AEP will be required to install pollution control technology, estimated to cost more than $4.6 billion. This is also the largest settlement that has ever been reached with a stationary source of air pollution in terms of the amount of pollution reduced. AEP will reduce its emissions by 813,000 tons or over 1.6 million pounds each year.

To give you a sense of the mammoth scale of these reductions, the amount of S0(2) emission reductions from this settlement alone will exceed all the S0(2) emissions from all sources in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut combined. That's all sources, in other words, all the power plants, refineries, boilers and other SO(2) sources in those three states are eclipsed by the emission reductions we achieved in this settlement.

The best news of all is that this settlement will result in record-breaking environmental and public health benefits not only in the areas near the plants but also in the vast, downwind areas that are affected by emissions
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