Transcript of Press Conference Announcing Settlement in United States Et Al vs. American Elec...(eement thatcan be reached. QUESTION: ...),Health

QUESTION: How many states does this affect?

MR. TENPAS: There are five states in which there are plants located, okay. There are eight states that joined the United States as plaintiffs in bringing the suit.

And then I'll let Granta speak to the number of states that will be benefited by this resolution, because although you have five places where the plants are sitting, these are emissions that the winds carry and spread much more broadly. So Granta, do you want to address that?

MR. NAKAYAMA: Well, the breadth of this settlement is very significant and it does not obviously affect only the five states where the facilities are located but it also affects all the downwind areas. So with respect to the Mid-Atlantic region and the Northeast, those are states directly downwind from these plants, those are states whose air quality is going to be impacted. And because of the massive scope, the scale of these emission reductions, 813,000 tons per year, you're going to see an effect.

And that's what's really significant here. This is going to have an effect over this whole broad region, which I believe is one of the reasons why those states joined us as co-plaintiffs.

Let me correct one thing I said. Ron just reminded me. I said 1.6 million pounds and I should have said 1.6 billion pounds. I just want to be very clear on that, a little difference between 1.6 billion and 1.6 million, and that is a historic settlement. I mean that is just huge when you talk about the amount of emission reduction.

Let me put it in context. We've had three record breaking years at EPA. Our last three fiscal years we've issued reports. As a result of our enforcement activities we've reduced about 1 million to 1.1 million pounds and I think 890 million pounds in the last three years if you look at the last three years through our enforcement efforts. This one case alone is 1.6 billion pounds. So we're about 1 billion pou
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