Earl Blumenauer: “Reclaiming my time, I was struck by your comment about the voluntary emission reduction plan in Texas. This is one of…”

“Reclaiming my time, I was struck by your comment about the voluntary emission reduction plan in Texas. This is one of the innovations that has been cited by Governor Bush under his leadership. There was legislation that was introduced, he supported, Texas Senate bill 766 that took effect more than a year ago. It has been touted as an approach to voluntarily clean up these 760 old plants that were grandfathered in. I find it fascinating that as a result of this effort, there have been 73 so-called pioneer companies out of the 760 that have taken part, that the majority of these plants, even of the 73 that took part, there are only 28 that even applied for permits, only 19 received them and only five of these volunteers with permits that actually required reductions. So there are actually only five out of 760 plants that are actually producing any result and it is something like 0.3 percent.”