By Jeff Nesmith, Cox News Service
and Mike Boyer, The Cincinnati Enquirer

WASHINGTON - The electric power industry is lining up "grassroots" support among its employees, retirees and stockholders for President Bush's beleaguered Clear Skies air pollution bill.

The bill would change the Clean Air Act, creating a new way of policing air pollution from power plants. In place of mandatory pollution controls, it would create a national "cap and trade" system in which utilities could buy and sell pollution allowances and choose their own technology for reducing pollution.

The administration's bill has run into trouble in Congress, and is not expected to be considered before late this year.

Recently, published reports based on leaked documents indicated that an Environmental Protection Agency computer analysis of Clear Skies and a competing bill introduced by Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., showed that the Carper bill would prevent more deaths stemming from power plant pollution.

In an e-mail last month to power company officials, the Edison Electric Institute called Clear Skies "an exciting opportunity for our industry to advance environmental protection, promote innovative technologies and grow our companies."

"Please join EEI and our industry in this effort," wrote Thomas Kuhn, president of the trade association for publicly owned electric utilities.

Cinergy Corp., one of the nation's largest coal-burners, has been a major advocate of the Clear Skies legislation, but it hasn't urged employees and retirees to send letters in support.

The utility keeps employees and retirees abreast of legislative issues like Clear Skies through e-mailed "Grassroots Updates,'' spokeswoman Kathy Meinke said.

The company hasn't issued a call for support, "but we could at a moment's notice,'' she said.

Cinergy chairman Jim Rogers told Congress earlier this year while the president's plan could cost the utility $1.5 billion, it would provide certainty about its future environmental costs.

Cinergy reached a proposed $1.4 billion settlement with the Justice Department 21/2 years ago over charges it violated the Clean Air Act. That settlement has never been completed while similar cases involving other utilities have worked their way through the courts.

An EEI Web page offers company participants a letter supporting Clear Skies that they can send to their representatives in Congress by clicking on the appropriate sites. For $1,500, power company officials will be able to "track" how their employees, stockholders and retirees participate in the campaign.

Copies of the Kuhn e-mail and other documents in the lobbying campaign were made public by Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, an environmental group.

"The dirty electric power industry has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to convince Congress to enact President Bush's bill," O'Donnell said. "The Bush administration and the dirty power companies are working in tandem to weaken the Clean Air Act in order to benefit industry."

EEI spokesman Jim Owens said the effort to solicit letters and e-mails from company "stakeholders" to members of Congress was based on "standard lobbying and public policy advocacy techniques."

Chairman of the institute is Allen Franklin, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based Southern Co., and one of the Clear Skies plan's most enthusiastic supporters in the power industry.

Georgia Power and other Southern Co. subsidiaries were among the defendants in 1999, when EPA sued owners of dozens of coal-fired power plants, accusing them of evading a provision known as "new source review."

The rule requires companies to provide modern air pollution control technology when they substantially upgrade or expand old power plants that had been "grandfathered" out of Clean Air Act pollution clean-up requirements.

The EPA lawsuits accused the plant owners of evading the provision by disguising plant expansions as routine maintenance.

One section of the Clear Skies plan would repeal laws under which the suits were filed.