Clean Air Act rules set for signing

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary is expected to sign the implementing rules and regulations of the Clean Air Act by the end of the month, Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) director Peter Anthony Abaya said yesterday.

Abaya said the Department of Environment and Natural Resources gave industries and groups opposing the law sufficient time to secure a Congress resolution deferring its implementation, but they failed to do so.

Abaya, meanwhile, revealed that the EMB rejected the requests of five government agencies to be exempted from the Act’s coverage.

The agencies were the departments of trade and industry, energy, transportation and communications, health, and interior and local government.

The DTI, he said, wanted power plants exempted from emission standards, while the DOH sought exemption for its 27 incinerators, the use of which the Act strictly prohibits.— Jose Rodel Clapano