With no coal industry of its own, the state ordered its utilities to switch to the low-sulfur coal found in Kentucky, West Virginia or Wyoming. Meanwhile, they kept their old plants running, producing four to 10 times as much pollution as a modern plant would. The message to the public was that clean air cost jobs. Everybody with nothing to do and even less to lose. The Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 were going to raise AEP's rates by 15 percent, the company said at the time.
Politicians fight hard Political protection for utilities was bipartisan.
In hindsight, it was also sometimes remarkably short-sighted. Nationally, the state's politicians made a name for themselves in the 1980s by killing proposals that would have taxed other states to pay for cleanups in Ohio, for instance. Rhodes began his second eight-year run as governor just as a court struck down the state's first and only attempt to force power plant cleanups, started by former Gov. John Gilligan. By the time Rhodes left office in 1982, Ronald Reagan was president and Washington backed off of Ohio. And by the time Congress and Reagan's successor, George Bush, tightened the law, Voinovich was headed into office.