Damn those activist judges. Imagine them holding that the law means what it says.

Why, if this sort of thing keeps up, the Clean Air Act will require cleaner air.

That's not what President Bush had in mind. He wanted his EPA to change the rules so that power plants, factories and oil refineries could avoid installing expensive new pollution-control equipment when they make repairs that cause more filth to go up the stack. Customers would save money that way.

Those customers might suffer more respiratory illnesses, but what's more important, your money or your lungs?

The Clean Air Act requires new and modified industrial plants to undergo something called New Source Review, a permitting process that imposes pollution-control requirements depending upon the plant's location. The Bush EPA had proposed that equipment replacements could be excluded from New Source Review if they did not cost more than 20 percent of the replacement value of the unit.

But the Clean Air Act clearly states that a plant that undergoes a "modification," meaning "any physical change . . . which increases the amount of any air pollutant," must undergo New Source Review. That review could force plant operators to install updated pollution-control equipment.

Industries had argued that this penalizes operators for replacing their equipment, making endless repairs of old machinery more attractive.

But the goal of the Clean Air Act was to require companies to phase in the latest and best pollution controls. New Source Review was created to make sure that would happen as plants were modernized.

The court held that the EPA's interpretation of the law would produce an absurd result: A law intended to limit increases in air pollution would allow plants operating below applicable emission limits to increase their pollution significantly without government review.

That's not what Congress intended.