EPA seeks delay over rule curbing coal plants’ toxic pollution
THE ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency plans to ask a federal court to delay an oral argument in a challenge involving a 2012 regulation limiting the amount of mercury, lead and other air toxins emitted from existing power plants.
While the power sector has largely already complied with the rule, several companies and 15 states - including Oklahoma, which was represented by current EPA head Scott Pruitt when he was the state’s attorney general - are still seeking to overturn it. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was set to hear the case on May 18.
Under President Donald Trump, the EPA has asked judges to stay multiple rules adopted under the Obama administration that target power plants, including ones regulating carbon emissions and the release of toxic metals in plants’ wastewater, as well as one limiting ozone emissions generated by fossil fuel burning.
In all three cases, the EPA is considering rewriting the regulations.
The rule on mercury and other air toxins, known as the MATS rule, has been the subject of litigation for years. While the Supreme Court initially required EPA to do a more thorough costbenefit analysis of the measure, it allowed the new standards to take effect in 2012. Under the rule, coal and oil-fired utilities had to install pollution controls that put them on par with the 12 per cent cleanest facilities in their sector.
Power plants are the single biggest emitter of mercury, a neurotoxin that causes nerve damage, especially in young children.
Over time these emissions have built up in fish, whose elevated levels of mercury are absorbed by people when they eat it. Congress gave the EPA the authority to regulate the toxic metals that are the by-product of burning coal - a list that also includes arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium and cyanide - in the 1990s, but it took the agency years to settle on a standard. At the time the regulation came out, the EPA estimated it would prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year when fully implemented and would cost the industry US$ 9.6 billion in compliance that year. It projects that reducing these emissions would save between US$ 37 billion and US$ 90 billion in 2016 in annual health costs and lost workdays.
In correspondence with other litigants in the case this week, the Trump administration said it would seek the delay “in order to give the time to fully review” the case “after the change in administration.” It said it planned to file the request late Tuesday afternoon.
Industry groups such as the National Mining Association have long opposed the rule, saying that it has been responsible for shutting down numerous coal-fired power plants and eliminating jobs. — WPBloomberg