Administration eyes weakening of mercury rules
The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.
The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the Trump administration to weaken it and several other pollution rules, while setting the stage for a possible full repeal of the rule.
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who is now the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected in the coming days to send the proposal to
the White House for approval.
The move is the latest, and one of the most significant, in the Trump administration’s steady march of rollbacks of Obama-era health and environmental regulations on polluting industries, particularly coal. The weakening of the mercury rule — which the EPA considers the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry — would represent a major victory for the coal industry. Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses.
The details of the rollback about to be proposed would also represent a victory for Wheeler’s former boss, Robert E. Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Murray, who was a major donor to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Trump took office, in a written “wish list” he handed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
The proposal also highlights a key environmental opinion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination hearings have gripped the nation in recent days.
The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Kavanaugh, however, wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.