RULE DOWNGRADES HEALTH BENEFITS IN AIR DECISIONS
EPA: Cost-benefit requirement aims to boost transparency
WASHINGTON
The Trump administration finalized a rule Wednesday that could make it more difficult to enact public health protections by changing the way the Environmental Protection Agency calculates the costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution.
The new cost-benefit requirements, which apply to all future Clean Air Act rules, instruct the agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, such as illnesses and deaths avoided by a potential regulation. In other words, if reducing emissions from power plants also saves tens of thousands of lives each year by cutting soot, those “co-benefits” should not be counted.
“This is all about transparency and conducting our work in a transparent fashion,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wednesday as he announced the rule during a webinar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Our goal with this rule is to help the public better understand the why of a rulemaking, in addition to the what.” He said the agency’s past approach “has meant inconsistent rules and a disoriented private sector.”
Wheeler said the change would not prevent the EPA from factoring in indirect benefits of new regulations in the future but that it requires the agency to be “upfront” about these calculations. “We will also require reports that distinguish between domestic and international benefits,” Wheeler added, “so that Americans can see what their regulators are doing for people here in the United States.”
The move is one of several major environmental rollbacks that the administration is pushing through before President Donald Trump leaves office next month. This week, it rejected calls to tighten national standards for fine particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, which ranks as the country’s most widespread deadly air pollutant. The EPA also plans to finalize a rule in coming weeks that will restrict the kinds of scientific studies the agency can use in crafting public health rules.
The EPA’s proposal has faced criticism from environmental advocates, who suggested that it will not withstand legal challenges. The incoming administration probably will overturn the rule, though that would take time because there are legal procedures that must be followed to eliminate an existing regulation.
Wheeler on Wednesday dismissed criticism of the effort as misleading, saying environmental groups and some media “are ignoring what we are trying to do here and mischaracterizing this.
This is all about transparency.”
Some conservative and industry groups praised the move, saying the change marked an overdue change in how the EPA shapes its regulations.
Daren Bakst, a senior research fellow in agricultural policy at the Heritage Foundation’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, said the move would address the “abuses” of past administrations when it came to weighing the costs and benefits of new regulations.