New bid to weaken rules on mercury

The Trump administration has completed a legal proposal to 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 in the Trump administration’s steady march of rollbacks of Obamaera 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 Murray, chief executive of the Murray Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Murray, who was a major donor to President Trump’s inauguration fund, requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Trump took office.

The proposal would also hand a victory to the former clients of William Wehrum, the EPA’s top clean air official and the chief author of the plan. Wehrum worked for years as a lawyer for companies that run coal-fired power plants, and that have long sought such a change.