New Trump rule takes aim at Clean Air Act

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Wednesday completed a rule that could weaken federal authority to issue clean air and climate change rules by changing the way the costs of pollution to human health and safety are tallied — and the way benefits of controlling that pollution are tabulated.

The new rule is the latest in a flurry of final Trump administration policies from the Environmental Protection Agency, as agency political appointees seek to wrap up four years of rolling back or weakening more than 100 environmental rules and policies.

But the costbenefit rule, which changes the way the EPA is required to report economic analyses of Clean Air Act regulations, is not expected to survive the incoming Biden administration.

Trump administration officials lauded the rule as though it would have a lasting effect.

Andrew Wheeler, the EPA administrator, said the rule was designed primarily to increase transparency.

But he also said that it had been explicitly designed to prevent future administrations from releasing rules like an Obama administration regulation on toxic mercury pollution, which the industry officials said was far too costly for the benefits and which the EPA rolled back this spring.

The new rule would change how the EPA is required to report its calculations of the economic costs and benefits of new clean air and climate change rules. Agency economists will be required to calculate the value of benefits to public health that directly stem from a new environmental regulation and separately the value of ancillary benefits, or “cobenefits” — such as the reduction of additional pollutants not directly governed by the regulation. Direct benefits and “cobenefits” would then have to be presented as separate categories.

That requirement, experts said, appears to be designed to give regulated industries a new avenue to sue a future EPA over tight new air pollution rules, by centering litigation around the costs and benefits of the ancillary category.