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EPA Proposes Rule Change That Would Let Power Plants Release More Toxic Pollution (npr.org)
The Trump administration announced on Friday a plan designed to make it easier for coal-fired power plants, after nearly a decade of restrictions, to release into the atmosphere more mercury and other pollutants linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source].
From a report: The limits on mercury, set in 2011, were the first federal standards to restrict some of the most hazardous pollutants emitted by coal plants and were considered one of former President Barack Obama's signature environmental achievements. Since then, scientists have said, mercury pollution from power plants has declined more than 80 percent nationwide. President Trump's new proposal does not repeal the regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, but it would lay the groundwork for doing so by weakening a key legal justification for the measure. The long-term impact would be significant: It would weaken the ability of the E.P.A. to impose new regulations in the future by adjusting the way the agency measures the benefits of curbing pollutants, giving less weight to the potential health gains.
In announcing the proposed rule, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that the cost of cutting mercury from power plants "dwarfs" the monetary benefits. The proposal, which the acting E.P.A. administrator, Andrew Wheeler, signed on Thursday, is expected to appear in the federal register in the coming weeks. The public will have 60 days to comment on it before a final rule is issued. [...] Reworking the mercury rule, which the E.P.A. considers the priciest clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry, would represent a victory for the coal industry, and in particular for Robert E. Murray, an important former client of Mr. Wheeler's from his days as a lobbyist.
In announcing the proposed rule, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that the cost of cutting mercury from power plants "dwarfs" the monetary benefits. The proposal, which the acting E.P.A. administrator, Andrew Wheeler, signed on Thursday, is expected to appear in the federal register in the coming weeks. The public will have 60 days to comment on it before a final rule is issued. [...] Reworking the mercury rule, which the E.P.A. considers the priciest clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry, would represent a victory for the coal industry, and in particular for Robert E. Murray, an important former client of Mr. Wheeler's from his days as a lobbyist.
Profits > human health and well being and lives.
And the donors paid awesome money for Trump and the Republicans. They are getting exactly what they want.
See, the Republican has been sold this lie that environmental protections are liberal snowflake luxuries when in fact they are about protecting our health and well being. And then you have business owners who say regulations are "job killers" and when those regulations are removed they - get this - STILL eliminate jobs to fatten their bottom lines even more.
But yet we little people are stuck with the healthcare bills and costs for the damage caused by the pollution and toxins.
If you read the article, you'll see that slashdot's and the NYT's headline is false and misleading. The proposed change does not allow the release of more mercury or repeal existing regulations. It makes it harder for the EPA to implement more regulations beyond what already exists:
"It would weaken the ability of the E.P.A. to impose new regulations in the future by adjusting the way the agency measures the benefits of curbing pollutants, giving less weight to the potential health gains."
I'm sure the NYT knows this and is purposely being misleading or maybe they are brain dead enough to not understand what they are printing. Regardless this is exactly the kind of crap that makes people distrust the media. An argument on whether it's worth the economic costs to further reduce mercury emissions beyond the 80% reduction that has already occurred by wiping out the remaining coal plants is worth having, but it isn't possible to do that when the media is falsely reporting stuff like this and people don't take the time to carefully read and understand what is being said.
I'm not sure if you read the summary vs just the clickbait headline, but this makes no changes to mercury emissions. What has changed is that in the future, the EPA will comply with the law, as ordered by court order from 2015 regarding how they document the reasons for their decisions.
The proposed change is that in the future the EPA will publish certain data (as already required by law), rather than obscuring the data by lumping unrelated things together.
The summary hints at what's actually going on when the summary says:
-- ...
President Trump's new proposal does not repeal the regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.
a key legal justification for the measure. The long-term impact would be significant: It would weaken the ability of the E.P.A. to impose new regulations in the future [without publishing their data regarding the new regulation they made up]
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Here's what happened. Under the Obama administration, certain people in the White House asked the EPA to put new regulations on coal. By law, when making new regulations, the EPA has to publish an analysis of the week benefits and costs. Their analysis concluded that further reducing mercury emissions would cost $9.6 billion and the benefits would be - minimal. Oops, that's a problem. It would be much more effective to spend $9.6 billion on nutritional education, anti-smoking, or any of many other choices, if you wanted to improve public health. Instead of having the coal plants pay $10 billion for mercury filters, it would have worked a heck a lot better to make them pay $10 billion for other, more effective, health related programs, Obama's EPA found.
But the White House wanted regulations on coal, not breastfeeding related programs or anything else that would have been more effective, get more bang for the buck. So what's the EPA to do? Issue the regulation while attaching their studies showing that their regulation was stupid?
The way the EPA dealt with this problem is they guessed that if they required more mercury reduction, coal plants *might* ALSO make drastic reductions to other emissions, including particulates and many others. The EPA study said that if the plants greatly reduced all of these other things, that would be good for public health. These other possible benefits that have nothing whatsoever to do with mercury would be significant, far greater than the minimal benefit related to mercury. So the EPA published numbers showing a) the cost of mercury reduction and b) the total benefits of greatly reducing particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, etc. They didn't publish their numbers for mercury because they were embarrassingly low.
In 2015 the court ruled that the EPA hadn't followed the law. If they are going to make a regulation on mercury emissions, they have to publish their estimates of the cost and benefits of mercury emissions reduction. They can't hide it by adding in a bunch of unrelated stuff and lumping it all together, the court ruled.
The EPA now proposes to follow the law, as they have been to ordered by the court, and publish their estimates for the costs and benefits of any new regulations - and only for the regulation, not a lump sum assuming a bunch of other new regulations.
Btw of you read up on the case, you will also find that they *knew* that what they were doing was unlawful and improper, but they did so at the insistence of a White House VIP.
If you really want to argue that the EPA administrators are wrong, that they only thought it was wrong to intentionally obscure legally required disclosures based on political pressure, I suppose you can try to make some logical argument why that's the right thing to do. Until you do so, I'm inclined to believe the people who did it, who should be experts at their job, when they decided this was improper so they should avoid mentioning the name of the White House VIP in any written correspondence. The judge who saw all of the evidence indicated it was not only unlawfully done, but knowingly unlawful.
I'll be happy to read any reasoned argument you have to make to the contrary, or view any evidence. Do you perhaps have some evidence that the court didn't see, suggesting that anyone involved thought that hiding the data was proper or even legal?