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.

Comments

Does it?

[alvinrod]

I'm all for cutting down on pollution, but is the headline actually correct? The summary seems to imply that it isn't:

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.

Either the headline is incorrect or the summary is wrong. Either way, once again I'll simply suggest that this is a good reason why bureaucracy shouldn't govern and that Congress should ultimately put forth all laws. Anything less is ultimately too susceptible to change and puts far too much power into the hands of the administration. We did away with kings for a reason.

Re:This whole administration

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This whole administration

[ShanghaiBill]

is mentally ill.

That is the point. Mercury is a neurotoxin. It makes you dumb. By loosening the standard, this will make people in critical swing states that have a lot of coal mining, such as Pennsylvania, dumber and more like to vote for Trump in 2020.

Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1% in 2016. Obama carried it by 5.4% in 2012.

Re:This whole administration

[Anonymous Coward]

is mentally ill.

That is the point. Mercury is a neurotoxin. It makes you dumb. By loosening the standard, this will make people in critical swing states that have a lot of coal mining, such as Pennsylvania, dumber and more like to vote for Trump in 2020.

Trump won Pennsylvania by less than 1% in 2016. Obama carried it by 5.4% in 2012.

Republicans have been pushing anti-intellectualism for a long time. I would not be remotely surprised if various republican operatives are okay with dumbing down their population. They certainly are okay with lying about everything and destroying the credibility of the fourth estate if it helps them. What makes this basically treasonous, is they know making the population easier to manipulate means that any sufficiently powerful group can manipulate them. They are perfectly happy to promote this.

In short they promote a stronger military (as if we needed a stronger military), but fail to defend where we truly are weak, and that is holding up standards of truth, honor, and decency. They push propaganda, rather than fighting against it, and tell people the propaganda is truth and the truth is propaganda. If that is not actual Evil, then I'm not sure what Evil is. The ends don't justify the means. They never did.

Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Oh, one more thing

[rsilvergun]

I notice we're all quibbling on the headline instead of discussion the fact that this administration would like very much to increase the amount of mercury in the air.

Article says it's down 80% since the rule went into place, and I'll remind you that there is no safe level of mercury exposure. It builds up over time. Buddy of mine found that out the hard way getting mercury poisoning from tuna...

Once again, we've got our priorities ass backwards.

Re:This whole administration

[fahrbot-bot]

they're not mentally ill.

they are just EVIL AS CAN BE.

Now, now. Be fair. They can be both.

Re: Reading comprehension

[TheGratefulNet]

if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, its very likely a duck.

this administration has been hell-bent on reversing every obama era decision and policy. they have also been doing all they can to side with the polluters and against any kind of environmental protection. pruitt was ousted but allowed IN, in the first place, and out kicked out when it became too much for even the R's to bear.

so, any change that trump makes has to be assumed to be that of a Bad Actor, and this is no exception. if he's signing his name to something, it will be bad for people and only good for his pay-masters.

anyone, here, saying that its not going to hurt us is a fucking shill, full stop.

Doesn't change mercury emissions, you know?

[raymorris]

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]
---

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.

Re:This whole administration

[MightyMartian]

Trump won by margins of error. Quit talking like it was some tremendous victory

California solved that easily

[rsilvergun]

by passing an anti-speed trap law.

And it wasn't a bureaucrat who created the speed trap, it was, again, a politician. Specifically one who didn't want to pay his taxes so he used speeding tickets from folks outside his district to pay for maintaining police, fire dept, etc.

Again, your anger is misplaced. And that's not by accident. Somebody is working really hard to make you distrust government (while making sure to use gov't for their own benefit). Think harder. You can figure this out. I know you can. And when you do you can join us in making the world better for real. I mean that.