US EPA orders rollback of mercury air pollution rules

AP, WASHINGTON





The administration of US President Donald Trump has targeted a regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying that the benefits to human health and the environment might not be worth the cost of the regulation.

The 2011 rule instituted by the administration of then-US president Barack Obama, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities have said was an US$18 billion cleanup of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

Overall, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in about the past decade, environmental groups have said.

Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities and other birth defects in children, among other harm.

Coal power plants in the US are the largest single artificial source of mercury pollutants, which enter the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.

The proposal on Friday from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenges the basis for the Obama regulation.

It calculates that the crackdown on mercury and other toxins from coal plants produced only a few million US dollars per year in measurable health benefits and was not “appropriate and necessary” — a legal benchmark under the country’s landmark Clean Air Act.

The proposal, which now goes up for public comment before any final administration approval, would leave the current mercury regulation in place.

However, the EPA said that it would seek comment during a 60-day public-review period on whether “we would be obligated to rescind” the Obama-era rule if the agency adopts Friday’s finding that the regulation was not appropriate and necessary.

Any such change would trigger new rounds in what have already been years of court battles over regulating mercury pollution from coal plants.

This move is the latest by the Trump administration that changes estimates of the costs and payoffs of regulations as part of an overhaul of Obama-era environmental protections.

It was also the administration’s latest proposed move on behalf of the US coal industry, which has been struggling in the face of competition from natural gas and other cheaper, cleaner forms of energy.

The Trump administration in August proposed an overhaul for another Obama-era regulation that would have prodded electricity providers to get less of their energy from dirtier-burning coal plants.

The EPA on Friday said in a statement that the administration was “providing regulatory certainty” by more accurately estimating the costs and benefits of the Obama administration crackdown on mercury and other toxic emissions from smokestacks.

Janet McCabe, a former air-quality official in the Obama administration’s EPA, called the proposal part of “the quiet dismantling of the regulatory framework” for the federal government’s environmental protections.

Coming one week into a government shutdown, and in the lull between Christmas and New Year, “this low-key announcement shouldn’t fool anyone — it is a big deal, with significant implications,” McCabe said.