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According to the Trump Administration's EPA, regulations to reduce emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants in power plants are too costly and should no longer be considered legally "appropriate and necessary".
Matt Brown / AP
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Matt Brown / AP
According to the Trump Administration's EPA, regulations to reduce emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants generated by power plants are too expensive and should no longer be considered legally "appropriate and necessary".
Matt Brown / AP
In another reversal project of an Obama-era standard, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic substances from power plants coal and oil was not profitable and should not be considered "appropriate and necessary."
The EPA says it maintains for the moment the restrictions of 2012 in force, largely because utilities have already spent billions of dollars to comply. However, environmental groups are concerned that the move may be a step towards the repeal of boundaries and could make it more difficult to impose other regulations.
In a statement, the EPA stated that it "confers regulatory certainty by taking into account in a transparent and accurate manner the costs and benefits".
The National Mining Association praised this initiative, calling the mercury limits "punitive" and "massively unbalanced".
When coal is burned, it releases mercury into the air, which can lead to health risks for people, including neurological disorders, heart and lung problems, and immune system deficiency. Babies developing in the womb and young children are particularly at risk. The main source of exposure is the consumption of contaminated fish and seafood.
In 2015, a court ordered the EPA to consider not only the benefits of the mercury rule, but also its cost to the industry. In its new proposal, the EPA estimates that it would cost between $ 7.4 billion and $ 9.6 billion a year and that the benefits would be between $ 4 and $ 6 million a year.
By contrast, the Obama administration had calculated an additional $ 80 billion for health, as particulates and other toxic pollutants are also reduced when utilities limit mercury. He said these "related benefits" included the prevention of 11,000 premature deaths each year.
"What has changed now is the administration's attitude to public health," said the director of legal affairs of the Clean Air Task Force, Ann Weeks, in a statement. Weeks called the EPA estimates of outdated and said that recent research revealed billions of dollars in public health benefits resulting from the mere reduction of mercury emissions.
Other worried about the future impact.
"We must not limit ourselves to fighting this dangerous pollutant," said Celia Chen, mercury expert at the Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program. In a statement, she said that global warming, for example, could affect the impact of mercury on the environment, but that the EPA proposal could make it more difficult to solve this problem. . "Regulators need tools to strengthen mercury controls in the future if needed," she said.
Critics fear that a revision of the method of calculating the costs and health benefits of the regulation also undermines the rationale for a set of other environmental rules. which may make them more vulnerable to prosecution.
Jeff Holmstead does not think this is necessarily the case. He is a former EPA Airline Director at Bracewell LLP, which represents clients in the energy industry. In a statement, he stated that the EPA did not prevent the courts from taking into account the benefits associated with a given settlement, but simply that it should not warrant a settlement such that "the present case, where almost all the benefits are ancillary benefits".
Although the mercury standards of the EPA have been challenged in court, utilities have spent more than $ 18 billion to comply with these requirements. In a letter to EPA last summer, utilities, regulatory groups and workers' associations said that mercury emissions had been reduced by almost 90 percent over the past year. decade.
In this letter, they also asked the EPA of the Trump administration to leave existing standards in place.
Since many regulators have included equipment costs in utility rates, some fear that no longer requiring the limits may leave customers paying for pollution controls without cleaner air. This is because continuing to operate this equipment also costs money.
"It is not unreasonable to expect that, if standards disappear, a number of utilities choose to no longer use the pollution control systems that they have settled, "says Janet McCabe, former Acting Assistant Administrator of Air and Radiation at the EPA under the Obama administration.
In 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act and advised the EPA to limit mercury emissions from various industries. It took 21 years before the EPA finalized the Mercury and Air Toxics standards for coal-fired plants. The standards help to meet the country's commitments under the Minamata Mercury Convention.
The proposal to weaken mercury limits is the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration to help the struggling coal sector. The US Federal Energy Administration Administration has stated that US coal consumption in 2018 is expected to be at its lowest level in nearly four decades. While the use of coal is increasing in China and India, the domestic industry is struggling to compete with cheaper electricity produced from natural gas and renewable energy.
In December, the administration proposed a revision allowing coal-fired producers to emit more CO 2 per megawatt hour of electricity produced. EPA has also taken steps to ease the Obama era's carbon regulations and cancel existing regulations governing coal ash.
The EPA proposal is open to the public for 60 days after being published in the Federal Register .
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