In a major win for coal industry, EPA to propose rule to weaken mercury pollution regulation - Entrepreneur Generations

The Environmental Protection Agency "has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it," Coral Davenport reports for The New York Times. "Specifically, the new Trump administration proposal would repeal a 2011 finding made by the E.P.A. that when the federal government regulates toxic pollution such as mercury from coal-fired power plants, it must also, when considering the cost to industry of that rule, take into account the additional health benefits of reducing other pollutants as a side effect of implementing the regulation. Under the mercury program, the economic benefits of those health effects, known as 'co-benefits,' helped to provide a legal and economic justification for the cost to industry of the regulation."

The Obama administration estimated that the mercury rule cost the electric utility industry $9.6 billion a year, making it the most expensive clean air regulation ever ordered by the federal government. The administration found that reducing mercury brings up to $6 million in health benefits annually, as well as $80 billion in health benefits from reducing the soot and nitrogen oxide  that occur as a side effect of controlling mercury, Davenport reports. Though the proposal wouldn't completely eliminate the mercury regulation, it's designed to provide the legal justification for the administration to weaken several pollution rules and possibly repeal the rules eventually.

EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, is expected to send the proposal to the White House soon. It's one of the most significant actions taken by the administration to roll back Obama-era health and environmental regulations and would be welcomed by the coal industry, Davenport reports. Indeed, the plan has coal's fingerprints all over it: the proposal's main author, William Wehrum, is the EPA's top clean air official, but before that was a long-time lawyer for companies that run coal-fired power plants.

Wheeler's former boss, Murray Energy Corporation chief executive Robert Murray, was a major donor to President Trump's inauguration fund and personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule as part of a written wish list he gave to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Davenport reports.

The proposal also highlights a possible consequence of confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court: when the coal industry sued to roll back the mercury regulation, in 2014 it lost its case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But Judge Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion, leading observers to believe that he would side with the coal industry in similar Supreme Court cases.

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