February 8th, 2008
Court Rules EPA Violated the Law by Evading Required Power Plant Mercury Reductions
The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rebuked EPA for attempting to create an illegal loophole for the power generating industry, … EPA unlawfully decided to remove power plants from the most protective requirements of the Clean Air Act,
“This decision is a victory for the health of all Americans, but especially for our children who can suffer permanent brain damage from toxic mercury pollution.”
EPA estimates that as many as 600,000 babies are born annually at risk of serious harm from exposure to high maternal blood-mercury levels
{The agency’s so-called “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” (“Orwellian doublespeak”) is like all others under Bush, it is just the opposite, it “would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury pollution to persist under a weak cap-and-trade program.” }
Approximately 1,100 coal-fired units at more than 450 existing power plants spew 48 tons of mercury into the air each year. Yet only 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury is needed to contaminate a 25-acre lake to the point where fish are unsafe to eat. Over 40 states have warned their citizens to avoid consuming various fish species due to mercury contamination, with over half of those mercury advisories applying to all waterbodies in the state.
“These two rules represented what was perhaps the biggest sellout to industry in the history of EPA,” said Waterkeeper Alliance Legal Director, Scott Edwards. “It’s a real tragedy that we’ve had to spend two years getting this industry-scripted scheme struck down while energy companies continue to poison our children with mercury.”
Power plants also emit tens of thousands of tons of other air toxics, including hydrogen chloride, arsenic and lead. “The technology exists to dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution, and it is years past time to put that technology to work,” said the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Litigation Director Jon Mueller. “With today’s decision, EPA will now have to get back to the business of protecting people’s health rather than higher profits for electric utilities,” said John Suttles, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who represented Physicians for Social Responsibility, American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics in the lawsuit.
The EPA rules generated controversy from the moment they were proposed in 2004, when it was discovered that industry attorneys – from the law firm from which EPA’s political management hailed – had drafted key language that EPA included verbatim in its proposal to let power plant companies off the hook. EPA’s internal auditor in the Office of Inspector General later discovered that EPA’s senior political management had ordered staff to work backwards from a pre-determined political outcome, “instead of basing the standard on an unbiased determination of what the top performing [power plant] units were achieving in practice.”
“Today’s ruling should show power plant companies and the EPA once and for all that they may cheat and delay required clean-up obligations, but the law will catch up to them,” said John Walke, attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Electric power plants are America’s worst polluters of mercury, smog, soot and global warming pollution, and their days of reckoning are long overdue.”
“The Bush administration cannot ignore its responsibilities to bring power plants’ mercury pollution under control,” said Earthjustice attorney James Pew. “We hope the administration will gain some new respect for the law in its last year and start working to protect Americans from pollution and stop working to shield polluters from their lawful cleanup obligations.”
February 10th, 2008
“Fuming over fumes”
ZD Net, by Harry Fuller
Meanwhile both branches of Congress are after the EPA and its internal records. This is the on-going battle over states’ rights to have tougher anti-pollution laws than those of the federal government. In the past Califonria and other states have passed anti-emissions standards tougher than the national, but this time around the EPA refused to grant California its waiver to continue that practice. Both the U.S. House and Senate are now investigating, and demanding records concerning the EPA ruling and communications with the White House.The EPA has refused to release such records, of course. It’s now known that the EPA staff recommended the agency approve California’s waiver. The EPA staff concluded vehicle emissions are contributing to global warming. The political appointees running the EPA overlooked the staff report and ruled against California. Now the battle over the EPA’s secret records is going to the subpoena stage.
This battle over vehicle emissions is reaching across the political landscape of America. It may be the lawyers’ full employment act. Florida just became the 17th state to join the lawsuit against the EPA and on the side of California which sued on January 2nd to uphold its state law against the EPA waiver denial. But the EPA got some more help on its side as well. You’ll never guess who’s joining the EPA – well, maybe you will. It’s the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers. They don’t want to have to build the same cars for America that they already have to build to suit regulations in Japan and Europe.
US Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced legislation that would direct the EPA to grant California a waiver under the Clean Air Act to cut global warming pollution from motor vehicles.
US Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment …
The New York Times, February 4, 2008
Meanwhile, the stonewalling continues. Despite heavy pressure from Congress and many state governors, the Environmental Protection Agency shows no sign of reversing its decision to prohibit California and more than a dozen other states from moving forward with aggressive measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.
Nor has the E.P.A. made any visible effort to comply with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last spring requiring the agency to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. Mr. Bush said he would follow the court’s order and the E.P.A. promised at least a draft of new regulations by last fall. We are still waiting.
And what of Mr. Bush’s hydrogen-powered Freedom Car? That, too, has receded from view.