Groups challenge EPA mercury rule over release of other toxins

Washington (Platts)--11Jul2005

Several conservation groups have mounted a different type of challenge to the
Environmental Protection Agency's already lawsuit-plagued mercury rule: a suit
alleging that the measure is illegal because it allows power plants to emit
lead, arsenic and other toxic substances that they previously had to control.

The suit, filed late Friday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit, focuses on a provision of the rule that rescinds an earlier
EPA finding that required plants to install high-tech pollution-control
equipment to curb their emissions of mercury and other substances classified
as "hazardous air pollutants" under the federal Clean Air Act. 

EPA's new rule, which the agency issued in March, uses a cap-and-trade system
that allows dirtier plants to buy pollution-reduction credit of mercury from
other, cleaner facilities. But it provides no such mechanism for other
CAA-designated hazardous air pollutants, which include arsenic, beryllium,
cadmium, chromium, manganese, dioxins and lead.

EPA's mercury rule declares that these substances pose "no hazards to public
health." The lawsuit, filed by Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club
and other groups, argues otherwise. "Some of these pollutants...can have
catastrophic effects on peoples' lives," said Nat Mund of Sierra Club. EPA
maintains that power plants do not emit enough non-mercury hazardous air
pollutants to justify requiring the entire industry to install
state-of-the-art pollution controls to capture them. 

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson Monnday said he is "very proud" of the
mercury rule, which he says will cost the power sector $51-bil in compliance
costs. "That's a significant impact," Johnson said. EPA faces a host of other
lawsuits over the mercury rule, as well as a challenge brought by several
dozen lawmakers under the seldom-used Congressional Review Act.

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