Mercury rising under the freedom fairy's reign

[Guest guest]

White House Threatens Mercury Change Veto

By JIM ABRAMS, AP

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House on Monday defended

its

anti-pollution policies and threatened to veto a

Senate proposal to

negate new Environmental Protection Agency rules on

limiting mercury

emissions from power plants.

 

Senate Democrats, joined by several Republicans,

claim that the EPA

rules favor the utility industry while slowing action

on a serious

public health hazard. A Senate vote to overturn the

rules was slated

for later Monday.

 

The White House, in a statement, said it supports

efforts to reduce

mercury emissions and protect public health based on

sound science. It

said the Senate resolution " would unnecessarily delay

the first-ever

reduction of mercury emissions from power plants " and

that, if it

reaches the president's desk, his senior advisers

would recommend that

he veto it.

 

The chances of the bill reaching that stage are not

high: passage in

the Senate is uncertain and is less probable in the

House, where the

GOP majority rarely deviates from the White House.

 

The bill's sponsors, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and

Susan Collins,

R-Maine, turned to a little-used 1996 law that allows

Congress to

challenge agency rules with a guaranteed floor vote.

The law has been

successfully invoked only once, when Congress in 2001

repealed Clinton

administration workplace ergonomics regulations.

 

By repealing the EPA rules finalized last March, the

Senate would

force the agency to return to the tougher Clean Air

Act rules imposed

during the Clinton administration that requires the

nation's 600

coal-burning power plants to use the best available

technology to

reduce mercury emissions.

 

Environmental and health groups and other opponents

of the new rules

say the regulations are inadequate in dealing with a

toxin that every

year puts hundreds of thousands of newborns and

children at risk of

neurological damage. Mercury pollutants work their way

up the food

chain after being absorbed by fish.

 

The administration says that, under the new rules,

mercury pollution

from power plants would eventually be cut by 70

percent, from 48 tons

currently to 15 tons.

 

The rules set a nationwide cap on mercury emissions

and put a ceiling

on allowable pollution for each state beginning in

2010. But individual

plants, through a cap-and-trade system, can avoid

cleanups by buying

pollution credits from plants that are under allowable

levels. The

utility industry says this is the best way to reduce

mercury emissions,

citing successes of cap-and-trade in reducing acid

rain in the 1990s.

 

Last month a federal appeals court rejected a suit

brought by

environmental and health groups and 14 states seeking

to force the EPA

to stop implementing the new rules.

 

The resolution is S.J.Res. 20

 

On the Net:

 

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/

 

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/

 

09/12/05 12:52 EDT

 

" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix