well..how else are tuna gonna get thier mercury???

February 2, 2004

EPA Mercury Proposal Contains Lobbyist Language

If new rules proposed by the Bush administration to cut power-plant

mercury emissions sound like they were written by industry lobbyists,

it's only because, well, they kinda were. The proposal, released by

the U.S. EPA on Friday for a 60-day public comment period, contains

at least 12 paragraphs lifted almost verbatim from memorandums sent

to the EPA by Latham & Watkins, a top Washington corporate

environmental law firm. EPA spokespersons dismissed the plagiarism

as an innocent interagency mix-up; the writer of the L & W memos called

it "gratifying." Enviros criticized the EPA proposal, which would

put in place a cap-and-trade system that would let plants buy and

sell mercury pollution credits and would not require plants to use

the best available technology to clean up their emissions. The EPA

claims the new program will reduce mercury emissions by nearly 70

percent by 2018; until then, you best hope you live near plants that

are selling rather than buying the right to pollute.

straight to the source: The Washington Post, Eric Pianin, 31 Jan 2004

only in Grist: Mercury rising, and rising, and rising -- in Muckraker

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