Bush Administration Backs Clinton Plan on Mercury Pollution

The Bush administration is asking a federal appeals court to uphold a Clinton-era plan to regulate mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency asked the U.S. Court of Appeals here to dismiss a suit challenging the agency’s decision in December to begin ordering reductions in the estimated 40 tons of mercury spewed annually from power plant smokestacks.

The court action represents a second instance in which the new Republican administration has sided with its Democratic predecessor and environmentalists and against an industry whose executives overwhelmingly supported President Bush’s election. Last month, the Bush administration endorsed the previous administration’s standards on cleaner burning diesel fuel and engines.

The government motion says the suit by the Edison Electric Institute--a trade association of investor-owned utilities--and another industry group is premature, since the agency hasn’t taken final action yet.

“The preliminary decision to list a hazardous air pollutant or a category of sources emitting such pollutants is unambiguously defined not to be a final agency action subject to judicial review,” the motion said.

Andy Buchsbaum, a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, praised the administration’s action. “This is a strong indication that they support moving forward with a national standard for mercury emissions from power plants,” he said.

Bush promised during his presidential campaign to cut power plants’ emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide. He recanted the carbon dioxide pledge last month, saying he had since learned it was not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Exposure to mercury, most often through the food chain starting with fish consumption, has been linked to neurological and developmental damage in humans. Fetuses and young children are particularly vulnerable.

The EPA has long regulated mercury emissions from incinerators and other sources but not from power plants. Utilities now are not even required to report how much mercury comes from their smokestacks.

Calling the emissions from power plants a health problem, the EPA announced in December that it would start regulating them in 2004.

But the government set no requirements on how much utilities would have to reduce mercury emissions or on what technology they will have to install to meet a new standard. The agency also said full compliance with the new standard would not be expected until 2007.

The National Academy of Sciences, which also concluded that mercury should be regulated, last year said power plants, especially those burning coal, are the largest source of mercury releases.

Edison spokesman Dan Riedinger said the aim was not to overturn the EPA decision but to give utilities “a prudent and realistic goal” and more leeway in meeting the eventual new standards.

“We’re not trying to find a way out of a prospective regulatory requirement, but if there are ways to do it that are more cost-effective than others we would like to have the flexibility to pursue that,” he said.