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Week Ending September 16, 2005
S. J. RES.20 A joint resolution disapproving a rule promulgated by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to delist coal and oil-direct utility units from the source category list under the Clean Air Act.
BRIEF
The Resolution expresses disapproval with the decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to remove coal-fired and oil-fired electricity generators from the list of major sources of hazardous air pollutants.
The inclusion of those power plants on the list was the result of the Clean Air Act, a far reaching law enacted in 1990. The Clean Air Act provisions set high standards for removal of pollutants from the environment, mercury in particular. The Resolution supports the belief that mercury deposits in the US would increase under the EPA rule revision.
Under current law power plants that violate EPA rules could trade off their levels of pollution with plants that have a pollution credit producing pollutants below the EPA allowed levels. Total pollutant output is capped but individual power plants can exceed pollution limits by exchanging pollution debits for credits.
The Resolution was bound up in committee but a sufficient number of Senators including some Republicans Senators petitioned in July to discharge the Resolution from committee and bring it to the floor for a vote. A motion to proceed with the Resolution passed by a vote of 92 to 8.
The focal point of the debate over the EPA decision centered on the dispersal of mercury into the atmosphere by coal and oil fueled power plants. Supporters of the Resolution held that the decision will reverse years of effort to reduce and limit the amount of Mercury in the US environment. Opponents hold that the cost of implementing the EPA decision would cost the taxpayers $2 billion but the cost of continuing to implement the stringent caps of the past fifteen years would cost $358 billion. They also asked if the mercury deposits in the US may have come from another country.
Sponsor: Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
Vote: Failed to pass the Senate (RV 225) (September 13, 2005) A motion to proceed with the Resolution Passed 92 to 8 (RV 224) (September 13, 2005)
Cost to the taxpayers: $2 billion.
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MORE INFORMATION
SOME OF THE FLOOR DEBATE REPRESENTING BOTH SIDES OF THE ISSUE
Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)
Mr. LIEBERMAN. “Mr. President, I offer my full support of the resolution and wish to thank Senator LEAHY, Senator Collins and the other cosponsors of this resolution who joined Senator LEAHY, Senator COLLINS and me in bringing it forward.
“One in 12 American women of childbearing age have mercury blood levels that put their fetuses at risk for developmental delays. Developmental delays are a human tragedy, often denying children their full intellectual and psychological potential. This human tragedy means that our schools and educational system face costs and burdens borne in meeting the special needs of these children, burdens that make it that much harder for our schools to achieve their overall mission of delivering the highest quality education to all Americans. At a time of increasing global economic competition in which human capital may be our most precious resource, we simply cannot afford to squander our people or divert the resources of our schools when we can prevent the problem in the first place.
That is why in 1990, Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed, comprehensive clean air legislation that, among other things, put in place a mechanism for dealing with power plant mercury emissions aggressively.
Unfortunately, the EPA's Clean Air Mercury Rule defies that clear intent of Congress and the first President Bush by failing to achieve anywhere near the full level of cost-effective and timely reductions in the emission of mercury from power plants, one of the critical sources of mercury in the environment.
The EPA's mercury rule depends on the agency's decision to undercut the Clean Air Act's mechanism for addressing mercury emissions from power plants. This resolution explicitly disapproves that undercutting decision.
The resolution should be adopted because the EPA must engage in a new rulemaking that is sound and that yields the proper level of reductions that the Clean Air Act contemplates and public health and economics demand.
Findings from both the Government Accountability Office and the EPA's Inspector General suggest that the EPA has much to repair in the rulemaking that led to the current rule. The GAO found that the EPA did not adequately evaluate the health benefits that would be achieved from requiring more aggressive mercury reductions than called for under the current rule. The EPA Inspector General determined that the agency did not evaluate what level of emissions reductions were technologically achievable, as required by the Clean Air Act. In addition, the EPA ignored an EPA-funded study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis pointing to substantial additional cardiovascular-related heath benefits associated with mercury reduction.
The Clean Air Mercury Rule was developed and promulgated at the same time that the Clean Air Interstate Rule was. The levels of mercury reduction expected to occur as a collateral result of reductions in sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen under the Interstate Rule are almost exactly those required by the Mercury Rule. This seeming coincidence raises the strong suspicion the EPA suborned its entire analysis of the Mercury Rule to the preordained goal of requiring under the Mercury Rule to effect no additional reductions in mercury than would be achieved as a collateral effect of the Interstate Rule. The flagrant flaws in the EPA's Mercury Rule rulemaking that both the GAO and the Inspector General exposed only reinforce that suspicion.
In contrast, the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to make a determination, after careful economic, technological, environmental, and public health analysis whether it was ``necessary and appropriate'' to regulate utilities' mercury emissions as a hazardous air pollutant under section 112. In December of 2000, the EPA, following the Clean Air Act's requirements, determined that power plant mercury indeed was a hazardous air pollutant, meaning that regulations under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act were ``necessary and appropriate.'' Once that determination was made EPA was required to put in place new technology-based regulations of mercury emissions from power plants, regulations that would call on each electric generating unit in the country to take technologically feasible actions to reduce its harmful emissions.
In contrast to the clear letter and spirit of the law, the new mercury rule leaves hundreds of large coal-fired power plants with absolutely no mercury controls until after 2020--if ever. In fact, the Congressional Research Service estimated that only 4 percent of installed power plant capacity is projected to require control by 2020 under this rule.
In addition, overall reduction levels under the new rule would be far below what can be achieved cost-effectively. In June, the GAO reported that the technologies exist for capturing 30-95 percent of mercury from coal. Recent tests have shown average removal rates of 70-95 percent for all coals, with those technologies applicable to the coals that account for 90 percent of power production showing mercury capture in excess of 90 percent. Currently, drastic reductions are underway in the State of Massachusetts, with mercury technology vendors working to meet a State-mandated 85 percent control level. Many, including vendors, state that 70-90 percent control can be achieved by the end of this decade. Associated costs to electricity consumers would increase by a mere 1-5 percent, according to the GAO report. These findings strongly suggest that the technology to control mercury is available now. By turning its back on a regulatory program that would achieve this level of control, the current EPA mercury rule turns its back on tens of thousands of children who will continue to be exposed unnecessarily to the development risks of mercury.
The EPA puts great stock in the use of cap-and-trade in its rule, and, as my colleagues in the Senate know, I, too, believe that cap-and-trade is a valuable tool for emissions control programs. In this case, I believe that cap-and-trade is the wrong tool to use, at least without specific technology requirements and much more stringent reduction requirements. Connecticut suffers from deposition of mercury emitted from upwind sources, and many highly populated areas within range of power plants are seeing significant deposition. To deal with mercury emissions, the case is strong, and the Clean Air Act reflects this, for requiring plant-by-plant controls.
At the same time, the EPA did next to nothing in its rulemaking to refute this case and to demonstrate that power plants' mercury emissions were only widely dispersed and yielded no local deposition. Instead, the EPA used an atmospheric model that masked, rather than revealed, whether mercury emissions have local deposition impacts. The EPA's model divided the Nation's atmosphere into a hypothetical grid of individual parcels that, at 500 square miles each, were so big that the model simply could not detect local emissions plumes and deposition even if it were occurring. When the model is run, the emissions of any large power plant within any of the model's grids are immediately dispersed by the model throughout the entire volume of that 500 square mile grid; the model simply cannot detect localized deposition occurring in any area smaller than 500 square miles! Thus, this technique cannot possibly reveal local effects occurring downwind of a large source. In effect, the model design itself created a self-fulfilling prophecy, which could only show the result that EPA wanted--that power plants emissions were dispersed, with no local deposition. In these circumstances, EPA has failed to make its case that cap and trade is the right tool to achieve both overall reductions and prevent harmful local effects.
Lastly, there is reason to believe that EPA overstated the role of global mercury emissions in high-deposition areas. If so, the case for plant-specific reduction requirements is even stronger. At the same time, even if one of the keys to addressing mercury deposition in the U.S. is inducing other countries to reduce their emissions, there can be no more effective way to accomplish that than if the U.S. itself adopts stringent controls on its own power plants and thus stimulates the development and widespread use of the technologies to achieve those reductions. If we want other Nations to follow our policies and use our technologies then we must act first.
For these reasons, Congress must adopt this resolution and the EPA must go back to the drawing board and produce a mercury program that will truly protect the American people.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)
Mr. INHOFE. First, it is the Energy Information Administration that came out and did the study on this. They said that there would be fuel switching. I only have to ask the question, if you are not able to use coal-fired plants, what are you going to switch to? Is it going to be windmills? There would be fuel switching, and it would have a devastating effect in terms of the problems that already exist in terms of the cost of natural gas.
The Senator from Vermont is passionate on this subject, and I don't want to be critical. But in talking about hotspots, that is the same thing that they said about acid rain--there are going to be hotspots--and it didn't happen. Thirdly, the point that was brought up on being family friendly. When you look at the fact that they say studies show that not a single woman or child has a blood mercury level approaching the level at which even the smallest affect was observed in any study, where is the real problem there? If you want to be family friendly, let's be a little concerned about the cost of fertilizer, about the cost of heating our homes when winter comes.
This is an exercise in futility. The President has already announced if this thing should pass--they will feel good and rejoice--he will veto it, and you can't override a veto. It is a done deal. The current rule regulates mercury for the first time. The current rule's cost is $2 billion, as opposed to $358 billion, a huge difference. A vote for this rule is a vote to drive the remaining chemical plants overseas. A vote for this rule is going to be a vote to increase the cost of fertilizer for every farmer in America. The cap and trade worked on acid rain, and it will work accurately now. All the talk about U.S. power plants. They only contribute 1 percent of the mercury that is in the system now globally.
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have sought recognition to give my reasons for voting against the so-called Leahy-Collins resolution.
I believe mercury pollution is a real problem, particularly for vulnerable populations, including children. Given these concerns, I support efforts to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, which account for 42 percent of U.S. emissions. This is in line with my support for many years for clean coal technologies, which will allow our Nation to utilize our most abundant natural resource in a cleaner, more efficient manner.
Debate on this resolution has revolved around two regulatory approaches--a maximum available control technology, MACT, rule or a cap-and-trade rule. I suggest that there is a third option that combines elements of both. A MACT system is enormously expensive on its own, costing up to $358 billion according to the Energy Information Administration, compared to $2 billion estimated by EPA for a cap-and-trade approach. However, a cap-and-trade-only system is inadequate on reducing pollution levels around specific plants, referred to as ``hot spots.'' The Leahy-Collins resolution would tie EPA's hands by restricting it to a MACT-only approach.
Under a third option, EPA could set a national emissions level, based on the best available science to protect public health and the environment, and implement a cap-and-trade system to meet this goal with the addition of measures to take care of hot spots, EPA could require reductions at specific plants. To this end, I have written the Administrator of the EPA urging this hybrid approach, which would meet environmental goals while balancing the implementation costs faced by consumers.
I ask unanimous consent that my letter to EPA Administrator Johnson be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
U.S. SENATE,
Washington, DC, September 13, 2005.
Hon. Stephen L. Johnson,
Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC.
DEAR ADMINISTRATOR JOHNSON: I am writing regarding the Clean Air Mercury Rule announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on March 29, 2005 and urge that you reconsider this rule.
Mercury pollution is of great concern to me. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is party to a suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which seeks to overturn the mercury rule.
As you reconsider this rule, I propose that the most reasonable approach to reducing U.S. mercury emissions from power plants would include a national cap with plant-specific reductions for those facilities found to be responsible for high levels of local mercury deposition, as some call ``hot spots.'' This would provide the flexibility needed by utility companies to make decisions on the appropriate mercury reductions at their plants, while avoiding the potentially inevitable problem of fuel switching to natural gas under a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standard.
Reducing mercury pollution is extremely important to the nation. Beyond that, there are specific concerns the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has, which concern this rule and the problems Pennsylvania faces with mercury-contamination fish advisories for every water body in the state.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response to these concerns.
Sincerely,
ARLEN SPECTER.
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