Senate Accepts Bush’s Plan for Mercury Emissions

The Senate last week narrowly affirmed the Bush Admin-istration’s recent controversial rule for reducing mercury emissions from power plants. The Senate did so by defeating, 51 to 47, a resolution to overturn part of the EPA rule. Sponsors of the resolution, including Democrats and Republicans mainly from the Northeast, wanted the Senate to overturn a portion of the March rule that allows emissions trading of the neurotoxic metal. In the rule, EPA changed a determination that mercury from power plants, like emissions of the metal from facilities such as waste incinerators, was a hazardous air pollutant that should be tightly controlled at every smokestack and disallowed from emissions trading schemes. By no longer classifying power-plant mercury as an air toxic, the agency paved the way for the emissions trading plan. This lets a power plant potentially increase its mercury emissions by purchasing pollution allowances from generating facilities that reduce their releases of the metal. This controversial provision of the EPA rule is the target of lawsuits filed by more than a dozen states and several environmental groups.