Obama Administration Weakens New Rules

In April, EPA drew up some new rules for steam power plant water pollution. The rulemaking was in response to lawsuit by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife. Nevertheless it was welcomed by environmentalists because many legacy plants are operating with expired permits and have become the largest source of toxic water pollution in the United States. According to the EPA, 160 water bodies are not meeting usually lax state quality standards and another 185 have fish consumption advisories.  EPA's study was based on data collected by the power plants themselves to meet permit requirements. Of the 274 coal fired plants that discharge ash or scrubber waste, 102 had no requirement to report discharges of toxic metals such as arsenic, boron, lead, and mercury to a government agency or the public. Fifty-seven plants are operating with permits that expired five or more years ago. The rules updated those in place since 1982, accounting for improvements in the steam electric power industry. The new rules were to be phased in between 2017 and 2022, and the EPA estimated fewer than half of existing plants would incur additional costs under any of the proposed regulatory options.

Despite these well-considered proposals, the Office of Management and Budget, which is notoriously corporate friendly, kicked the proposals back to the EPA by virtue of its authority to analyze proposed regulations from a cost-benefit and regulatory impact viewpoint. Businesses' best friend in government went so far as to rewrite portions of the proposed rules. According to environmentalists who have seen OMB revisions, the agency has seriously weakened EPA's regulations by giving industry the option of continuing to dump toxic wastes into the nation's waters.  One example of the seriousness of the problem is the Bruce Mansfield coal plant in Shippingport, PA.  The 2740 MW plant has three scrubbers to clean air emissions but the pollutants in the scrubber waste water is dumped into streams that join the Ohio River. Pennsylvania has issued an advisory to limit consumption of fish from the Ohio due to high levels of mercury. Bruce mansfield operates under an expired federal permit that imposes no discharge limits for heavy metals or that requires monitoring of pollutant levels. Mother Jones described the Shippingport plant[photo]as one of the twelve dirtiest plants in the nation based on the 17.4 million tons of CO₂ emitted each year.

EPA proposed two options in its rule making: Option 5 requires the elimination of all dumping of toxic wastes into water bodies.  Option 4 would eliminate ash contaminated discharges and apply rigorous treatment for scrubber waste water.  EPA has extended the public comment period for forty five days until September 20th in response to numerous requests.  Show you care about your health and the health of the nation at large. Send in a comment support EPA's attempt to protect us from power plant waste.  The docket number is EPA-HQ-OW-2009-0819