EPA favored industry

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Internal federal records show the Environmental Protection Agency put pressure on states so they would not enact controls on mercury emissions from power plants that were tougher than the controls required by the EPA.

The EPA’s plan for reducing mercury emissions from coal plants was struck down by a federal appeals court this month. The three-judge panel was particularly critical of a provision in the EPA’s standards that would allow coal plants with high mercury emissions to avoid making reductions by purchasing “credits” from coal plants that had lower emissions.

The Associated Press reports that internal EPA memos and e-mails obtained by the advocacy group Environmental Defense show that over the past two years EPA officials bored down on states that sought to enact tougher standards to prohibit or hinder coal plants from buying their way out of reducing mercury emissions.

Nevada was one of those states.

EPA officials tried to get Nevada air quality officials to accept pollution allowances that exceeded the mercury emissions Nevada coal plants already were producing. The EPA even offered the allowances for the Mohave coal plant in Laughlin, which was closed in 2005 because, among other reasons, its operators refused to upgrade pollution controls.

Michael Elges, chief of the Nevada Environmental Protection Department’s Bureau of Air Quality Planning, told the AP that Nevada officials refused the offer because they “didn’t think it’s appropriate” for mercury allowances “to be available in Nevada or anywhere else in the nation.” The EPA told Nevada officials the agency would reject the state’s mercury plan — and in December it did.

Federal air quality laws allow states to enact tougher standards on certain pollutants, and at least 30 states have sought to more strictly regulate mercury emissions. But the Bush administration’s EPA not only has rejected those efforts but also has thwarted efforts by California and other states to more strictly regulate tailpipe emissions.

It is the EPA’s job to ensure that our air is clean. But the agency can’t do that by refusing to restrict industries from belching poisons and pollutants into the sky.