14 DAY TRIAL // A federal court of appeals in the United States has recently ruled in favor of the country's Environmental Protection Agency and has stated that the latter is entitled to ask power plants to cut their air toxics emissions regardless of the costs associated with their doing so.
Under the national standards set in place by the Environmental Protection Agency and upheld by the federal court of appeals this past Tuesday, power plants in the United States must implement measures intended to limit their emissions of mercury, arsenic, and other toxic air pollutants. Think Progress informs that, in supporting the Agency's rules for emissions control, the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit dismissed complaints that these standards were bound to force power producers to spend loads on money on cleaning up their act and force some facilities into retirement.
The federal rules that the court of appeals chose to uphold are to come into effect in April 2015, and the Environmental Protection Agency expects that they will help limit air pollutants emissions originating from power plants to a considerable extent.
Specifically, it is estimated that coal-fired power plants will experience a drop of 90% in their mercury emissions, will reduce their acid gas emissions by 88%, and will also curb sulfur dioxide emissions by 41%, Politico tells us.
Although the court of appeals eventually ruled in favor of the Environmental Protection Agency, judge Brett M. Kavanaugh thinks that the organization should have perhaps considered how its new standards would affect power producers before putting them on paper and taking steps towards implementing them.
“In my view, it is unreasonable for EPA to exclude consideration of costs in determining whether it is 'appropriate' to impose significant new regulations on electric utilities. To be sure, EPA could conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs. But the problem here is that EPA did not even consider the costs. And the costs are huge, about $9.6 billion (€6.9 billion) a year,” the judge said in a statement.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency maintains that these costs are well worth it, especially given the fact that the new standards are bound to prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks on a yearly basis.
“The mercury and air toxics standards are critical public health safeguards that reduce deadly air pollution. These standards developed by EPA will require some of the nation’s biggest polluters, coal- and oil-burning power plants, to cut emissions because they pose a significant health risk to the American people,” Senator Barbara Boxer wished to stress.