Being critical of the EPA mercury rule is not the same as ignoring the risks from high levels of exposure to mercury or the need to phase out older coal burning power plants. No one opposes clean air or continued progress in reducing air pollution. Some comments suggest the contrary.

Some of the responses to the question about EPA’s mercury rule are based on exaggerated risks and misleading information. And, that began with EPA. As Susan Dudley points out, almost all of the asserted benefits come from co-benefits that EPA assumes will occur. Others claim that the rule is needed to protect children’s health and address asthma.

There have been numerous studies documenting that mercury levels in fish have remained constant for decades even though mercury emissions in the US have been declining. According to EPA and environmental groups mercury emissions end up in fish and mercury in fish represents a major health risk, especially to pregnant women. However, that is not the conclusion of major studies by Harvard, Lancet, or others. In fact, numerous studies conclude that the benefits from fish consumption far outweigh risks. So, there is more than sufficient reason to doubt the validity of EPA’s rationale for its regulation.

The agency claims that this regulation will prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 4700 heart attacks. There were 2.4 millions deaths in 2009 according to the Census Bureau. EPA’s 11,000 figure represents one-half of one precent. Does any reasonable person believe that epidemiology studies can be that precise? The answer is no. The same is true about avoided heart attacks. There are over 1 million each year. It is also asserted that this rule will have asthma benefits but anyone who has looked at the data knows that the incidence of asthma has been increasing as air pollution has been decreasing. Asthma is far more complex than EPA suggests.

Actions have consequences and if this rule survives the inevitable legal challenges it is a sure bet that the unintended negative consequences will swamp any assumed benefits.

The reliability of the electric grid is important to individuals and the economy. The short time line for complying with this regulation has raised serious questions about its impact on the grid because of the number of coal fired plants that will be shuttered. EPA has chosen to dismiss those by pointing to the utilities who will meet the new standards. That is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that the capital stock cannot turnover rapidly enough to replace over 60 coal fired units with natural gas. So in the end, consumers will bear higher costs, the risk of brownouts will be higher, and human health benefits will be negligible, if any.

Over the past 30+ years, there has been tremendous progress in improving air quality and the environment in general. Improvements in the future will be more challenging as pollution levels get smaller and the costs of reductions more costly. The time has come to spend more time in finding common ground in making further improvements more efficiently and to abandon the model that industry is the enemy and lacks environmental values. The sooner that can be achieved the better off the economy and the environment will be.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency introduced a new rule on December 21, 2011 that for the first time requires controls on mercury pollution from major U.S. coal-fired power plants. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule is long overdue and supported by several forward-looking energy companies. Yet science skeptics are once again contesting the benefits of environmental clean-up and jeopardizing public health for private profit.

One overlooked issue in recent discussions of the MATS rule is the environmental health effects of mercury. Recently published research from the Great Lakes region shows that the extent and severity of mercury pollution is greater than previously recognized (http://www.briloon.org/mercuryconnections/GreatLakes). Most people are exposed to toxic mercury through consumption of fish. The average mercury concentrations in six commonly eaten game fishes exceeded the U.S. EPA human health criterion in 60 percent of the land area of the Great Lakes region. And mercury’s risks extend beyond human health. The economic and nutritional benefits from one of the nation’s most important recreational freshwater fisheries are at stake. Mercury levels in walleye, for example, are high enough in many inland lakes and rivers in the Great Lakes region to degrade their quality as a food resource and compromise their reproduction.

The new research also demonstrates that mercury controls work. As mercury emissions in the Great Lakes region declined after the implementation of state and federal regulations, so have mercury levels in this environment. Historical mercury loading to the region, as estimated from lake sediments, has decreased 20 percent from peak levels around 1985. There are those who would argue against the importance of controlling mercury from U.S. sources given the magnitude of international sources, but lake sediments tell us the actual history of mercury inputs. The recent declines in mercury in lake sediments were concurrent with a 48 percent decrease in U.S. mercury emissions in the Great Lakes region and a 17 percent increase in global emissions. Importantly, mercury concentrations in some fish and fish-eating birds have also declined, illustrating clearly the benefit of controlling U.S. emissions. Mercury concentrations in walleye and largemouth bass are approximately 25 percent lower today than in 1970, when measurements began.

Despite progress in the Great Lakes region, the mercury problem is far from solved. All 50 states still have fish consumption advisories due to mercury, and an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 children born each year in the U.S. are exposed to mercury levels in utero that are high enough to impair neurological function. The U.S. EPA’s own analysis shows that the monetized benefits of pollution control from this rule to the American public would outweigh the costs to industry by up to 13 to 1 (including benefits of reduced particulate matter from power plant emissions). The estimated net benefits for mercury were limited to improvements in IQ, and would have been even higher if other human and environmental health endpoints, such as impacts to fish and wildlife resources, had been considered. As the Great Lakes research demonstrates, the science on the impacts of mercury pollution is clear. The costs of uncontrolled emissions from power plants are too high to be ignored.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards present a science litmus test to the Obama Administration. The findings from the Great Lakes region from more than 170 scholars who worked for three years to produce 35 peer-reviewed papers provide compelling, even overwhelming, science on mercury pollution and its effects on one of the most important welfare provided a clear case for cutting emissions, this is it.

Today's much anticipated roll out of EPA's utility MACT rule underscores the politics swirling around the regulation of coal-fired plants. EPA actually signed the rule last Friday, but then slow walked the release of the details until today, suggesting that they wanted to game the timing to optimize and shape the political message. In addition, using a Children's Medical Center as the backdrop for the announcement seems to further politicize an already polarized debate. More than two decades in the making, this rule is a politically charged high-stakes regulation with lots of controversy over the costs, benefits and impact on the reliability of electricity. In announcing the rule, EPA argued that it made a number of changes to provide more flexibility to utilities. But at the same time, the agency admits that the final rule is very similar to the proposed rule which drew more than 900,000 comments. EPA also claims that the benefits of the rule will exceed the costs 10 to 1.

Both the environmentalists and the industry make compelling arguments on the relative costs and benefits of the utility MACT rule. Without commenting on which camp is right, but one thing is clear: we would all be better served if we could move beyond the controversy and secure a certain outcome that would permit prudent planning.

Many of the affected utilities with coal-fired plants are willing to comply by installing increasingly sophisticated emissions control technology. Some may opt not to comply because of the costs, and instead shut down older plants. But everyone would appreciate some certainty on the regulations so long-term investment decisions can be made. Today's announcement helps to provide some certainty by giving utilities four years to comply with the rule, but with 1100 pages of requirements that are, in many respects, the same as the much maligned proposed rule, it could also lead to more confusion and concern. In fact, immediately following Administrator Jackson's announcement today, House of Representatives leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee raised concerns that the utility MACT rule will destroy jobs and make electricity more expensive and less reliable. Even though EPA's work on the utility MACT regulation is complete for now, the final chapter has not yet been written.

(These comments were submitted by Trip Van Noppen, President of Earthjustice)

Coal-fired power plants are the quintessential bad neighbor. Every year, they release far more toxic air pollution than any other industry—and yet they've never been held accountable for the damage those poisons are doing to people who live in the shadow of their smokestacks.

For more than two decades, the powerful coal power industry has managed through ferocious lobbying to defeat the safeguards we need for mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollutants. Meanwhile, countless other industries have cleaned up their acts and come into compliance with the law—using existing technologies to be better neighbors.

But today that is finally changing. Thanks to an unprecedented outpouring of citizen support, to many years of Earthjustice litigation, and to a strong stance by President Obama and Administrator Jackson, new safeguards are being put in place for coal plants across the country. The new standards will save lives, reduce asthma, and drive a transition to cleaner energy production. The old, dirty coal plants will close down or clean up, clean energy jobs will blossom, and we will all breathe easier.

And for all that we hear these days about how broken things are in Washington, this action by the Obama administration proves that when strong laws are combined with strong citizen enforcement and a willing president, major progress is possible. Years from now, we will look back at today as a seminal moment in our long transition from dirty fossil fuels to a clean, healthy, prosperous energy economy.

Public health should be the only factor considered when gauging the significance of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. By this measuring stick, the outcome resulting from finally assigning a limit to the staggering volume of mercury, acid gases and other air toxics coal-fired power plants can pump out of their smokestacks and into the air we breathe, will be nothing short of remarkable.

For far too long, normal business operations for many of America’s coal-fired power plants have been the direct cause of literally thousands of serious illnesses and deaths each year. Dirty air from these power plants exacerbates lung disease triggering children’s asthma attacks and makes breathing difficult for people living with COPD and other chronic lung diseases.

No parent wants to see their child suffer from the serious developmental disabilities unknowingly eating fish contaminated with mercury toxins from power plants can have on the developing brain. Thankfully, the Clean Air Act ensures public health is the primary factor considered when setting healthy air laws. Washington must staunchly protect this vital public health safeguard from threats to weaken, block or delay full implementation of not only the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards but also future air quality protections.

Polluters are pulling out all the stops to block this rule from going forward. The latest tactic is to suggest that more protective health standards will cause supply reliability issues and result in blackouts. When I was leading New York’s efforts to enact regulations to implement carbon pollution reductions under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, known as RGGI, I was told by power company representatives that the price to comply would be far higher than we had modeled and that the lights would go out in New York City due to power supply shortages. The biggest whopper we heard was that some power companies would actually move to other states and generate their power there. My point is that these tactics are not new and have been debunked. In New York, which implemented RGGI in 2008, the prices were what the state modeled; the lights never went out in New York City and no plant moved operations to another state. Over the course of the past 40 years, neither state nor federal environmental standards have resulted in blackouts and there is no reason to expect that these new standards will change that.

We have been waiting for more than twenty years for the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards to finally take effect. All signs seem to indicate we have almost reached the finish line and can finally begin to look forward to the day when sending our children outside to play will not increase their risk of having an asthma attack and eating fish will finally be safe again for pregnant women and children.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards gives our nation the healthier future we all deserve to enjoy.

The EPA’s analysis of the new mercury rule (the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology, or Utility MACT) is yet another example of regulatory bait-and-switch. The rule refers to mercury but really targets CO2, and it generates its purported benefits from reducing particulates that are already covered by other regulations. For an excellent and revealing analysis of the EPA calculations, see Anne E. Smith’s technical comments.

The EPA claims this rule would produce $53 billion to $140 billion in annual benefits, but at most $6 million of the benefits come from mercury reductions. We can compare this $6 million to the EPA’s estimated costs of more than $10 billion per year. However, even this bad deal is likely overly optimistic.

First, other independent annual cost estimates range from $70 billion to $200 billion—well above the EPA estimate.

Second, the benefits of particulate reduction and mercury reduction are based on questionable assumptions.

Suppose a study examined accidents in which four people each fell a distance of 50 feet. If two of the four died, the prediction of what is called a linear-dose response is that for every 200 feet that a population falls, two people will die. This would be averaged out among the population and the distance of falling. For instance, this linear-dose response would predict that for every 400 people who step off a six-inch curb, two will die from the impact. A cost-benefit calculation using this assumption would show that even a small city would save thousands of lives per day by cutting down all curbs. Though stepping out into street may be dangerous for other reasons, dropping down six inches is not the cause of any fatalities. Nor would eliminating curbs reduce any of the other dangers of stepping into the street.

Likewise, the EPA’s analysis of the Utility MACT rule using a linear-dose response is way off base, because existing mercury and particulate levels are more analogous to stepping off a six-inch curb than a 50-foot cliff.

In summary:

· The benefits of MACT’s mercury reduction are negligible.

· Particulates are already controlled by other regulations under the Clean Air Act, and the benefits calculated by the EPA for this rule are almost certainly exaggerated as well.

· The EPA’s cost estimate for the rule is far below independent estimates.

The proponents of the proposed rule tell stories of mercury poisoning and point to benefit estimates as though they reflect a reduced incidence of mercury poisoning. However, even the EPA’s own cost-benefit calculations reveal that this is not a mercury rule in any meaningful sense—less than one-tenth of one percent of the estimated benefits come from mercury abatement. Those who conflate the exaggerated benefits of particulate reduction with the virtually nonexistent benefits of controlling mercury emissions perpetrate a costly fraud.

Considering all of the troubling information that has been brought to light since the introduction of Utility MACT, it is incredibly discouraging that the EPA moved forward in finalizing the controversial rule - even though a diverse group of elected officials, federal regulators, power suppliers and grid operators have highlighted how the rule stands to put significant stress on consumers, local and national economies, and the reliability of the power grid. The EPA and the Administration have continually ignored any evidence that challenges the rule, which itself suffers from statistical errors, inaccurate technological assumptions, and inadequate economic and reliability analysis. In fact, a recent Associated Press survey found that more than “32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations.”

It was recently reported that internal Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) emails to the White House illustrate FERC’s own reliability concerns created by the Utility MACT. David Kathan, a senior economist at FERC stated in an email, “I don’t think there is any value in continuing to engage EPA on the issues …EPA has indicated that these are their assumptions and have made it clear they will not change anything on reliability or gas availability in the proposed rule.” FERC actually went so far as to ask that the EPA change the notation that they had “worked closely with FERC and the DOE” on reliability concerns stemming from Utility MACT during an interagency review. It is clear that FERC agrees Utility MACT will put America’s energy security at serious risk.

In allowing the EPA to move forward in finalizing Utility MACT, the Administration is choosing to turn a blind eye to its own Executive Order issued in January 2011 stating that the regulatory system must promote economic growth, job creation, and predictability while reducing uncertainty. The EPA power-sector rules will not only cost nearly $11 billion annually, but it will also impose significant costs on consumers and on industries that depend on affordable and reliable power to remain competitive in the international marketplace. For every one job that may be created in order to comply with the rule, we expect four higher-paying energy and manufacturing jobs to be lost. That’s a loss of more than one million jobs in the next decade.

The projected benefits of Utility MACT have been way overblown by its proponents in an effort to increase support. There has not been a specific MACT rule since the Bush Administration’s Clean Air Mercury Rule, which was set aside more than six years ago. However, power-plant mercury emissions have continued to decline substantially over this period. Most of the rule’s benefits come from reducing soot emissions. Yet, those emissions are already well controlled by the Clean Air Act, so Americans can only expect a few incremental health benefits from this expensive rule. Maybe that’s why the EPA has yet to make its final rule public – or even signal when it might – drawing criticism from environment, public health and industry groups alike.

Many in Congress have recognized the need to take action against Utility MACT. Senator Jim Inhofe has filed a joint resolution disapproving the rule, an effort that I support and urge his peers to follow suit. An overturning of Utility MACT will send an important message to the EPA and the Administration. The EPA should have recognized recent emissions improvements before implementing a rule with unrealistic deadlines for compliance. The end result will restrain domestic energy, endanger jobs, and saddle consumers with higher power bills.

If the enormous public benefits EPA predicts from these mercury standards were real, they would justify the cost to Americans of almost $11 billion per year. Unfortunately, they are not.

According to a regulatory impact analysis released earlier this year, EPA derived the vast majority of its estimated health and economic benefits not from reducing the toxic emissions that it is statutorily obligated to address (and which its press releases tout), but by counting what it refers to as “co-benefits.” These co-benefits comprise 99.996% of the total benefits EPA estimates, and arise not directly from reducing toxic emissions, but from other things that EPA thinks will happen as beneficial side effects.

The only “direct” benefits EPA presents in support of the rule amount to at most $6 million per year – the upper bound value it places on reducing exposure to toxic mercury emissions, which EPA predicts will raise even the most highly exposed children’s IQ by 2/10ths of one percent (or .002 IQ points). Scientists suggest even these very small effects greatly overstate the likely effects of the rules on children’s health, arguing that EPA “systematically ignored evidence and clinical studies” in developing these health estimates.

EPA gets its huge benefits by assigning high dollar values to reductions in emissions of fine particles (not air toxics or acid gases) that it models will occur as a side-effect of the required controls. These fine particles are already regulated through other EPA mandates, including standards EPA updates regularly based solely on public health considerations. (EPA is explicitly not allowed to consider implementation costs in setting national fine particle standards, but must set them at a level that is “requisite to protect public health… with an adequate margin of safety.”) Yet, through what is essentially an accounting trick, EPA calculates almost all of its monetary benefits for this rule from particle reductions well below the levels it has established as safe.

Contrary to EPA’s claim that the rule will provide particular benefits to children, the premature deaths EPA says will be averted are modeled to accrue to people with an average age of 80 years, who would live weeks or months longer, if at all, as a result of the regulations. This modeling is also suspect, because EPA assumes causality where none can be explained, and makes other assumptions that overstate effects.

Also disingenuous is EPA’s claim that the “rule will provide employment for thousands, by supporting 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.” First, this estimate quantifies only the jobs necessary to comply with the new rules, and ignores jobs lost, despite EPA’s recognition that “the industries that use electricity will face higher electricity prices as the result of the toxics rule, reduce output, and demand less labor.” Second, a careful reading of the fine print reveals that even the employment effects EPA claims are not statistically different from zero.

These new regulations will be among the most expensive regulations ever issued. Contrary to EPA’s claims, the real health impact of these rules will likely be negative. They will unnecessarily raise the price of electricity, impede economic recovery, and worsen public health and welfare. Not only will the rules increase the cost of heating, air conditioning, food, and other goods and services that contribute to public health, but they will divert scarce resources from much more pressing problems and activities that could contribute to improved health and economic well-being.

EPA mercury rules for electricity generating units are based on false science and economics

The Environmental Protection Agency clams its “final proposed” Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rules will eliminate nearly all toxic pollution from electrical generating units, bring over $60 billion in annual health benefits, and prevent thousands of premature deaths yearly – all for “only” $11 billion a year in compliance costs.

All of this may be true in the virtual reality of EPA computer models, linear extrapolations, cherry-picked health studies and statistics, government press releases and agency-generated public comments. However, in the real world inhabited by families, employers and other energy users, the new rules will bring few benefits, but will impose extensive costs that the agency chose to minimize or ignore in its analysis.

Emissions of mercury and other air toxics from power plants have been declining steadily for decades, as older generating units have been replaced with more efficient, less polluting systems or been retrofitted with better pollution control technologies. While a few older plants still violate EPA’s proposed rules –the new rules are simply not based on credible scientific and epidemiological studies.

As independent natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon and CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen pointed out in their Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily articles, and in Dr. Soon’s 85-page critique of EPA’s draft rules, US power plants account for only 0.5% of the mercury in US air. Thus, even if EPA’s new rules eventually do eliminate 90% of mercury from power plant emission streams, that’s still only 90% of 0.5% – almost zero. The rest of the mercury in US air comes from natural and foreign sources, such as forest fires, Chinese power plants and the cremation of human remains (from tooth fillings that contain mercury and silver).

EPA fails to recognize that mercury is abundant in the earth’s crust. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and released into the atmosphere when the trees are burned in forest fires, fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. In fact, US forest fires annually emit as much mercury as all US coal-burning electrical power plants. Mercury and other “pollutants” are also released by geysers, volcanoes and subsea vents, which tap directly into subsurface rock formations containing these substances.

The agency compounds these errors by claiming fish contain dangerous levels of mercury that threatens the health and mental acuity of babies and children. In making this claim, the agency commits four more grievous sins. First, it ignores the fact that selenium in fish tissue is strongly attracted to mercury molecules and thus protects people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic form.

Second, EPA based its toxicity claims on a study of Faroe Islanders, who eat few fruits and vegetables, but feast on pilot whale meat and blubber that is high in mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – but very low in selenium. Third, it ignored a 17-year Seychelles Islands evaluation, which found “no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects” in children who eat five to twelve servings of fish per week.

Fourth, it used computer models to generate linear extrapolations from known or assumed toxic levels down to much lower levels. Not only is this method contrary to sound science and epidemiology; it resulted in politicized “safety” levels that are twice as restrictive as Canadian and World Health Organization mercury standards, three times more restrictive than US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and four times tougher than US Food and Drug Administration recommendations. No wonder the Centers for Disease Control says blood mercury levels in US women and children are already well below excessively “safe” levels set by EPA.

In other words, EPA grossly exaggerated the health benefits of its proposed mercury rules. It then completely ignored the adverse effects that its rules will inflict. Not only is EPA’s anti-mercury campaign scaring mothers and children into not eating nutritious fish that is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. It is also raising electricity heating, air conditioning and food costs, impairing electrical reliability, costing jobs, and thereby harming the health and welfare of countless Americans.

Energy analyst Roger Bezdek has calculated that utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit older plants – and another $30 billion a year to operate, maintain and power the energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment they will be forced to install. Moreover, under its MACT rules, EPA intends to micromanage every aspect of power plant operations. It will now cite companies for violations even if emissions fully comply with air quality standards, if operators merely deviate from new agency “work practice standards” and “operational guidelines,” even under unusual weather conditions or equipment malfunctions that are beyond the operators’ control.

While it is true that older power plants are more significant sources of toxic air emissions, those plants are mostly in key manufacturing states that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity. Many utility companies cannot justify those huge costs – and thus plan to close dozens of units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little to replace it.

Electricity consumers could pay at least 20% more in many states within a few years. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will pay 40-60% more. That will severely affect business investment, production and hiring – and family plans to repair cars and homes, save for college and retirement, take vacations, or have health physicals or surgery.

Chicago public schools will have to pay an additional $2.7 million annually for electricity by 2014, says the Tribune. Hospitals, factories and other major electricity users will also be hard hit. Many poor and minority families will find it increasingly hard to afford proper heating and air conditioning. Further job losses and economic stress will lead to further reductions in living standards and nutrition, more foreclosures and homelessness, and additional drug, alcohol, spousal and child abuse.

The very reliability of America’s electricity grid could be at risk, if multiple power plants shut down. Brownouts, blackouts and frequent power interruptions will affect factory production lines, hospital, school, farm and office operations, employment, and the quality of food, products and services.

The impact on people’s health and welfare is patently obvious. But EPA considered none of this.

EPA insists there was strong public support for its rules. However, its rules were clearly based on false, biased or even fraudulent information. Furthermore, EPA itself generated much of that public support.

The agency recruited, guided and financed activist groups that promoted its rulemaking. Over the past decade, it gave nearly $4 billion to advocacy organizations and “environmental justice” groups, according to a Heritage Foundation study. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and members of her staff also visited historically black and other colleges – giving speeches about “toxic emissions,” providing templates for scare-mongering posters and postcards, and making it easy for students to send pro-rulemaking comments via click-and-submit buttons on college websites.

This EPA action does almost nothing to improve environmental quality or human health. In fact, by advancing President Obama’s goal of shutting down power plants and raising electricity costs, it impairs job creation, economic recovery, and public health and welfare. It is intrusive government at its worst.

Congress, states, utility companies, affected industries, school districts and hospitals, and families and citizen groups should immediately take action to postpone the MACT rules’ implementation. Otherwise, their harmful impacts will be felt long and hard in states that depend on coal for their electricity.

___________

Craig Rucker is CEO of CFACT the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

One of the biggest misconceptions inside the beltway is that the EPA is widely unpopular outside of the beltway. Despite heated rhetoric from polluting interests, their congressional allies and Republican presidential candidates, the fact is that the American public overwhelmingly trusts the EPA to enforce public health safeguards that protect the air our children breathe and the water they drink.

Poll after poll demonstrates that voters support the EPA’s efforts to hold polluters accountable. For example, a recent public opinion survey conducted by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies found that a strong majority support the EPA’s efforts to reduce global warming pollution, with 71 percent indicating support for requiring reductions in carbon emissions, including a solid majority of Republican voters.

Additionally, a nationwide poll from the American Lung Association, conducted earlier this year, found that 66 percent of voters believe that EPA scientists, rather than Congress, should set pollution standards, while a CNN poll, conducted immediately after the budget showdown this spring, found that a staggering 71 percent say the federal government should continue to provide financing to the EPA to enforce regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Any suggestion that the EPA’s implementation of vital clean air standards represents a conflict between good policy and good politics flies in the face of all available data. And with more than 800,000 Americans having submitted public comments to the EPA in support of the new national standards for mercury and other toxic air pollution for power plants – the most comments ever received in support of an EPA rule – it’s clear that the public strongly supports the EPA’s continued efforts to set commonsense limits on pollution and protect public health.

I prefer to address this topic not as an environmentalist but as the father of two young children.

Like any parents, my wife Mary and I will do anything in our power to keep our kids safe. We know that our power has its limits, but that doesn't stop us from trying.

Getting the house ready was just the beginning. We were also determined to protect our daughter from less-obvious dangers. Well aware of the toxic chemicals that increasingly find their way into our bodies, we shopped for the healthiest foods we could find -- and still do.

Of course, not all Americans have the same easy access to fresh, organic, and healthy foods that we do. In lots of neighborhoods it can be hard to find decent produce. But even so, you'd think there'd still be plenty of nutritious alternatives to fast food, like the humble tuna sandwich.

Not anymore. Tuna, like many types of fish, is often contaminated with mercury, a neurotoxin that damages the brain and nervous system, particularly in fetuses and young children. Mercury in the bloodstreams of pregnant and nursing women can result in birth defects like learning disabilities, reduced IQ, and cerebral palsy.

We've known about the dangers of mercury for a century. We've also known how the fish get contaminated: primarily via coal-fired power plants, whose smokestacks spew more than 30 tons of mercury annually into the air we breathe.

A heavy metal like mercury does not stay in the atmosphere for long. It eventually falls to Earth, inexorably working its way up the food chain until it winds up in the tuna sandwich in some kid's lunch box -- or on the sushi platter ordered by a young woman who's just become pregnant.

And that's where my wife and I get mad -- both as environmentalists and as parents: There is absolutely no reason our kids should be exposed to this poison. The EPA was first charged with limiting toxic air pollutants like mercury more than 20 years ago, during the George H. W. Bush administration. The technology to filter mercury from coal-plant smokestacks is widely available. But there's still no national limit on how much mercury a coal-fired power plant can release into the air. It's like debating what kind of childproof latches to put on the cabinets while the kids are playing with the knives.

The new standard the EPA will announce would require coal plants to keep more than 90 percent of their mercury emissions out of the atmosphere. The new rule would also apply to such cancer-causing metals as arsenic, chromium, and nickel. Filtering out these poisons would prevent hundreds of thousands of illnesses and up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. It would be the single biggest measure to save American lives in a generation.

We know that it's impossible to protect our children from every possible harm. Inevitably, knees will get scraped and probing fingers will get pinched in cabinet doors, and that giant leap off the porch might end in a tumble. But to endanger our kids solely for the sake of polluters' bottom line? As parents, and as Americans, that's something we should never accept.

On the eve of the U.S. EPA issuing its final rule aimed at reducing toxic air pollutants emitted from coal-fired and oil-fired power plants, Americans can look forward to real health benefits.

As chronicled by the Clean Air Task Force last year, the “direct link between power plant emissions and human health has been documented in an extensive body of scientific research drawing on multiple lines of evidence, including several rigorous, large-scale epidemiological studies.” [CATF, The Toll From Coal, 2010.] The new rule will lead to lower emissions of hazardous pollutants, such as mercury, arsenic and other toxic metals, acid gases, and dioxin, that lead to thousands of premature deaths and heart attacks, hundreds of thousands of significant illness, and lost work days for Americans.

Much has been said in recent months over whether the industry can respond with sufficient time to comply with the rule while also keeping the lights on. Some owners of coal plants are claiming that they can't get ready in time, and are asking that EPA give them an across-the-board option for more time. But in fact, the Clean Air Act gives everyone up to three years to comply, and EPA has the further authority, on a case-by-case basis, to grant another year, but only where absolutely necessary. Should it be required, the law allows the President to grant further exemptions where issues of national security would be threatened.

Companies owning half of the nation’s coal-fired generating capacity (11 of the top 15 largest coal fleet owners in the U.S.) have told Wall Street that they are well positioned to comply with EPA’s clean air rules.

For those that legitimately need more time in light of local reliability issues, current law and industry practices offer a wide range of options to address reliability issues as the industry responds. Many of these are quite technical, and can be used to address the specific concerns in areas where a plant needs more time to operate for reliability purposes.

Many are much less technical. For example, the market is already responding with thousands of megawatts of new gas-fired power plant projects now under construction and enabled by more plentiful and affordable natural gas supply. There are new binding offers to install cost-effective “demand-response” and energy efficiency measures to avoid needing to build and pay for more new power plants. These are proven technologies, which, like the construction of new pollution control equipment where it is sensible to add, can provide work for Americans in upcoming months and years.

The nation’s electric reliability organization, “NERC”, has issued a report indicating that with few exceptions, the regions’ electric systems will have adequate supply to meet electric demand. And it, like so many other industry studies (including some I have co-authored), indicates that retirement of many of the nation’s oldest and least efficient coal plants is occurring because they are no longer economical with today’s natural gas prices and lower demand.

Rather than needing an across-the-board “extra year” option to emit toxic pollution, more surgical solutions are warranted – and available. Notably, the nation’s five largest grid operators, serving 160 million customers, have proposed a narrowly tailored, “reliability safeguard.” Under it, power plant owners would provide ample advance notice regarding their compliance schedule (and retirement plans). An independent entity would assess which plants are needed for system reliability and which plants can safely retire or go off-line to retrofit. Only power plants that are truly needed to keep the lights on could receive an extension until additional transmission, generating capacity or demand-side resources could be added. EPA would adopt run-time limits into the permits for plants that are needed to keep the lights on, until those plants can be controlled or replaced. Some approach like this could be implemented in the relevant regions.

The issuance of the new rule will move all of this forward. Finalizing the rule will lead to significant health benefits (including avoiding up to 4,000 premature deaths and $29 billion in health damages, according to a recent report by John Hanger and the CATF in October 2011). This can happen while relying on current authorities, and using narrowly drawn permits that give plants needed for reliability purposes to run only for that purpose. This targeted approach would serve the nation’s twin goals of keeping the lights on and making our air fit to breathe.

The debate surrounding the impending mercury standards from the US EPA hasn’t had any traction here in Illinois. That might sound a bit surprising given the fact that almost 50 percent of the electricity in the state comes from coal-fueled power plants. So how is this possible? Because the industry and the state EPA negotiated stringent mercury regulations several years ago that allowed enough time for each company to make business decisions and technological upgrades to meet the new standards.

So the individual plants have already or will soon meet the new standards and, according to the Illinois EPA, the state has already seen an average 75 percent decrease in mercury emissions – some individual coal plants have seen an almost 90 percent decrease.

This shows that there is a sweet spot for regulations that allow flexibility in how to reach the goals, include negotiated deadlines and are created to provide a substantial benefit to the environment.

Compare this to the US EPA’s current efforts to increase regulations of coal ash disposal. Coal ash is one of the residues from the process of turning coal into electricity. It is either stored in wet or dry landfills or recycled to make cement that is used in everything from road construction to buildings. The US EPA has been working on new regulations on coal ash disposal that have been handled by states in the past with few problems (though the few failures have had an unfortunate, dramatic impact). Proposed Federal regulations include the possibility of declaring coal ash a hazardous material – which would take away its ability to be recycled and severely limit the places it could be landfilled. All the choices will cost companies and (eventually) consumers money. More than 40 states have sent the US EPA negative comments on their proposed rules.

There is no doubt that promulgating new regulations is no picnic. But these two examples show that there is a right way and wrong way to approach the regulatory environment and it usually starts with focusing on the importance of the problem you’re trying to solve, determining if new regulations are actually warranted (or if current rules need to be better enforced) and then working with industry to give it a fair shot to meet the new standards. Over-reaction to headlines and asking for impossible deadlines only invite bigger fights and fewer solutions.

The two prime issues distorting the energy markets are the $50 billion plus per year of federal subsidies for conventional energy sources, subsidizing mature technologies, in mature markets by mature companies; and the requirements for the traditional generation plants to minimize their emissions and wastes, addressing their intense impact on human health and ecosystems. The idea that EPA should allow the traditional industries to sustain their emissions where when new control and mitigation technologies are now available, is not good public policy. The position the traditional fossil industry is fostering that EPA should reconsider rulemaking because of the multi-billion dollar impact of the potential rise in prices in less clean forms of energy. But as EPA has pointed out, the death and health impact is borne by the American consumer at a far greater cost than what would be absorbed in the electric bills. In addition, if traditional energy is continued to be heavily subsidized and be allowed to delay their negative health and environmental impacts - the result distorts and retards the assets of high value energy efficiency and renewable energy. EPA needs to push the next level of emissions controls across the board, and not just focus on particulates and mercury, but other heavy metals, carcinogens, hormone imitators, coal ash, and a host of other harmful wastes and emissions.

Based on the experience of the past three years, it is a safe, Romney-like wager that this proposed regulation over states the benefits and understates the cost and difficulty of meeting the compliance schedule. EPA under Lisa Jackson has lost credibility on issuing regulations that strike a balance between legitimate environmental challenges and our technological and economic ability to resolve them. If Jackson's real objective is to shutter old coal fired power generation units, there is a better way to achieve that goal without causing undue economic harm.

It is an established fact that mercury is a neurotoxin. Over 500 years ago, Swiss doctor Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (commonly called Paracelsus) pointed out that All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy. Based on this bed rock principle, the question should be are Americans exposed to levels of mercury that represent a serious health risk? If the answer is yes, which is doubtful, will reducing mercury emissions for coal fired power generation significantly reduce that risk?

EPA traditionally uses a linear dose response model with an “adequate margin of safety” to make its health benefits calculation. Linear dose response is a hypothesis, not an established fact. As exposure levels get lower, the use of linear dose response produces a very conservative risk estimate that almost certainly overstates the real risk. And as exposures get lower, the cost of incremental reductions gets larger.

According to a U.N. study, mercury emissions in the U.S. represent 3% of global emissions, roughly the same as the amount of annual mercury emissions from our country's forest fires. Between 1990 and 2005, industry reduced mercury emissions by 58%, according to EPA’s own data. Other analyses indicate that our economy is already reducing pollutants like mercury by 1-3% annually based on existing regulations. So by now, they are about two-thirds lower.

Looking at all of the data, it seems obvious that exposures from power plant emissions are low and therefore the benefits of further reductions will at best will be minimal. Once again, EPA is overstating its case by using statistical gimmicks to produce hypothetical lives saved. At some point, the agency should answer the question, how low is low enough?

The cost of the rule is anything but minimal. As in the case of the boiler MACT, EPA has low balled the cost. Rather than $10.9 billion annually, independent studies put the cost between $70 and almost $200 billion annually. That cost imposed on the electric power generation system will unnecessarily lead to double digit electricity rate increases and to a substantial loss of jobs. This rule clearly ignores Executive Order 13563, issued this past January, which directed agencies to promote economic growth, job creation while reducing regulatory uncertainty. (Mrs. Jackson must not have received her copy.)

The rule would give utilities up to 4 years to meet the emission reduction targets. The time required for permitting, planning, contracting, retrofitting, and upgrading make it doubtful that many companies will be able to comply with this regulation while maintaing service to customers. Last month, testimony at a FERC reliability conference made clear that this rule risks widespread blackouts and power outages because of the loss of base-load power.

The bottom line is that once again EPA zealotry is taking priority over common sense actions to spur economic recovery and job creation. The continued long term improvement in environmental quality is dependent on a strong and growing economy. EPA seems oblivious to this fact which is clearly demonstrated by economic history. What is even worse is that the EPA approach to reducing mercury emissions is clearly inferior to one which would remove barriers and create economically rational incentives for utilities to replace coal fired power with natural gas over a realistic period of time.

EPA will of course dispute that this regulation is excessive and that it has over stated the health benefits and understated the economic impacts. The best way of proving which conclusion is correct is by subjecting this rule to an independent assessment by a panel of experts who are not beholden to EPA for grants. The field of environmental risk assessment is filled with many qualified experts in health effects, systems analysis, and economics who could be drawn on for such an assessment. If EPA is confident in the basis for the proposed regulation, it should welcome such an independent review. But no one should hold their breadth waiting for EPA to accept the challenge.

EPA’s record of extremism and overstated risks is making a strong case for a top to bottom restructuring and refocusing of its mission. The sun cannot set too soon.