EPA and State of New Jersey Propose Settlement with Bank of America for Monmouth County, NJ Superfund Site Cleanup

On May 15, 2023 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposed settlement with Bank of America to address the White Swan Cleaners/Sun Cleaners Area Groundwater Contamination Superfund Site in Wall Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. Under the proposed agreement, Bank of America, the current owner of the White Swan property, will be required to fund and perform vapor intrusion and groundwater cleanup work at an estimated cost of $29 million.

"With this settlement EPA is holding Bank of America accountable for its share of the cleanup at the White Swan site," said Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. " After years of investigation and cleanup efforts, this is a significant step towards resolving the contamination issues at the site for the benefit of the community, the environment, and public health."

“The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are committed to protecting the health of those who live and work in the vicinity of the White Swan Cleaners/Sun Cleaners site,” New Jersey Commissioner of Environmental Protection Shawn M. LaTourette said. “We have partnered together to test indoor air at hundreds of business and residential properties and installed ventilation systems on dozens with vapor intrusion concerns. This settlement with Bank of America ensures that long term cleanup, including remediation of contaminated groundwater and future vapor mitigation work, will be funded by the responsible party, not by the taxpayers.”

Bank of America became legally responsible for the site when it bought the White Swan property through a series of bank mergers and acquisitions in 2004.

Bank of America also will reimburse EPA for certain aspects of its cleanup work, paying $10.8 million, and pay up to $1.5 million for future EPA oversight costs. As part of the agreement, Bank of America will construct and then run the groundwater pump and treatment system for four years to capture and clean the most highly contaminated groundwater at the site.

The company will pay up to a total of $6.5 million to the State of New Jersey to settle its liability for cleanup and removal costs, to voluntarily resolve its liability for natural resource damages (NRD), and to address long-term operational needs of the treatment system. This amount includes $3.7 million for cleanup costs and $2.8 million set aside in an escrow account for any future groundwater system operation and maintenance or added vapor intrusion work needed after the State takes over the cleanup.

Vapor intrusion occurs when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from contaminated soil and groundwater seep into buildings, potentially exposing occupants to harmful chemicals. EPA has found that the former dry-cleaning operations of White Swan Cleaners and Sun Cleaners were the sources of soil and groundwater contamination. VOCs from the contamination can easily evaporate into the air and cause health hazards. EPA added the site to the National Priorities List (NPL) in 2004. In the course of the cleanup, EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) have installed several indoor air ventilation systems after conducting indoor air testing on residential and commercial properties. In 2018, EPA also oversaw Bank of America’s removal of contaminated soil from the White Swan property. Cleanup of the Sun property, which is not related to the White Swan property, is being funded by EPA.

https://www.epa.gov/vaporintrusion/what-vapor-intrusion

The proposed consent decree, which has been lodged in the U.S. Federal District Court of New Jersey, is subject to a 60-day comment period. The Department of Justice and EPA will evaluate the comments and decide whether to proceed and then, if appropriate, seek final approval by the court.

For more information, to view the proposed consent decree and to give comments, please visit: https://www.justice.gov/enrd/consent-decrees

For additional background, please visit the White Swan Cleaners/Sun Cleaners Area Ground Water Contamination Superfund site profile page.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) www.EPA.gov
Press Release dated May 15, 2023
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-and-state-new-jersey-propose-settlement-bank-america-monmouth-county-nj-superfund

Court Orders Owners of Former Plating Company in Richmond to Pay $5.2 Million for Hazardous Waste Violations

The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) was recently awarded $5.2 million in civil penalties from Marion Patigler and the estates of her parents, Gerhard and Ingrid Patigler, for years of hazardous waste violations.

The judgment took into account the more than $500,000 in enforcement costs incurred by the California Attorney’s General Office and $300,000 in cleanup costs incurred by DTSC. Marion Patigler was also permanently banned from engaging in any future hazardous waste management practices in California.

Marion Patigler was sentenced to three years in jail for her failure to complete the cleanup of hazardous waste left at the facility in Richmond in 2015. For many years Electro-Forming operated as an electroplating and metal polishing company located in a mixed-use residential neighborhood in Richmond.

Court backs Obama’s climate change accounting

A federal appeals court is upholding the Obama administration’s accounting of the costs of greenhouse gas emissions as applied to a Department of Energy (DOE) regulation.

In a unanimous decision late Monday, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected an industry-backed request to overturn a 2014 rule that set energy efficiency standards for commercial refrigerators.

In doing so, the court specifically backed the so-called social cost of carbon, President Obama’s administration-wide estimate of the costs per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere — currently $36.

The DOE used the carbon cost in its cost-benefit analysis, justifying the rule in part because of the amount of climate change regulators believe it would avoid.

It’s the first time a court has considered the legality of the carbon accounting, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, which supports the policy and filed a brief backing the DOE in the case. Congressional Republicans, business interests and energy companies have criticized the accounting as bad math and improper forecasts.

...

“To determine whether an energy conservation measure is appropriate under a cost‐benefit analysis, the expected reduction in environmental costs needs to be taken into account,” the judges wrote. “We have no doubt that Congress intended that DOE have the authority under the [Energy Policy and Conservation Act] to consider the reduction in SCC.”

They went on the say that the industry challengers were incorrect in stating that the carbon cost is “irredeemably flawed,” concluding instead that “DOE’s determination of SCC was neither arbitrary nor capricious.”

...

The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, which led the industry litigation, said it was “disappointed” with the ruling 

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/290859-court-backs-obamas-climate-change-accounting

By Timothy Cama

The Hill http://thehill.com

August 9, 2016

An Economic Assessment of the Supreme Court's Stay of the Clean Power Plan and Implications for the Future

Summary
The Clean Power Plan is expected to contribute substantially to US greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but the Supreme Court has halted its implementation. However, the conditions supporting a stay based on economic harms to the coal sector are not met.

Key Findings

• Because of market, technological, and policy trends that are independent of the Clean Power Plan, combined with compliance flexibility, the economic conditions supporting a stay based on economic harms to the coal sector are not met.
• The same factors mitigate concerns about large increases in electricity prices and harms to the broader economy until at least the mid-2020s.
• The gradual phasing of the emissions reductions and the flexibility to reduce emissions by a wide range of approaches are well within the confines of the Clean Air Act.
• Existing trends suggest that the costs to the public of pushing back the Clean Power Plan deadlines likely far outweigh the benefits to the coal sector.
• Claims of irreparable harm arise frequently in environmental litigation. Our economic framework for analyzing the potential irreparable harm under the Clean Power Plan is applicable in other contexts.

Abstract
The Clean Power Plan is expected to play an important role in reducing US greenhouse gas emissions. On February 9, 2016, responding to appeals from the affected industries and states, the Supreme Court issued a "stay" suspending implementation of the Clean Power Plan until after the judicial review process. Industry groups stated the plan will pose large “irreparable” costs to the coal sector during the period of judicial review. However, modeling suggests that because of prevailing market, technological, and policy trends, the Clean Power Plan will result in near-zero costs beyond current trends until 2025, in part because of the plan’s built-in flexibility. These factors and lessons from option theory suggest the stay is economically unjustifiable based on claims of irreparable economic harm to the coal sector. If implementation of the rule proceeds, current trends imply the stay will have little effect on industry’s ability to follow the current compliance schedule. 

 ...

[A variety of organizations have performed simulation modeling of the CPP on behalf of the electricity industry and environmental organizations, which they have shared in stakeholder dialogues, workshops, and private briefings. These findings are not generally available in a citable form, and we depend on our own modeling results, which are consistent with the results that other groups report. We have used RFF’s Haiku electricity model to simulate about 50 CPP scenarios, which differ in the compliance approach taken by states, the level of coordination among states, and the levels of future electricity demand and fuel prices. Here, we focus on a scenario in which all states are assumed to participate in a nationwide emissions trading program and choose to cover existing and new sources under their state caps (Burtraw et al. 2016). The assumption of national emissions trading (as opposed to regional or no trading) reduces overall implementation costs, but the coverage of new sources under the cap raises implementation costs. We assume (conservatively) that only half the level of new programmatic energy efficiency assumed by EPA in its modeling. These assumptions should yield a balanced estimate of the overall costs of the CPP and the effect of the CPP on the coal-fired fleet. In this context, we estimate total compliance costs of $6.3 billion per year in 2025 and $8.4 billion in 2030 (2011$). The 2030 estimate can be compared to EPA’s estimates of $5.1 to $8.4 billion for 2030 costs, depending on the approach states choose (EPA 2015). It is noteworthy that EPA finds the costs before 2030 to be substantially lower than in 2030. In 2022, EPA estimates costs of $1.4 to $2.5 billion, and in 2025 costs of $1 to $3 billion. These estimated costs are comparable in magnitude to the costs of existing policies, but not the most expensive among recent policies. For example, for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, EPA (2011) estimates annual costs of $10.4 billion in 2016 (2011$). Barbose and Darghouth (2016) report annual compliance costs of $2.5 billion in 2014 for state renewable portfolio standards (2011$).

Photo: alohaspirit/iStock
It is also noteworthy that EPA estimates the CPP costs to be several times lower than the societal benefits of lower emissions. Burtraw et al. (2016) estimate that emissions allowance prices with multistate compliance (trading) rise to only $2 per ton of CO2 by 2025, meaning that existing technological trends and policies will reduce emissions nearly to the levels required for the initial compliance period (2022–24). By 2030, allowance prices rise to $17 per ton of CO2. For comparison, EPA analyzes state-level compliance and estimates allowance prices ranging from $0 to $14.59 per ton in the first compliance period (EPA 2015). Multistate compliance would be expected to have a much lower allowance cost. For an average coal-fired plant, the allowance price in 2030 implies a marginal cost increase of about $17 per MWh (47 percent) and for a natural gas-fired plant, the allowance price in 2030 translates into an increase of about $7 per MWh (15 percent). The CPP therefore provides a relative advantage to natural gas-fired plants compared with coal-fired plants. Without the CPP, generation from coal-fired plants would account for 32 percent of total generation in 2030; under the CPP, they would account for 27 percent of total generation. These shares contrast sharply with the 50 percent share in 2005 and even the 37 percent share in 2012 (EIA 2015a). The CPP is expected to increase the average wholesale generation price by about 4 percent, raising the revenue per MWh of generation at these plants and offsetting some of the higher generation costs caused by the policy. Table 1 shows that, in annual percentage terms, the effect of the CPP on operating profits is a fraction of the effect of the recent natural gas price declines on operating profits. The reduction in generation from coal-fired power plants will be felt at coal mines that face lower demand for coal.]

U.S. EPA announces $22 million settlement for cleanup of Cooper Drum Superfund Site in South Gate, Los Angeles County

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice today announced that a group of 40 parties have agreed to conduct the cleanup of the Cooper Drum site in South Gate, 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The settlement requires an estimated $15 million to construct the additional groundwater treatment system needed, including wells, piping and treatment costs, plus $7 million to reimburse EPA for its past cleanup actions at the Superfund site.

“Today’s settlement is a binding commitment to pursue the final cleanup of this former industrial site,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “Our goal is to protect the residents of South Gate from the toxic chemicals that have contaminated their local groundwater.”

Cooper Drum is a 3.8 acre site located in a commercial, industrial and residential area of South Gate. From 1974 until its closure in 1992, the Cooper Drum Company reconditioned used steel drums from industrial customers, such as chemical manufacturers, chemical packagers and oil companies. The 55 gallon steel drums, which contained residual oils and solvents, were washed and prepared for reuse. Residual wastes from the drums, primarily volatile organic compounds such as trichloroethylene (TCE), spilled and leaked on the site, contaminating soils and groundwater. Cooper Drum was placed on Superfund’s National Priorities List in 2001.

Over the last 14 years, EPA has overseen the design, construction and operation of soil and groundwater treatment systems aimed at cleaning up TCE, lead, PCBs and petroleum hydrocarbons. The site’s soil vapor extraction system, which has been operating since 2011, has removed over 742 pounds of chemicals from affected soils. The groundwater extraction system has treated more than 17 million gallons of contaminated groundwater since 2012. All water that is served to the residents and businesses in South Gate meets state and federal drinking water standards.

Drinking high levels of TCE may cause damage to the nervous system, liver and lungs. PCBs are a known human carcinogen and may cause a variety of other adverse health effects on the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. Long term exposure to lead can lead to kidney problems or high blood pressure.

http://www.gilbaneco.com/assets/SAIA-Adjcent-Facility-Soil-Gas-Sampling_feature2.jpg

Between 2001 and 2009, EPA’s cleanup activities at the Cooper Drum site relied on public funding. In 2009, agency investigators were able to identify former customers of the drum reconditioning business. Since then, the settling parties, known as the Cooper Drum Cooperating Parties Group, have funded the cleanup and worked cooperatively with EPA. This is the final phase of work for the site for known conditions, and implements the cleanup selected in the Record of Decision in September 2002.

The settlement, lodged in Federal District Court on December 29, 2015 as a consent decree, will be posted in the Federal Register and available for public comment for a period of 30 days. The consent decree can be viewed on the Justice Department website: www.justice.gov/enrd/Consent_Decrees.html.

Southern California’s I-710 freeway passes through 15 cities and unincorporated areas including South Gate, where the effects of pollution are disproportionately higher than in other areas of Los Angeles County. Approximately one million people, about 70% of whom are minority and low-income households, are severely impacted by industrial activities and goods movement in the area. In a multi-year effort, federal, state, and local governments and nonprofit organizations are working together to improve the environmental and public health conditions for residents along this corridor.

For more information on EPA’s work at the I-710 corridor, please visit: http://www.epa.gov/region9/strategicplan/i710.html

For more information on the site, please visit: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/cooperdrum or http://tinyurl.com/npju6s2

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) www.EPA.gov

Press Release dated December 29, 2016
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/275D055CEE479A9F85257F2A007720B6

Court refuses to overturn air pollution rule despite Supreme Court defeat

An appeals court has upheld the Obama administration’s sweeping mercury pollution rule for power plants, despite a Supreme Court decision against the regulation.  The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is allowed to enforce the air pollution regulation while it works to fix the flaw identified by the high court.  The Supreme Court ruled in June that in developing the mercury and air toxics standards, the EPA violated the Clean Air Act by not considering the compliance costs to electric utilities.

The agency did consider costs in writing the rule, but the justices decided that a unique provision in the law requires a cost-benefit analysis before even starting to write it.

http://www3.epa.gov/mats/powerplants.html

The Supreme Court did not overturn the rule and left it to the Circuit Court to decide its fate. The EPA plans to fix the problem by April by simply reasserting the cost-benefit analysis that it already completed. The Circuit Court judges did not say why they reached their decision in the brief order, although they noted that the EPA has promised a fix by April 16.

EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said ... “These practical and achievable standards are already cutting pollution from power plants that will save thousands of lives each year and prevent heart and asthma attacks,” she said. “The standards also slash emissions of the neurotoxin mercury, which can impair children’s ability to learn.”  Harrison noted that the majority of power plants affected by the rule are already operating the necessary controls to comply.

A group of states and energy companies had asked the Circuit Court to vacate the rule....

By Timothy Cama

The Hill  www.TheHill.com

December 16, 2015

For Full Story go to http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/263234-court-upholds-epa-air-pollution-rule

The SO2 Allowance Trading System: The Ironic History of a Grand Policy Experiment

http://www.rff.org/Publications/Pages/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=22015 

Abstract:
Two decades have passed since the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 launched a grand experiment in market-based environmental policy: the SO2 cap-and-trade system. That system performed well but created four striking ironies. First, by creating this system to reduce SO2 emissions to curb acid rain, the government did the right thing for the wrong reason. Second, a substantial source of this system’s cost-effectiveness was an unanticipated consequence of earlier railroad deregulation. Third, it is ironic that cap-and-trade has come to be demonized by conservative politicians in recent years, since this market-based, cost-effective policy innovation was initially championed and implemented by Republican administrations. Fourth, court decisions and subsequent regulatory responses have led to the collapse of the SO2 market, demonstrating that what the government gives, the government can take away.
...

Beginning in 1995 and over the subsequent decade, the SO2 allowance-trading program performed exceptionally well along all relevant dimensions. (Early assessments of the system’s design and performance were provided by Schmalensee et al 1998 and Stavins 1998.) The program was environmentally effective, with SO2 emissions from electric power plants decreasing 36 percent – from 15.9 million to 10.2 million tons – between 1990 and 2004 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2011b), even though electricity generation from coal-fired power plants increased 25 percent over the same period (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2011). The program’s long-term goal of reducing annual nationwide utility emissions to 8.95 million tons was achieved in 2007, and by 2010 emissions had declined further, to 5.1 million tons. Overall, the program delivered emissions reductions more quickly than expected, as utilities took advantage of the possibility of banking allowances. With its $2,000/ton statutory fine for any emissions exceeding allowance holdings (and continuous emissions monitoring), compliance was nearly 100 percent.

The costs of achieving these environmental objectives with cap-and-trade were significantly less than they would have been with a command-and-control regulatory approach. Cost savings were at least 15 percent and perhaps as much as 90 percent, compared with counterfactual policies that specified the means of regulation in various ways and for various portions of the program’s regulatory period (Carlson et al. 2000; Ellerman et al. 2000; Keohane 2003). In addition to static cost effectiveness, there is evidence that the program brought down abatement costs over time by providing incentives for innovation in equipment and operating procedures that are generally much stronger than those provided by traditional command-and-control regulation (Ellerman et al 2000, pp. 235-48; Popp 2003; Bellas and Lange 2011).

While the program was less costly than a conventional approach, the costs may not have been as low as they could have been. Marginal abatement costs varied significantly across facilities, at least in the program’s first two years (Carlson et al. 2000). On the other hand, there is evidence that the intertemporal allocation of abatement cost (via allowance banking) was at least approximately efficient (Ellerman and Montero 2007), and the pattern of voluntary compliance was consistent with cost-effective compliance strategies (Montero 1999).

The following factors may have kept costs above the theoretical minimum, though the influence of each has been debated: (1) provisions in the CAAA that encouraged early use of flue-gas desulfurization (using devices called “scrubbers”) instead of switching to low-sulfur coal – in an effort to limit impacts on high-sulfur coal producers (Ellerman et al 2000, pp. 301-2); (2) lack of information about marginal abatement costs on the part of market participants, particularly in the early years; (3) state regulation that, particularly in the early years of the program, had the effect of distorting or constraining utilities’ responses to federal environmental regulation (Arimura 2002; Bohi and Burtraw 1992; Ellerman et al 2000, pp. 190-5); (4) interactions between the SO2 program and other federal regulations, such as New Source Review and New Source Performance Standards, which constrained the program’s operation; and (5) policy uncertainty when regulators and policy makers subsequently considered further reductions in the national SO2 cap.

...

Whereas some studies at the time of the program’s enactment predicted that its benefits would be approximately equal to its costs (Portney 1990), more recent estimates have pegged annual benefits at between $59 and $116 billion, compared with annual costs of $0.5 to 2 billion.  More than 95 percent of these benefits are associated not with ecological impacts (including acidification of aquatic ecosystems), however, but with human health impacts of reduced levels of airborne fine sulfate particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) derived from SO2 emissions. Epidemiological evidence of the harmful human health effects of these fine particulates mounted rapidly in the decade after the CAAA was enacted (Chestnut and Mills 2005).

Estimates of these health benefits vary widely, but they appear to be on the order of $50 billion to more than $100 billion per year (Burtraw et al. 1998; Burtraw 1999; Chestnut and Mills 2005; National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program 2005; Shadbegian, Gray, and Morgan 2005; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2011a). As Table 1 shows, strict ecosystem benefits are probably considerably less than program costs, though at least one study (Banzhaf et al 2006) suggests that ecosystem benefits alone have exceeded program costs. In any case, estimated human health benefits of the program have exceeded annual costs by a factor of more than fifty! The government did what turned out to be the right thing for the wrong reason.

Environmental Economics Blog on Fallout from Federal Appeals Court Striking Down Cross-State Air Pollution Rule

http://www.env-econ.net/2012/08/benefit-cost-analysis-be-darned.html

The least that I can do is CAIR*

Benefit-cost analysis be darned:

The fallout has begun just one day after a federal appeals court scrapped a major EPA rule designed to curb long-distance drifting power plant pollution — and Louisville’s air quality may pay the price.
A Western Kentucky utility told the Kentucky Public Service Commission Wednesday that it intends to abandon pollution controls that would have allowed it comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, also known as the transport rule. 
Henderson-based Big Rivers Electric Cooperative, which owns and operates four generating stations and a 1,266-mile transmission system, could save its customers about $225 million by dropping pollution controls required for the transport rule, said Marty Littrel, cooperative spokesman.

via www.courier-journal.com
Stavins and Schmalensee conclude:

Existing studies providing estimates of the Transport Rule’s benefits and costs consistently find that benefits outweigh costs, on a national basis, often by a wide margin.

*With apologies to Kid Rock. 

Environmental Economics Blog http://www.env-econ.net

Posted by John Whitehead on August 23, 2012

EPA Issues First National Standards for Mercury Pollution from Power Plants/ ‘mercury and air toxics standards’ meet 20-year old requirement to cut smokestack emissions

http://tinyurl.com/cpo5nkr
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the first national standards to protect American families from power plant emissions of mercury and toxic air pollution like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. The standards will slash emissions of these dangerous pollutants by relying on widely available, proven pollution controls that are already in use at more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants.

EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also help America’s children grow up healthier – preventing 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year. 
 
"By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health– and especially for the health of our children. With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another action that will benefit the American people for years to come," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance."

“Since toxic air pollution from power plants can make people sick and cut lives short, the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a huge victory for public health,” said Albert A. Rizzo, MD, national volunteer chair of the American Lung Association, and pulmonary and critical care physician in Newark, Delaware. “The Lung Association expects all oil and coal-fired power plants to act now to protect all Americans, especially our children, from the health risks imposed by these dangerous air pollutants.”

More than 20 years ago, a bipartisan Congress passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury. To meet this requirement, EPA worked extensively with stakeholders, including industry, to minimize cost and maximize flexibilities in these final standards. There were more than 900,000 public comments that helped inform the final standards being announced today. Part of this feedback encouraged EPA to ensure the standards focused on readily available and widely deployed pollution control technologies, that are not only manufactured by companies in the United States, but also support short-term and long-term jobs. EPA estimates that manufacturing, engineering, installing and maintaining the pollution controls to meet these standards will provide employment for thousands, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,000 long-term utility jobs.

Power plants are the largest remaining source of several toxic air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, cyanide, and a range of other dangerous pollutants, and are responsible for half of the mercury and over 75 percent of the acid gas emissions in the United States. Today, more than half of all coal-fired power plants already deploy pollution control technologies that will help them meet these achievable standards. Once final, these standards will level the playing field by ensuring the remaining plants – about 40 percent of all coal fired power plants - take similar steps to decrease dangerous pollutants.

As part of the commitment to maximize flexibilities under the law, the standards are accompanied by a Presidential Memorandum that directs EPA to use tools provided in the Clean Air Act to implement the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability. For example, under these standards, EPA is not only providing the standard three years for compliance, but also encouraging permitting authorities to make a fourth year broadly available for technology installations, and if still more time is needed, providing a well-defined pathway to address any localized reliability problems should they arise.

Mercury has been shown to harm the nervous systems of children exposed in the womb, impairing thinking, learning and early development, and other pollutants that will be reduced by these standards can cause cancer, premature death, heart disease, and asthma.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which are being issued in response to a court deadline, are in keeping with President Obama’s Executive Order on regulatory reform. They are based on the latest data and provide industry significant flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach and use of already existing technologies.

The standards also ensure that public health and economic benefits far outweigh costs of implementation. EPA estimates that for every dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, the American public will see up to $9 in health benefits. The total health and economic benefits of this standard are estimated to be as much as $90 billion annually. 
 
The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the final Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was issued earlier this year, are the most significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the Acid Rain Program of the 1990s.

Combined, the two rules are estimated to prevent up to 46,000 premature deaths, 540,000 asthma attacks among children, 24,500 emergency room visits and hospital admissions. The two programs are an investment in public health that will provide a total of up to $380 billion in return to American families in the form of longer, healthier lives and reduced health care costs. 

More information: http://www.epa.gov/mats/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) www.EPA.gov 
Press Release dated December 21, 2011