S.J. RES 20

S.J. RES 20 -- (Senate - September 13, 2005)

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Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I offer my full support of the resolution and wish to thank Senator LEAHY, Senator Collins and the other cosponsors of this resolution who joined Senator LEAHY, Senator COLLINS and me in bringing it forward.

One in 12 American women of childbearing age have mercury blood levels that put their fetuses at risk for developmental delays. Developmental delays are a human tragedy, often denying children their full intellectual and psychological potential. This human tragedy means that our schools and educational system face costs and burdens borne in meeting the special needs of these children, burdens that make it that much harder for our schools to achieve their overall mission of delivering the highest quality education to all Americans. At a time of increasing global economic competition in which human capital may be our most precious resource, we simply cannot afford to squander our people or divert the resources of our schools when we can prevent the problem in the first place.

That is why in 1990, Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed, comprehensive clean air legislation that, among other things, put in place a mechanism for dealing with power plant mercury emissions aggressively.

Unfortunately, the EPA's Clean Air Mercury Rule defies that clear intent of Congress and the first President Bush by failing to achieve anywhere near the full level of cost-effective and timely reductions in the emission of mercury from power plants, one of the critical sources of mercury in the environment.

The EPA's mercury rule depends on the agency's decision to undercut the Clean Air Act's mechanism for addressing mercury emissions from power plants. This resolution explicitly disapproves that undercutting decision.

The resolution should be adopted because the EPA must engage in a new rulemaking that is sound and that yields the proper level of reductions that the Clean Air Act contemplates and public health and economics demand.

Findings from both the Government Accountability Office and the EPA's Inspector General suggest that the EPA has much to repair in the rulemaking that led to the current rule. The GAO found that the EPA did not adequately evaluate the health benefits that would be achieved from requiring more aggressive mercury reductions than called for under the current rule. The EPA Inspector General determined that the agency did not evaluate what level of emissions reductions were technologically achievable, as required by the Clean Air Act. In addition, the EPA ignored an EPA-funded study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis pointing to substantial additional cardiovascular-related heath benefits associated with mercury reduction.

The Clean Air Mercury Rule was developed and promulgated at the same time that the Clean Air Interstate Rule was. The levels of mercury reduction expected to occur as a collateral result of reductions in sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen under the Interstate Rule are almost exactly those required by the Mercury Rule. This seeming coincidence raises the strong suspicion the EPA suborned its entire analysis of the Mercury Rule to the preordained goal of requiring under the Mercury Rule to effect no additional reductions in mercury than would be achieved as a collateral effect of the Interstate Rule. The flagrant flaws in the EPA's Mercury Rule rulemaking that both the GAO and the Inspector General exposed only reinforce that suspicion.

In contrast, the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to make a determination, after careful economic, technological, environmental, and public health analysis whether it was ``necessary and appropriate'' to regulate utilities' mercury emissions as a hazardous air pollutant under section 112. In December of 2000, the EPA, following the Clean Air Act's requirements, determined that power plant mercury indeed was a hazardous air pollutant, meaning that regulations under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act were ``necessary and appropriate.'' Once that determination was made EPA was required to put in place new technology-based regulations of mercury emissions from power plants, regulations that would call on each electric generating unit in the country to take technologically feasible actions to reduce its harmful emissions.

In contrast to the clear letter and spirit of the law, the new mercury rule leaves hundreds of large coal-fired power plants with absolutely no mercury controls until after 2020--if ever. In fact, the Congressional Research Service estimated that only 4 percent of installed power plant capacity is projected to require control by 2020 under this rule.

In addition, overall reduction levels under the new rule would be far below what can be achieved cost-effectively. In June, the GAO reported that the technologies exist for capturing 30-95 percent of mercury from coal. Recent tests have shown average removal rates of 70-95 percent for all coals, with those technologies applicable to the coals that account for 90 percent of power production showing mercury capture in excess of 90 percent. Currently, drastic reductions are underway in the State of Massachusetts, with mercury technology vendors working to meet a State-mandated 85 percent control level. Many, including vendors, state that 70-90 percent control can be achieved by the end of this decade. Associated costs to electricity consumers would increase by a mere 1-5 percent, according to the GAO report. These findings strongly suggest that the technology to control mercury is available now. By turning its back on a regulatory program that would achieve this level of control, the current EPA mercury rule turns its back on tens of thousands of children who will continue to be exposed unnecessarily to the development risks of mercury.

The EPA puts great stock in the use of cap-and-trade in its rule, and, as my colleagues in the Senate know, I, too, believe that cap-and-trade is a valuable tool for emissions control programs. In this case, I believe that cap-and-trade is the wrong tool to use, at least without specific technology requirements and much more stringent reduction requirements. Connecticut suffers from deposition of mercury emitted from upwind sources, and many highly populated areas within range of power plants are seeing significant deposition. To deal with mercury emissions, the case is strong, and the Clean Air Act reflects this, for requiring plant-by-plant controls.

At the same time, the EPA did next to nothing in its rulemaking to refute this case and to demonstrate that power plants' mercury emissions were only widely dispersed and yielded no local deposition. Instead, the EPA used an atmospheric model that masked, rather than revealed, whether mercury emissions have local deposition impacts. The EPA's model divided the Nation's atmosphere into a hypothetical grid of individual parcels that, at 500 square miles each, were so big that the model simply could not detect local emissions plumes and deposition even if it were occurring. When the model is run, the emissions of any large power plant within any of the model's grids are immediately dispersed by the model throughout the entire volume of that 500 square mile grid; the model simply cannot detect localized deposition occurring in any area smaller than 500 square miles! Thus, this technique cannot possibly reveal local effects occurring downwind of a large source. In effect, the model design itself created a self-fulfilling prophecy, which could only show the result that EPA wanted--that power plants emissions were dispersed, with no local deposition. In these circumstances, EPA has failed to make its case that cap and trade is the right tool to achieve both overall reductions and prevent harmful local effects.

Lastly, there is reason to believe that EPA overstated the role of global mercury emissions in high-deposition areas. If so, the case for plant-specific reduction requirements is even stronger. At the same time, even if one of the keys to addressing mercury deposition in the U.S. is inducing other countries to reduce their emissions, there can be no more effective way to accomplish that than if the U.S. itself adopts stringent controls on its own power plants and thus stimulates the development and widespread use of the technologies to achieve those reductions. If we want other Nations to follow our policies and use our technologies then we must act first.

For these reasons, Congress must adopt this resolution and the EPA must go back to the drawing board and produce a mercury program that will truly protect the American people.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, earlier today I was necessarily detained from voting on S.J. Res. 20, ``A Joint Resolution disapproving a rule promulgated by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to delist coal and oil-direct utility units from the source category list under the Clean Air Act.''

Mercury emissions and rulings by Federal agencies concerning the environment are extremely important. Although my vote would not have changed the outcome, I respectfully request that the RECORD show that had I been able to cast my vote, I would have joined with the majority of Senators who voted to uphold the administration's rulings and against the resolution of disapproval.

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