EPA gutting rule credited with coal-plant toxic air cleanup

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is gutting an Obama-era rule that compelled coal plants to cut back emissions of mercury and other human health hazards, limiting future regulation of air pollutants by petroleum and coal plants.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whose clients have gotten many of the regulatory rollbacks they asked for from the Trump administration, was set to announce the final version of the weakened rule later Thursday.

Environmental and public health groups and Democratic lawmakers faulted the administration for pressing forward with rollbacks — in the final six months of President Donald Trump’s current term — while the coronavirus pandemic continues.

With rollbacks on air pollution protections, the “EPA is all but ensuring that higher levels of harmful air pollution will make it harder for people to recover in the long run” from the disease caused by the coronavirus, given the lasting harm the illness does to victims hearts and lungs, said Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the senior Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The EPA left in place standards for emissions of mercury, which has been linked to brain damage and other ailments. But the agency was expected to whittle down the health benefits that regulators can consider in crafting rules, thus challenging the underlying basis for the 2011 Obama administration rule and others like it.

The Trump administration contends the mercury cleanup was not “appropriate and necessary,” a legal benchmark under the country’s landmark Clean Air Act, and began work in 2018 to roll back the regulation.