EPA guts rule credited with cleaning up coal-plant toxic air
Source: AP
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday gutted an Obama-era rule that compelled the country’s coal plants to cut back emissions of mercury and other human health hazards, a move designed to limit future regulation of air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants.
Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said the rollback was reversing what he depicted as regulatory overreach by the Obama administration. “We have put in place an honest accounting method that balances” the cost to utilities with public safety, he said.
Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist whose previous clients have gotten many of the regulatory rollbacks they sought from the Trump administration.
Environmental and public health groups and Democratic lawmakers faulted the administration for pressing forward with a series of rollbacks easing pollution rules for industry — in the final six months of President Donald Trump’s current term — while the coronavirus pandemic rivets the world’s attention.
FILE - In this Aug. 23, 2018, file photo, a coal-fired plant in Winfield, W.Va, is seen from an apartment complex in the town of Poca across the Kanawha River. 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. (AP Photo/John Raby, File)
Read more: https://apnews.com/f335db392caae2729636b01910f4055a
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Not just the environmental stuff, but the whole structure of the government.
So much destruction. 
