GAO - EPA Distorted Mercury Data In Order To Pimp "Clear Skies"

[hatrack]

"The Environmental Protection Agency distorted the analysis of its controversial proposal to regulate mercury pollution from power plants, making it appear that the Bush administration's market-based approach was superior to a competing scheme supported by environmentalists, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said yesterday. Rebuking the agency for a lack of "transparency," the report said the EPA had failed to fully document the toxic impact of mercury on brain development, learning, and neurological functioning. The GAO urged that these problems be rectified before the EPA takes final action on the rule.

The analysis follows a critical report by the EPA's inspector general that suggested that agency scientists had been pressured to back the approach preferred by industry. "The administration is showing a blatant disregard for the health of children, the health of women of childbearing age, but they are also showing a blatant disregard for the law," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who had asked for the analysis. "To not change would be the height of arrogant disregard."

Cynthia Bergman, an EPA spokeswoman, said the agency is on track to issue the mercury rule by March 15. She said the final rule would provide comparisons between the competing options that the GAO said were missing.

EDIT

The administration said the cap-and-trade plan would reduce more pollution, in part because it would invite less litigation, and blend nicely with a cap-and-trade proposal to control sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, called the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). But the GAO report said the EPA had tipped the scales to favor the market-based plan. For example, the EPA found that capping pollution at every plant would result in savings of $13 billion -- the difference between the estimated savings in health costs and the pollution control costs. The EPA said the cap-and-trade approach provided a much larger benefit of $55 billion to $68 billion, but the GAO said yesterday that this analysis included the benefits from implementing the CAIR rule. The report also suggested that the EPA had used dubious methods to assess the monetary value of mercury reductions. Although the approach was "quick and low-cost," the GAO said the method was characterized by great uncertainty and should have been treated "as a last-resort option."

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15244-2005Mar7.html

[tom_paine]

1. Just more Soviet-syle propaganda from the Soviet-style Busheviks

They are quite breathtaling in their contempt for their own Imperial Subjects. Rivalling the Soviet Union or Nazi Germanyin their distatset for the average Amerikan's intelligence.

Luckily, they are not yet as violent or directly oppressive as those regimes, though it may well be inevitable given the nature of Totalitarianism.

[Viking12]

2. and Repig congress adding to the bullshit

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9266


Jeffrey Holmstead— EPA Assistant Administrator, Air and Radiation

* Holmstead has served as an adjunct scholar for Citizens for the Environment, an organization formed in 1990 as a project of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a libertarian think tank that has received funding from corporate-fortune funded foundations including the Scaife Family (oil and banking), Koch (oil), Olin (chemical and munitions), and Bradley (electronics manufacturing) Foundations. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CPE "labeled most environmental problems - including acid rain, natural resource depletion, and shrinking landfill space - as myths..." CFE appears to be inactive, though Holmstead's biography states that he is currently an adjunct scholar.

* Was an attorney for Latham and Watkins - Homstead's clients included the AdHoc Industry group on Regulatory Reinvention, Alliance for Constructive Air Policy, Bristol Myers-Squibb, and Montrose Chemical.


The new mercury regulations were lifted directly from memos written by Latham Watkins