Is this the GOP’s vision of a happy, healthy future?Image: Devin Hunt

Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected an extreme agenda disguised as a jobs and transportation bill. This unsuccessful effort was founded on the absurd notion that more pollution would mean more jobs, and that what the country really needs is more of the congressional paralysis and obstructionism that already wearies and disgusts Americans.

This week, the Senate will vote again on repealing life-saving pollution standards — this time a Tea Party-backed attack on the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) that keeps out-of-state smog and soot pollution from fouling the air of neighboring communities. Once again, the dirty air champions are going to talk about jobs, but the public already knows what the Senate affirmed last week — dirty air and dirty water are not a jobs plan.

Last week’s failed legislation was Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) Long-Term Surface Extension Act of 2011 [PDF] — a witch’s brew of Tea Party House Republican bromides about job creation that in reality were just poisonous attempts to:

• kill health safeguards against mercury and toxic pollution from cement plants, incinerators, and industrial boilers;
• quietly pass Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) truly radical REINS Act [PDF], which would allow just one chamber of Congress to block law enforcement of existing statutory safeguards, from clean air and clean water protections, to food safety standards, to Wall Street reform; and
• just as quietly pass the insidious Regulatory Time-Out Act of 2011, which would indiscriminately and nonsensically block the most significant health and environmental safeguards, financial responsibility reforms, and the like for one year, notwithstanding how much damage and destruction to the American people or economy would result from blocking those safeguards.

This week, Paul plans more of the same, with a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to void EPA’s CSAPR. These standards will clean up dangerous smog and soot pollution from the oldest, dirtiest coal-burning power plants in the eastern half of the United States, saving lives and creating jobs by cleaning up pollution.

EPA has projected that these clean air standards will prevent every year [PDF]:

• up to 34,000 premature deaths;
• 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks;
• 400,000 cases of asthma attacks; and
• 1.8 million days when people miss work or school.

Moreover, these health safeguards will deliver up to $280 billion in annual benefits to the American people, compared to $2.4 billion in compliance costs to polluting coal-burning power plants, yielding benefits that outweigh costs by an astonishing 116 to 1. Many politicians and industry lobbyists claim to support benefit-cost analysis; how much would health benefits to Americans have to outweigh polluter compliance costs before Paul and his resolution’s co-sponsors would support clean air safeguards? 200 to 1? 500 to 1?

Further proof for this extreme agenda is shown by the zealous irresponsibility of Paul’s chosen weapon, a Congressional Review Act vote that repeals not only the CSAPR, but also prohibits EPA from adopting “substantially similar” health protections.

The Congressional Review Act is a nuclear bomb with radioactive spillover consequences: It voids not just the targeted safeguards, like CSAPR, but also prohibits EPA from adopting similar protections, such as a substitute for the Bush administration’s 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule. A federal court overturned [PDF] this rule in 2008. CSAPR responds to the court order to reduce smog and soot pollution from power plants in a more protective manner that complies with the Clean Air Act.

If a Congressional Review Act vote abolished CSAPR and blocked EPA from reissuing a similar rule, this would make it extremely unlikely that EPA could even reissue clean air standards achieving the same emissions reductions as the weaker Clean Air Interstate Rule; the two rules are substantially similar in numerous respects, including the problems they target; the states, polluters, and pollutants covered; the rules’ underlying modeling and rationale; the legal authority and regulatory structure; etc. The result would be millions more tons of smog and soot pollution from dirty power plants.

All of this explains why Paul’s extreme pollution agenda already is attracting bipartisan opposition from more moderate and responsible members, with five or more Republican senators expected to oppose the CRA resolution.

The White House’s Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change, has authored an eloquent and ringing endorsement of the cross-state rule. One hopes this important backing represents the prelude to a White House statement of administration policy (SAP) recommending a presidential veto of Paul’s resolution, adding to the laudable record of SAPs opposing House dirty air attacks this year.

The greater question remains, however: When will congressional obstructionists finally abandon their stalling and ideological pollution plans in favor of getting down to the business of moving the country forward to a healthy and clean energy future?

Obama is the new Bush when it comes to clean air.Photo: Hrag Vartanian

In the most outrageous environmental offense of the Obama administration, the president himself has intervened politically to block the Environmental Protection Agency from correcting an unprotective smog standard that the head of EPA recognizes to be scientifically and legally indefensible [PDF]. The president’s own rationale for interference defies the Clean Air Act and a unanimous Supreme Court decision, elevating unlawful considerations above public health, science, and the law.

The president’s intervention is compounded by grievous legal and factual errors. The president sided with Big Oil and other polluters based on their claims about regulatory burden, notwithstanding that compliance with stronger smog standards would not have been required until 2016 anyway, and stronger safeguards will save the country money too.

Siding with an unprotective smog standard adopted by the Bush administration under equally politicized circumstances, the president has condemned EPA and his Department of Justice to defend that Bush standard in court against lawsuits by the American Lung Association, NRDC, and a dozen states, including the president’s own. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has deemed the Bush standard to be “not legally defensible given the scientific evidence“ [PDF].

News coverage of the Friday Smog Massacre only scratched the surface of the deeper levels of capitulation, illegality, and harmful consequences embodied in the president’s action, which serves political interests above the health of the American people, compliance with the law, and respect for scientific integrity.

I will plumb those deeper levels in a series of posts starting with this one.

A brief history of lengthy delay and lawbreaking 

Public health standards protecting all Americans against dangerous ground-level ozone or smog pollution were last set in accordance with sound science and the Clean Air Act in 1997. Then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner adopted a health standard of 0.08 parts per million. In all too familiar EPA preference for laxity, regardless of political party, that number was rounded up to 0.084 parts per million or 84 parts per billion (ppb). That 84 ppb level remains the permissible concentration of smog pollution today that federal and state officials across the country are enforcing.

Despite the Clean Air Act requirement that clean air standards be reviewed and revised every five years, the Bush administration delayed and failed to revise the 1997 ozone standards until March of 2008. Then-EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson disregarded the unanimous recommendations of EPA’s independent, expert science advisers that the 84 ppb standard be lowered to between 60 and 70 ppb in order to protect public health with an adequate safety margin. Instead Johnson set the standard well outside that range at 75 ppb [PDF].

After Johnson rejected the science advisers’ unanimous ozone advice, the advisers took the extraordinary step of writing a strong letter to him condemning [PDF] his weaker 75 ppb standard: “[T]he members of the CASAC Ozone Review Panel do not endorse the new primary ozone standard as being sufficiently protective of public health.”

Johnson’s reasons for refusing to follow the science and the advisers’ recommendations were a joke. His reasoning carried the same hallmarks of tortured excuse and silence in the face of contrary evidence that characterized another Bush EPA air quality standards decision. In 2006, Johnson disregarded the near-unanimous advice of these same expert advisers when he adopted similarly unprotective standards for soot pollution, or PM2.5. One month into the Obama administration, a federal court found [PDF] the Bush administration soot standards arbitrary and overturned them, sending them back to EPA to start over.

A promise to follow science and the law, and protect public health

Administrator Jackson wished to avoid the same fate in court for the unlawful ozone standards issued by the Bush EPA. Lawsuits had been filed against these standards in 2008 by the American Lung Association, NRDC and other environmental groups, and more than a dozen states and cities. Numerous industry groups challenged the Bush standards too, comically claiming them to be unlawfully stringent.

More importantly, speaking to the public health and welfare standards for ozone, Jackson indicated [PDF] that she wanted to “ensure that two of the nation’s most important air quality standards are clearly grounded in science, protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, and are sufficient to protect the environment.”

So in September 2009, she announced that EPA would reconsider the inadequate 2008 Bush ozone standards. Stating the obvious, she noted that “[t]he ozone standards set in 2008 were not as protective as recommended by EPA’s panel of science advisers, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.”

In January 2010, EPA proposed [PDF] to strengthen the Bush ozone standards to fall within the 60 to 70 ppb range recommended by the science advisers, and the agency solicited public comment.

It was widely rumored in Washington and believed in clean air circles that by the fall and early winter in 2010, Jackson wished to finalize ozone standards at the midpoint of the range recommended by EPA’s science advisers — 65 parts per billion.

Strengthening the ozone standard to this level would have avoided [PDF] approximately 8,000 premature deaths, and prevented 3,800 nonfatal heart attacks and 40,000 asthma attacks beyond the Bush standard, every year.

More delays and a breakthrough

In December 2010, however, Jackson announced that she would delay adoption of final standards until July 29, 2011. This marked the third delay in five months, following delays in August and October, 2010. Her stated reason [PDF] was that “additional advice from [EPA's expert science advisers] may prove useful and important in evaluating the scientific and other information before her.”

Agency watchers assumed the real reason was the White House. Considering the unanimous and forceful recommendations from EPA’s
science advisers and staff scientists, what more could be gained from double-checking with those advisers? To confirm that they really meant it?

The only plausible explanation was that Jackson had faced opposition from the White House political machinery and she was looking to the independent science advisers to reemphasize the even greater need in 2011 for stronger standards. Perhaps they might even indicate that protections at the lower end of their recommended range, at or below the 65 ppb level Jackson reportedly wished to adopt, would best protect the American people.

Industry representatives concluded the same thing about the political reasons for this third delay; their lobbying frenzy accelerated and targeted the White House even more feverishly.

Hastily reconvened in March of this year, the science advisers predictably reaffirmed their unanimous recommendations that the smog standard be set between 60 and 70 ppb, writing [PDF] that “the evidence is sufficiently certain to be confident of public health benefits and additional protection for susceptible groups.” Individual advisers supplemented that conclusion with observations of adverse health impacts at the lower end of that range, suggesting the advisability of a standard closer to 60 than 70.

In early summer information began circulating that the administrator had settled on her number. Journalists began calling around in June asking what people knew about ozone meetings that reportedly were occurring between Jackson and White House chief of staff, Bill Daley. The journalists mentioned dark reports they were hearing about Jackson facing stiff opposition from the White House. The reporters did not know what number Jackson was discussing with Daley. But following the science advisers’ strong reaffirmation of their original recommendations, the strength of ozone science, and reports that she favored 65 in December, it was hard to imagine her going to the White House with a number weaker than 65 in June.

Through other channels outside the administration came reports of White House officials poring over maps to determine which areas of the country would be out of attainment with smog standards set at different levels. There were reported conversations involving White House officials already floating the idea of deferring correction of the unprotective, illegal Bush standard until 2013, while suggesting they would set the standard then at 60 ppb in line with ozone science that only had grown stronger since 2008 to show emphatic health hazards at that level.

One day I mentioned this wimpy ”gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” 60 ppb rumor to an EPA official. On the other end of the phone I heard what sounded like a barely suppressed fit of derisive laughter.

Nearing the finish line

What we do know happened next is that EPA transmitted its official, final draft ozone standards to the White House on July 11, an event logged on a White House website. This immediately suggested the following to knowledgeable observers: There had been a breakthrough, likely a compromise, between EPA and the White House. EPA was being allowed to finalize more protective smog standards, reflecting an agreement brokered between Jackson and the White House.

A particular feature of the Clean Air Act explains why that public transmittal to the White House was so laden with meaning. All proposed and final Clean Air Act rules transmitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget, and circulated for interagency review, must be made publicly available when the rule is finalized. In this way the public can see the before-and-after versions of clean air rules to clearly see any changes wrought by the White House or sister agencies, and reach their own conclusions as informed citizens about potential political interference.

This carries well-understood implications for the dynamic surrounding White House-EPA negotiations over clean air regulations. The surest way for any White House to interfere politically with clean air standards and block public awareness of that interference is to stop EPA from sending rulemaking packages to the White House. (That, for example, is why there was the tragi-comic controversy during the George W. Bush administration in which White House officials frantically insisted that an EPA official rescind an email that had transmitted EPA’s finding that greenhouse-gas pollution endangers the public welfare.)

Once EPA does transmit a rulemaking package to the White House, both parties therefore understand this means EPA’s preferred standards will become a matter of public knowledge. (Cue the sinister background music and get ready for a foreshadowed plot twist in my next post.)

Based on this July 11 transmittal, clean air advocates reached the same conclusion that industry lobbyists did across Washington: the White House and EPA had agreed to finalize stronger smog safeguards.

Not long thereafter, in late July and August, rumors began circulating that the EPA package contained a standard of 70 ppb, to the point that reporters began calling seeking reaction to that number and asking how the White House had forced Jackson to retreat from 65. But it remains unknown how or even if the smog standard weakened from 65 to 70 from December to July.

As plaintiffs to the ozone lawsuit over the Bush standard, I think we got a phone call from EPA the morning of July 26, three days before the July 29 deadline by which EPA had last said it would finalize ozone standards. EPA was going to announce that it would miss this deadline too — the fourth missed deadline since August 2010.

The notice of this latest delay reads almost pathetically in the aftermath of the Friday Smog Massacre: “We look forward to finalizing this standard shortly. A new ozone standard will be based on the best science and meet the obligation established under the Clean Air Act to protect the health of the American people. In implementing this new standard, EPA will use the long-standing flexibility in the Clean Air Act to consider costs, jobs, and the economy.”

Despite this latest delay, however, administration officials still were saying the right things publicly about their intention to issue strengthened standards, recognizing the law’s prohibition on cost considerations when setting scientifically grounded clean air standards. In late July, White House officials were vowing they would promote flexible, cost-effective measures to implement new smog standards, as the law allows, while establishing “smart standards that are based on science and the law,” not economics, as the law requires.

So much for promises.

During this entire period, of course, industry lobbyists were jumping into overdrive, lobbying the White House with openly illegal arguments and threats to the president’s reelection. I have dealt with that lobbying spectacle (here, here, and here) but I’m too revolted by the lobbyists’ immoral triumph to spend any more time on the despicable details.

Cut off at the knees

Shortly after 9:00 on the morning o
f the Friday Smog Massacre, Sept. 2, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley telephoned the heads of some public health and environmental groups to deliver the shocking news: The president was scuttling protective smog standards in favor of Bush standards that Jackson deems legally indefensible and unsafe.

The environmental groups had been invited to the White House for a 10:00 meeting whose agenda revealed nothing of the coming disaster. The last minute phone calls ensured that White House officials would not have to announce the bad news in person to an unsuspecting audience, just one that had been blindsided in transit to the meeting.

The presidential statement and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) letter were all tidied up by then and readied for release to the press by 10:00, just as the meeting began.

Not the EPA’s statement. The agency was left behind in a wake of political pathos, gasping, and managing only to issue the same presidential statement shortly after the White House already had done so. An administration official confirmed that the White House had informed EPA officials only the day before. The agency had no statement of its own prepared (or at least none yet approved for release by the White House).

By 10:15 am, the evil wizards at the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute probably had popped the corks already for Voldemort cocktails of champagne and unicorn’s blood.

EPA released its own statement after 11:30. It is a textbook example of suppressed anger and resignation delivered through pursed lips. It does not mention the ozone standards until the final curt sentence of a three-sentence statement: “We will revisit the ozone standard, in compliance with the Clean Air Act.” 

I choose to read meaning into this sentence that Jackson surely did not intend. The words to me convey the plaintive reality that this political capitulation, this presidential directive to EPA to uphold legally indefensible smog standards, was not an act “in compliance with the Clean Air Act.” Those quaint words linger at the close of the statement like a rebuke. Only in “revisiting” the ozone standards according to the president’s political timetable can EPA hope to one day comply with the law.

The White House had resorted to the same act of bury-the-story political cowardice that the Bush administration perfected when announcing anti-environmental decisions on the Friday of a holiday weekend. The White House was justifiably embarrassed by the announcement because the capitulation was humiliating and irresponsible.

News outlets soon reported that in a telephone news conference, White House officials, hiding behind anonymity, “repeatedly denied that politics played a role in the decision.”

“This is not a product of industry pressure but a judgment of the merits of the rule,” said one senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It has nothing to do with politics, nothing at all.”

This is abject nonsense.

There is not a single word, not the slightest intimation, in the presidential statement or the accompanying apologia from OMB that the White House sabotage was a “judgment of the merits of the rule.” (I will examine the excuses in the presidential statement and OMB letter in a follow-up post.)

The merits of that rule concerned whether the 2008 Bush ozone standards were consistent with the Clean Air Act’s requirement to set air quality standards that are “requisite to protect the public health,” “allowing an adequate margin of safety.” Legislative history further requires “the maximum permissible ambient air level … which will protect the health of any [sensitive] group of the population,” such as children, the elderly, and asthmatics.  

When proposing [PDF] in January 2010 to correct and strengthen the flawed Bush standards, Jackson described the substance of the rulemaking as a proposal by EPA “to set different [air quality] standards than those set in 2008 to provide requisite protection of public health and welfare, respectively.”

Where did the president or OMB render judgment on the merits whether the Bush standards were legally and scientifically sufficient to protect public health? Whether the Bush standards provided an adequate margin of safety to sensitive groups like children?

Nowhere.

And when the president orders the only government official authorized by the Clean Air Act to set air quality standards not to correct unprotective standards that she has publicly declared scientifically and legally indefensible; when he invokes a rationale for refusing to enforce the law that a unanimous Supreme Court has declared unlawful; when that rationale is the rhetoric and product of an intense industry lobbying campaign relying upon the same unlawful factors?

That has everything to do with politics. 

The executive branch’s job is to carry out and enforce the law, not to decide that it’s more politically convenient to do so two years from now. Not to force the Justice Department to defend an illegal measure in court out of political preference. Not to consign the American people to the deadly pollution and unlawful safeguards that are the consequence of that political decision.

In the aftermath of the smog fiasco, representatives for the smog lobby churned the blood in the water and called the capitulation a “big first step” toward more hoped-for regulatory reversals. Lobbyists boasted about their “frequent contact with White House Chief of Staff William Daley.”

The first Huffington Post article reporting the president’s cave had nearly 13,600 comments shortly after midnight on the day of the announcement. While not all condemned the president, most did. This was his progressive base. But these were also everyday Americans expressing disbelief, anger, and disgust.

Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters and executive director of the progressive U.S. Public Interest Research Group for 21 years, told me this after the debacle: “In my 30-plus years of environmental work in D.C. I have worked with Democratic presidents for 15.5 years, and I think this was the worst decision ever made by one of them.”

My prior blog posts make clear I have applauded the Obama administration’s many clean air accomplishments (e.g., here, here, here). I will testify in Congress this week in defense of some of these accomplishments. The administration’s clean air agenda has been its greatest success story at EPA. It will remain so.

The president and Jackson were right to herald the powerful legacy of life-saving clean air standards that EPA has finalized and proposed for adoption. Every year these health protections will save tens of thousands of lives, avoid hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks, and prevent millions of days that people otherwise would miss work or school due to respiratory illness.

That very strong legacy is just one of the things that what makes the disgraceful smog decision all the more stupefying and bitter.

By blocking a stronger smog standard, first at 65 ppb and then at 70 ppb, the president and White House officials have allowed the following health hazards [PDF] to occur every year until that standard eventually is strengthened and enforced: 4,300 to 8,000 premature deaths; 2,200 to 3,800 nonfatal heart attacks; and 23,000 to 40,000 asthma attacks.

That’s a legacy too.

Photo: Thanh Mai Bui Duy

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) recently announced his legislative priorities for the upcoming months, and they consist of the same old reckless attacks on health and environmental safeguards for all Americans. Creating an apocalyptically titled hit list of his “Top 10 Job-Destroying Regulations,” Cantor takes aim at an astonishing 12 clean air safeguards, and five other labor, environmental, and health care standards. But problems with basic arithmetic are the least of the concerns with this “top 10″ list.

For every year that these 12 clean air safeguards are blocked by Cantor and his House GOP colleagues, the harmful consequences would be:

• up to 38,600 additional premature deaths;
• over 19,000 more heart attacks;
• over 205,000 additional asthma attacks;
• over 4 million more days when Americans will miss work or school due to the health hazards of air pollution; and
• the elimination of Clean Air Act authority to reduce dangerous heat-trapping air pollution from the biggest industrial polluters.

This terrible health toll is the consequence of just a single year under the irresponsible House GOP agenda. The truth is, however, that the legislative attacks announced by Cantor block the various clean air safeguards for longer than one year, in most cases indefinitely.

In this post I will address each of the targeted clean air safeguards and explain the harms and irresponsible consequences that the House GOP’s dirty air agenda would cause.

These 12 clean air safeguards provide Americans with the clean and safe air that we rely on every day, so that our asthmatic children can go to school, and we are healthy enough to go to work and lead productive lives. Allowing polluters to dump millions of tons of dangerous air pollution into our communities and lungs every year does not create jobs; it just makes people too sick to go to work or school.

The Clean Air Act has been shown, time and time again over its 40-year history, to be one of our nation’s most successful pieces of legislation. The act not only protects our families from dangerous air pollution, but offers an astonishing return on our nation’s investment in clean air. According to a peer-reviewed EPA study earlier this year, the Clean Air Act is expected to deliver $12 trillion in net economic benefits between 1990 and 2020. The specific standards Cantor decries as “job-killing” have been shown to have a net positive increase in job creation, with benefits to Americans that outweigh costs to polluting industries.

The House Republican dirty air hit list reflects a baseless and ideological tirade against clean air protections that would put Americans’ lives at risk, while doing nothing to create jobs. American families cannot afford to see these clean air standards rolled back.

Dirty Air Agenda Nos. 1 and 2: Health standards for smog, soot, and toxic air pollution from power plants

Cantor promises to repeal the EPA’s proposed Mercury and Air Toxics Standards [PDF] and the final Cross-State Air Pollution Rule [PDF] for power plants that burn coal and oil. This single legislative assault would result in tens of thousands of premature deaths that these two clean air standards otherwise would prevent every year.

What does the dirty air bill do? Cantor’s chosen legislative weapon, the TRAIN Act (H.R. 2401), [PDF] would block the power plant Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule indefinitely. Blocking these standards for just one additional year would result in:

• up to 25,300 lives lost due to smog, soot, and toxic air pollution;
• more than 11,000 heart attacks;
• more than 120,000 asthma attacks;
• over 12,200 more hospital and emergency room visits; and
• many hundreds of thousands more days of missed work or school.

These figures are drawn from the EPA’s projected health benefits for these two standards, found here [PDF] and here [PDF].

The bill also establishes a new requirement that a panel of cabinet members with no environmental expertise review these and numerous other standards issued by the EPA. Both the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) already perform this function, making the process nothing more than a delaying tactic and layer of bureaucratic red tape. It is transparently designed to tie the hands of EPA’s health and scientific professionals, slowing or blocking them from doing their job to protect public health. It’s a classic Washington ploy, creating paralysis by analysis, which wastes taxpayer dollars and prolongs Americans’ exposure to dangerous air pollution.

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will slash power plant smog and soot pollution that travels across state lines. These “good neighbor” provisions will ensure that citizens in downwind states can breathe clean air, just like their upwind-state neighbors. Starting in 2014, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will save up to 34,000 lives every year [PDF].

The EPA estimates that this clean air safeguard will have a net impact creating 700 jobs [PDF]. The agency projects the rule’s benefits to be as high as $280 billion [PDF] every year.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards would sharply reduce power plant emissions of mercury, a dangerous toxin that harms children’s developing brains, along with toxins like arsenic, dioxins, lead, and other heavy metals. These standards already are over a decade overdue and, once implemented in 2015, will save up to 17,000 lives every year [PDF].

The EPA estimates that these standards would have a net impact creating 9,000 jobs [PDF]. Further, the standards would have health benefits of up to $140 billion every year starting in 2016, with benefits outweighing the utility industry’s compliance costs by 13 to one. These job creation and health benefits are in addition to the benefits flowing from the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

By contrast, Cantor provides no evidence at all for his assertions that the one recently finalized rule, and other not yet finalized rule, are destroying jobs or impeding job creation.

Cantor also asserts these two standards will result in electricity bill increases “in many parts of the country of anywhere from 12 to 24 percent” — but he fails to identify any factual support for the assertion.
The EPA’s analysis and projections (reviewed by OMB) directly contradict Cantor’s mere assertions: EPA estimates that the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule could cause average monthly household electricity bills to increase by 1 percent [PDF], and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards could add approximately $3-4 [PDF] to consumers’ monthly electricity bills.

Moreover, a recent report from PJM Interconnection [PDF], the nation’s largest transmission operator, concluded that there will be more than adequate electricity resources to maintain a reliable electric grid while meeting these clean air standards. Reserve margins would be maintained at or above target levels.

The Congressional Research Service concludes [PDF] that many of the 40-plus-year-old coal plants that might retire “are inefficient and are being replaced by more efficient combined cycle natural gas plants, a development likely to be encouraged if the price of competing fuel — natural gas — continues to be low, almost regardless of EPA rules.”

Both reports, and the EPA’s own findings, repeatedly stress the enormous monetized benefits from the rule. These enormous health benefits will have a concrete impact on our economy through avoided hospital and doctor visits, fewer missed days of work, and healthier citizens breathing cleaner air. Taken together, these standards have a combined annual benefit of up to $420 billion every year.

Dirty Air Agenda Nos. 3 – 6: Health standards for mercury and other toxic air pollution from incinerators and industrial boilers

House Republicans next take aim at four final mercury and toxic air pollution standards for incinerators and industrial boilers. Incinerators and industrial boilers emit pollutants like lead, benzene, mercury, and cancer-causing dioxins. Cantor identifies H.R. 2250 [PDF] as the legislative vehicle to permanently delay and weaken the EPA’s proposed standards to clean up these dirty facilities.

What does the dirty air bill do? H.R. 2250 is a deadly piece of legislation that sets the stage for an endless delay of protections that are already many years late. 

The bill voids standards for both large and small industrial boilers and solid waste incinerators. It adopts a definition of “solid waste” that, among other things, allows industrial facilities in communities across the nation to burn tires, coal waste, and used chemicals for energy without controlling or reporting their toxic air pollution, so long as they recovered some amount of energy from the process. Just as tobacco causes cancer whether smoked in a pipe or a cigarette, toxic air emissions from incinerating tires and other industrial materials do not disappear or become safe just because plants recover “energy” from the combustion process. To accomplish these dirty outcomes, the bill must overturn a 2007 D.C. Circuit Court decision [PDF].

The bill also pushes back industry compliance dates by at least 3.5 years and alters the Clean Air Act to allow indefinite delay of future standards.

Delaying current compliance deadlines for industry by a minimum of 3.5 years would result in [PDF]:

• over 100,000 tons of toxic air pollution, including mercury, toxic metals, and acid gases;
• up to 22,750 more premature deaths;
• 143,000 more asthma attacks; and
• over 1 million days when people miss work or school.

For every additional year of delay that H.R. 2250 allows, these numbers only continue to grow.

The EPA already has announced it is reexamining aspects of these standards, and has set out a timeline providing industry more than enough time and opportunity to weigh in before refinalizing the rules by April 2012. The EPA has indicated that it does not need or want additional time from Congress. Legislative delays only will hurt Americans’ health.

Cantor provides no factual support whatsoever for his assertion that “over 200,000 jobs” are “at risk” from these standards. On the other hand, the EPA’s analysis, reviewed by OMB economists, projects that these standards will have a net positive impact on jobs, creating an estimated 2,200 jobs [PDF], while achieving the enormous public health benefits that allow Americans to work and go to school and lead healthy lives.

These life-saving standards have overall monetized benefits to our economy that greatly exceed the compliance costs to industry. The EPA estimates that the standards will have benefits to the economy of up to $54 billion [PDF] every year starting in 2014, compared with industry compliance costs estimated at only $1.4 billion.

Dirty Air Agenda Nos. 7 and 8: Health standards for smog, soot, mercury, and toxic air pollution from cement plants

Cantor plans to push H.R. 2681 [PDF], a deadly piece of legislation aimed at giving cement plants a free pass from cleaning up all of their toxic air emissions and a free pass from controlling emissions that lead to the creation of smog and soot pollution. These emissions include mercury, which endangers children’s developing brains and can lead to loss of IQ points. Cement plants are the fourth largest source of industrial mercury emissions in the United States, and they emit high levels of deadly soot pollution. Giving these polluters a free pass has deadly consequences for thousands of Americans.

What does the dirty air bill do? H.R. 2681 would void standards for smog, soot, mercury, and other toxic air pollution for cement plants. These standards went into effect in September of 2010. Just like the legislation that would give incinerators and industrial boilers a free pass from cleaning up their toxic air pollution (H.R. 2250), this bill purports to give the EPA “more time” to complete standards for cement plants, ignoring the fact that the EPA already has completed the standards. The bill also distorts the Clean Air Act by basing toxic air pollution standards for cement plants on the dirtiest plants, rather than the cleanest currently in operation, and weakens the law to allow indefinite delay of these standards.

Toxic air pollution standards for cement plants are already 13 years overdue. H.R. 2681 further delays these already adopted standards by a minimum of 4.5 years. Blocking these standards would result in the following harms every year they are delayed:

• up to 2,500 premature deaths;
• 1,500 heart attacks;
• 1,500 emergency room visits; and
• over 100,000 missed work days.

The benefits of these health standards significantly outweigh the costs by
a margin of up to 19 to one [PDF]. Moreover, EPA analyzed various studies and concluded the standards could create up to 1,300 jobs.

Dirty Air Agenda No. 9: Health standards for smog pollution

The EPA has proposed to strengthen national air quality standards for ground-level ozone, often called smog. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has concluded that standards set in 2008 by the Bush administration are “legally indefensible” and scientifically insupportable [PDF]. The EPA has proposed to strengthen the smog standards to fall within the range unanimously recommended by EPA’s expert science advisors and the agency’s own internal scientists.

The EPA estimates that, starting in 2020, the value of improving the smog standard to even 70 parts per billion (ppb), the highest end of the proposed range, would achieve monetized benefits of up to $37 billion per year [PDF], with costs between $19 and 25 billion per year.

Setting a standard at 70 ppb also would produce the following benefits every year:

• up to 4,300 lives saved;
• up to 23,000 cases of aggravated asthma avoided;
• almost 7,000 hospital visits prevented; and
• 2.6 million days of work or school that people otherwise would miss due to air pollution.

On top of these economic benefits and huge health savings, the historical record contradicts claims that stronger smog standards have impeded economic growth or job creation. A recent study by the Center for American Progress reported that parts of the nation failing to meet current smog standards — thereby necessitating stronger clean air measures — have job growth and employment statistics similar to the rest of the country.

What’s more, the report shows that previous industry claims that ozone standards were unachievable have been shown time and again to be false. Finally, there are business associations that support stronger ozone standards, and that have not joined the irresponsible industry lobbying campaign.

Dirty Air Agenda No. 10: Health standards for harmful soot pollution

Cantor’s memo incredibly targets a supposed “job-destroying” clean air standard that the EPA has not even proposed or described, much less adopted. This example, more than any, shows the extent to which House Republicans appear willing to ignore reality in order to carry out the wishes of corporate lobbyists.

What does the dirty air bill do? Cantor’s memo promises to push H.R. 1633 [PDF], an especially crude attack on science that prohibits the EPA from reviewing air quality standards for so-called “coarse particle pollution,” or PM10, often known as soot. The bill prevents the EPA even from examining new science or proposing new standards about such soot pollution.

Soot pollution is a mixture of materials such as metals, smoke, acids, dirt, pollen, and molds. The mixture is often embedded with toxic substances and infiltrates the airways and lungs. It is emitted by a variety of pollution sources, including power plants, oil refineries, and diesel engines. When inhaled, these particles can cause serious health problems, including:

• asthma attacks in children;
• heart attacks; and
• death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes.

Notably, the EPA has not made or announced any decisions about new soot standards. The EPA has not even proposed, much less finalized, new standards to replace the current soot standards. The agency is currently studying the science behind the soot standards with the assistance of its independent expert science advisors, as required by the Clean Air Act. After comprehensively reviewing the relevant science and medical literature, the law requires the EPA to issue a proposal, even if it proposes to keep soot standards exactly the same. The EPA plans to issue a proposal late this year or next year.

When setting clean air standards like these for soot or smog, the EPA identifies pollution levels that are unsafe for people to breathe, based upon the best scientific and medical understanding. The EPA does not require pollution reductions from any specific sources or sectors pursuant to this standard-setting process. Contrary to what Cantor and other GOP representatives have claimed, the EPA standards will not regulate “farm dust,” nor impose any restrictions on farms. EPA never has adopted pollution control obligations for “farm dust,” and the agency has expressly said it has no intention of doing so. Without hearing from a single scientist or the public, House Republicans are condemning clean air standards that the EPA has not so much as proposed.

Dirty Air Agenda Nos. 11 and 12: Health standards for carbon pollution from power plants and oil refineries

The hit list’s final attack on clean air standards targets not-yet-proposed standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants and oil refineries. 

House Republicans want to force the EPA to stop all work to limit life-threatening carbon pollution from power plants, refineries, and other large sources of greenhouse gas pollution. These congressional critics want to allow all new carbon-polluting facilities to be built completely uncontrolled. They would allow big polluters to continue dumping unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, threatening the health of our children, families, and communities. The science is clear and health professionals agree — carbon dioxide pollution is a serious health issue that already is harming the health and well-being of the American people.

Cantor claims that the Obama administration is “quickly moving forward” on these standards, when the EPA has yet to even issue proposed rulemakings. After the EPA issues a proposal, the public will have at least 60 days to comment on the standards, at which point the EPA would move towards finalizing standards taking into account the public’s input. This is hardly a rush to judgment. And considering there are no proposals yet, and considering that the law requires the EPA to take costs into account when setting carbon pollution standards, there is no factual basis whatsoever for Cantor’s assertions about the standards’ impacts on the economy and jobs.

By launching a sweeping and unprecedented legislative assault on these 12 clean air safeguards, House Republicans have cast their lot with corporate polluters over the American people. The House GOP’s dirty air hit list is far worse than any assaults on clean air protections mounted even by former Congressman Newt Gingrich in his infamous Contract on America. The death toll from this House GOP hit list numbers nearly 40,000 every year, carried out by repealing or delaying clean air protections already adopted or imminent.

NRDC’s president, Frances Beinecke, rightly has observed that this GOP jobs plan is “nothing more than a repackaged anti-government screed that seeks to help the pollution industry by repealing environmental and public health standards.”

And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson put it well here: “Telling the truth about our economy and our environment is about respecting the priorities of the American people. More than 70 percent of Americans want EPA to continue to do its job effectively. Those same Americans want to see a robust economic recovery. We have the capacity to do both things if we don’t let distractions keep us from the real work of creating jobs.”

The American people do not support the House Republicans’ dirty air legislative priorities. The public won’t buy the canard that allowing more pollution will create more jobs. But the hit list delivered by the GOP does aim to distract us from job creation and responsible leadership for many months to come.

Industry lobbyists are cynically exploiting anxieties over current economic conditions to oppose Americans’ right to be protected against unhealthy smog pollution. Because they don’t have the facts or science or law on their side, these lobbyists have been reduced to misrepresenting the way the Clean Air Act works and its extended timelines for reducing pollution.

The truth is that polluting industries will have many years to reduce harmful smog pollution, well past the current period of economic challenge. Strengthening smog standards will benefit Americans and the economy by saving thousands of lives and avoiding hundreds of thousands of illnesses and countless days missed from work and school.

Lobbyists for polluting industries are feverishly opposing stronger smog safeguards for Americans. They argue that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should delay stronger protections because they say our economy can’t handle it right now. 

For example, Business Roundtable President John Engler protests that “[e]stablishing these new ozone standards would be tantamount to putting ‘not open for business’ signs in counties across the country at precisely the wrong moment, when unemployment is high and on the rise.”

Energy industry lobbyists are making apocalyptic declarations that “[m]any states and metropolitan areas will face effective bans on economic growth and job creation at the very time they need it the most.”

An industry lobbying coalition letter urges the president to block the EPA from doing its job to set protective smog standards, and the letter begins with the ominous words, “In light of our fragile economy … “ 

The italicized language highlights what these alarmist statements share in common — the implication that companies cannot comply with stronger smog standards in the near term due to the current state of the economy. Industry lobbyists are spinning the horror story that the minute the EPA strengthens protections against smog pollution, industries immediately will incur costs and economic growth and job creation will be stymied.

That is wildly wrong. In reality, implementing revised smog standards under the plain terms of the Clean Air Act takes many years. The process provides states and companies with a great deal of time and flexibility to meet those standards, using cost-effective tools to cut pollution.

Critics that suggest otherwise are being deceptive by omission.

The EPA has proposed [PDF] to strengthen the smog standards to a level consistent with the unanimous recommendations of its science advisors, following EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s recognition [PDF] that the standards set by the Bush administration in 2008 are “not legally defensible given the scientific evidence.” Much as industry lobbyists want her to break the law by maintaining unprotective Bush standards, she is rejecting those entreaties.

Once the EPA adopts more protective smog standards, it is then up to states to decide how best to ensure that air quality within the state meets those standards. State officials evaluate air quality data and make recommendations to the EPA about which areas within a state are in “attainment” or “nonattainment” with the smog standard.

Following adoption of a revised smog standard, states have at least six months and up to a year to make preliminary recommendations to the EPA concerning which areas should be designated in attainment or nonattainment with the revised standards. The EPA then has up to two years from the date new standards are promulgated to decide how to designate areas, based on the states’ input. If there are data problems or questions about how best to designate a certain area, the Clean Air Act provides the EPA the possibility of an additional one-year extension (CAA §107(d)(1)(B)(i)).

Assuming that the EPA announces revised smog standards by the end of August, this would mean that it could have until as late as August of 2013 (or 2014 if justified) to take even just the initial step of making so-called “nonattainment designations.” It must be noted, too, that, historically, the EPA has been months or even years behind schedule in making these designations.

After smog nonattainment areas are identified through this designation process, states then must submit to the EPA suggested plans (called state implementation plans or “SIPs”) describing the pollution control measures states will require to reduce smog pollution and meet the revised standards. For most measures, states have three years from the date a revised smog standard is adopted to suggest plans to the EPA, giving states until August of 2014.

The EPA then proposes to approve, conditionally approve, or disapprove a state’s suggested plan, soliciting public comment, followed by final action on those plans. The law allows up to 18 months for this process, although, again, the EPA often takes substantially more time. The Clean Air Act does not require regulated industries to comply with the control measures contained in state plans until EPA approves these plans. This might occur as early as February 2016, but if history is any guide, it probably would be later.

Deadlines for designated nonattainment areas to meet the revised smog standards then depend on how dirty the air is in those areas. Congress gave the dirtiest areas of the country the most time to meet air pollution standards, out of recognition that more time was needed in these areas to get the job done.

Assuming the EPA adopts more protective smog standards this month, states then would be given anywhere from five to 22 years from now to meet the new standards, depending upon the severity of air pollution in an area. See here (CAA §181). Areas like Los Angeles and Houston would be given the most time, while marginal areas designated nonattainment for the first time could be given five years.

This means the earliest areas would need to meet revised smog standards would be August of 2016, and the latest would be August 2033. And the law allows even those earlier deadlines to be extended if the standards are not attained on time.

Accordingly, even if industry’s alarmist predictions about compliance costs were right — and they are not — updated smog standards would place no burden on today’s fragile economy. Instead, strengthening smog standards will lay out a roadmap that, over the nex
t few years and decades, will guide our country toward cleaner air and healthier families.

The cynical industry campaign to exploit anxieties over current economic conditions ignores all this. But that deception does not change the extended timelines allowed by the law. Polluting industries will have years before compliance costs must be incurred and smog standards must be attained.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

House Republicans insist on accusing the Obama administration of suffering from some kind of regulatory spasm. But they refuse to acknowledge that the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is following federal laws and court orders — orders issued when the Bush administration failed to abide by the law. By following the law today we will save tens of thousands of lives and avoid hundreds of thousands of illnesses.

In order to understand the basic falsehood of conservative complaints that the Obama administration EPA is out-of-control, it is vital to understand first the Bush administration’s history of adverse judicial rulings and failed regulatory responsibilities.

Only then can you understand the legal obligations facing EPA at the start of the Obama administration. And only then can you begin to appreciate the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and pure partisanship behind most conservative criticism of EPA’s actions today.

Here is just a sampling of some of the moderate rhetoric employed by House Republicans today to express their respectful disagreement with the substance of recent EPA health safeguards:

• “[T]he scariest agency in the federal government is the EPA … an agency that has lost its bearings.” — Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho)
• “[T]he epitome of the continued and damaging regulatory overreach of this Administration.” — Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.)
• “EPA’s regulatory jihad” — Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.)  
• “The out-of-control regulation authority” — Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)

Similar statements from House or Senate Republicans were notably absent during the prior Republican administration. This despite the fact that federal courts found the Bush administration EPA to have violated federal environmental laws repeatedly and egregiously.

In April 2008, the Bush EPA released a 20-page spreadsheet [PDF] of 94 EPA rules or actions under just the Clean Air Act that had been challenged in court until that point during the Bush administration.

As of August 2011, 37 of those cases have been decided by a court, and in nearly two-thirds of those cases (23), the courts overturned the Bush EPA rules. (The remaining 57 cases have either settled, been voluntarily dismissed, voluntarily remanded, or are still pending in court.) 

In 15 of those 23 adverse rulings, the courts found that the Bush EPA had contradicted or disregarded the plain language of the Clean Air Act. This is the worst way for EPA to lose a federal environmental lawsuit, because it reflects a court’s judgment that the agency defied the plain instructions of the law.

Public health and environmental groups were the prevailing parties in 18 of those 23 Clean Air Act rulings against the Bush EPA. These groups prevailed in 13 of the 15 “plain language” court decisions. EPA lost this startling number of Clean Air Act cases because the Bush administration had adopted unlawful regulations that benefited polluting industries at the expense of human health and the environment, despite unambiguous statutory directives requiring otherwise. This was truly out-of-control behavior.

These adverse court rulings occurred primarily in the Bush administration’s second term, because it took this long for unlawful, deregulatory regulations issued during the first term to wind their way through the courts. When federal courts returned these unlawful regulations to EPA for correction, the Bush administration then failed to repromulgate these “remanded” rules before leaving office.

Sometimes this failure was for understandable reasons, as the second term was coming to an end. And sometimes the failure was rooted in the same ideological defiance that had resulted in the original court rulings against EPA. A good example of this is the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts vs. EPA that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act; the Bush administration ran the clock out for the last two years of its second term, refusing to respond to the Supreme Court’s remand.

When the Obama administration took office in January 2009, it inherited the legal obligation to respond to court orders in not just these 23 Clean Air Act cases, but also in numerous other losing cases under other environmental statutes that EPA administers. The current administration inherited the responsibility to fix a decade-long mess consciously created by the Bush administration and industry supporters out of a shared ideological-economic agenda to violate environmental laws and weaken public health safeguards.

It is striking how thoroughly today’s fiercest EPA critics ignore this history and its implications. Conservative politicians like the House members quoted above, pundits like the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and industry lobbyists ignore this unprecedented wave of Bush administration lawbreaking that the Obama EPA now must rectify.  

These EPA critics disregard the multiple years of delay by the Bush administration (and in some cases the Clinton administration before it) that led to missed statutory deadlines for clean air safeguards and other protections. These delays occurred before the Bush administration even got around to adopting rules that the courts then found unlawful.

These critics ignore the subsequent delays that occurred when the Bush administration failed to correct its own illegal actions before leaving office. They show no concern for the delays that have continued while the present EPA reproposes and reissues lawful standards. Ones that will not even take place for several more years. All of this adds up to more than a decade of denying the American people health safeguards promised by Congress in the Clean Air Act.

Worse, these anti-EPA critics show no evident regard for the massive health toll to the American people — the tens of thousands of deaths, tens of thousands of heart attacks, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks and other diseases — that resulted from this campaign of delay and law-breaking by the prior administration.

Where are these current critics’ concern for public health, for clean air and water? Where is their concern for congressionally required standards and prescribed statutory deadlines? Where is these lawmakers’ concern for the rule of law itself?

Where were the outraged press statements and quotes in the media during the last decade from Reps. Ed Whitfield, Fred Upton, and Joe Barton, and Sens. John Cornyn, Jim DeMint, and James Inhofe, when a genuinely “out-of-control” Bush EPA broke the law again and again and again and again and again and facilitated the Bush administration’s law-breaking, by supplying EPA political appointees with the bogus legal theories that the Bush appointees adopted over the objections of career EPA staff and attorneys. (It is surely the case that the expert career attorneys in EPA’s Office of General Counsel had advised Bush political appointees in advance that some or many of these rules faced very high legal risks or were indefensible on precisely the grounds for which the rules were subsequently invalidated.)

No, these political, pundit-class, and industry critics show concern only when EPA finally follows the law and issues long-overdue health standards to protect the American people. These members of Congress and industry lobbyists reserve their disdain and over-the-top rhetoric for instances in which EPA is responding, as it must, to court instructions to obey the law. For example, when EPA is following the unanimous recommendations [PDF] of its science advisors and a unanimous Supreme Court decision to protect the American people against dangerous smog pollution. Or when EPA is following a Supreme Court decision recognizing carbon pollution is pollution, and scientific consensus that this pollution is dangerous to health and the environment [PDF].

It is especially cynical that congressional conservatives are waging their most hostile assaults against three particular Clean Air Act safeguards: mercury and air toxics standards for power plants, industrial boilers and incinerators, and cement plants. The Bush administration issued illegal standards for each of these industrial sectors, the largest remaining uncontrolled sources of toxic air pollution in the U.S.

These standards already were overdue when issued, and now toxics standards for these sectors are over a decade overdue as a result of the Bush administration’s lawbreaking. Yet congressional conservatives want to deny the American people the benefits of enormous mercury and toxic pollution reductions — tens of thousands of lives saved — and have responded with fury to the Obama EPA’s proposal or adoption of lawful standards.

Where is the searching legal analysis from these critics that explains why or how EPA is not following the law? Where is their explanation for why solid and consensus science is wrong? They don’t bother. Those are not their concerns.

What has become of our political discourse, of basic honesty even, when these vituperative EPA critics do not so much as acknowledge this history of law-breaking that brought us to where we are today? When they do not acknowledge that EPA has a responsibility to follow court orders and federal statutes to adopt long-overdue health protections for Americans?

These critics are advancing a fundamentally dishonest story line. They would have one believe that the Obama administration walked into office and decided to undertake a regulatory jihad against industry, a campaign to end the use of coal.

That is utter nonsense. It ignores the history discussed above and the rule of law 101.  And it’s insulting to the intelligence of people everywhere who care more about the facts and law than political grandstanding and divisive rhetoric.

EPA’s primary jobs are to implement and enforce federal environmental laws passed by Congress. Yet it is striking how very little of the overheated criticism by congressional conservatives even tries to make the case that EPA is failing to properly carry out our nation’s environmental laws.

The next time you read an anti-EPA editorial in the Wall Street Journal, or the hypercritical press statements by conservative congressional critics, try this mental exercise. Estimate what portion of the criticism is a thoughtful explanation why the criticized EPA action is inconsistent with the federal laws that EPA is bound to enforce. Then estimate what portion of the criticism is a conservative-libertarian rhetorical insult that might as well be a macro on the right’s computers.

Once you strip away the rhetoric and the EPA insults, here is the dirty little secret behind the majority of this criticism. When you compare the criticism to the facts of what EPA is actually doing, the laws that EPA is enforcing and defending — it is precisely because EPA is carrying out duly enacted laws that the criticism is so virulent.

And that is why House Republicans have launched unprecedented assaults to weaken as many of those environmental laws as possible. They know EPA is enforcing the law and it burns them up.

These critics resent EPA. But they really really resent America’s environmental laws.

So who is more out-of-control?

Take a deep breath and relax!

You decide.

In choosing whether to enforce current law to dramatically reduce mercury, arsenic, lead, and nearly 100 other toxic air pollutants from power plants — or instead to retreat from these health safeguards — it comes down to this.

Do you believe doctors at the American Lung Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, EPA scientists, and dozens of peer-reviewed studies that power plants’ air pollution is very harmful and cleaning it up will deliver significant health benefits to all Americans, especially children?

Or do you believe the nation’s most heavily polluting utility company, Washington utility lobbyists, and the “hypothesis” of a conservative representative that this pollution does not pose significant health risks and controlling the pollution will not deliver real benefits?

Incredibly, that’s how industry and political opponents of EPA’s mercury and air-toxics standards are framing the health choice facing the country. That’s how they are framing the question of whether to carry out or kill legal standards that EPA projects will avoid [PDF] the following harms every year:

• Up to 17,000 premature deaths;
• 4,500 cases of chronic bronchitis;
• 11,000 nonfatal heart attacks;
• 12,200 hospital and emergency room visits;
• 11,000 cases of acute bronchitis;
• 220,000 cases of respiratory symptoms;
• 850,000 days when people miss work;
• 120,000 cases of aggravated asthma; and
• 5.1 million days when people must restrict their activities.

Now contrast these enormous benefits with the following three prominent examples of pollution denialism.

1. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) announced [PDF] at an April 15 congressional hearing his “hypothesis” that exposure to air pollution from power plants such as particulate matter is not linked to premature death. Barton then asserted that EPA findings that reducing such pollution will avoid thousands of premature death every year “are pulled out of thin air.” Barton went so far as to dispute any “medical negatives” from air pollution such as mercury, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter.

Doctors from respected health associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, and the American Public Health Association immediately wrote [PDF] Barton to strongly reject his contentions. Indeed, Barton’s hypothesis and claims are so thoroughly wrong that the doctors’ letter began by openly declaring their “shock” over Barton’s statements. Their letter noted:

The health impacts of short-term exposure (over hours to days) of particulate matter [have been] found to include: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; increased risk of cardiovascular harm, including acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and congestive heart failure, especially among the elderly and in people with cardiovascular disease; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including strokes; hospitalization for asthma among children; and aggravated asthma attacks in children.

The doctors’ letter concluded by listing 30 peer-reviewed studies establishing “a clear link between air pollution and a range of serious adverse human health effects.” Not surprisingly, Barton’s office has failed to respond to the doctors.

2. Utility industry lobbyists representing the Southern Company and the utility coalition, the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, have stated that there are “no incremental health benefits associated with [EPA's mercury and air-toxics standards].” These lobbyists have denied further that reducing power plants’ hazardous air pollution, including mercury, “actually does anything to protect public health.” The lobbyists even went so far as to dispute the association between premature deaths and particulate matter pollution.

Numerous medical organizations reject [PDF] these preposterous claims, including the American Lung Association, American Thoracic Society, American Public Health Association, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Moreover, the lobbyists’ bald contentions conflict with a substantial body of peer-reviewed scientific studies [PDF] that serve as the foundation for EPA’s extensive findings [PDF, chapters five and six] of health hazards attributed to air pollution from power plants, especially deadly particulate matter.

The lobbyists’ claims are not backed by peer-reviewed studies and amount to scattershot rhetoric that is counterfactual and scientifically unsound, but rests on the tired hope of deniers that the claims will sow doubt that will grow with increasing applications of verbal fertilizer.

But falling into the “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” category, there is one fact that makes these lobbyists’ claims even more surreal. One of the two utility industry lobbyists in question is the former political appointee that headed the Bush EPA’s air office, Jeff Holmstead. In that capacity, Holmstead delivered testimony before Congress at odds with his current denials on behalf of utility clients.

The left column of the following table quotes statements by Holmstead at a recent videotaped debate sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute. The right column quotes testimony by Holmstead and related EPA statements, both during his tenure as political head of the agency’s air office.

3. Finally, there are the following absurd statements on the website for the American Electric Power Company (AEP), one of the heaviest-polluting utility companies in the country:

Significant bodies of scientific work, including previous conclusions by the EPA, indicate that particulate emissions from power plants are not a significant risk to public health. We believe that particulates generated from the transportation sector are a greater risk to public health.

The first quoted statement is sheer nonsense. There is no such significant body of scientific work, and for good reason the AEP claim is unaccompanied by any source citation.

Moreover, there are no “previous conclusions by the EPA” that support the AEP claim; EPA conclusions about the severe risks from power plants’ particulate matter directly contradict the AEP claims. And when I asked several EPA officials what AEP possibly could be talking about in making this startling claim about “previous conclusions by EPA,” the agency officials had no idea. (It’s also noteworthy that the AEP claim is contradicted by the Bush EPA’s consistent findings [PDF, chapters one and four] that power-plant air pollution is deadly and responsible for a litany of health hazards.)

When I questioned a group of AEP officials about the basis for the first statement above, one of the officials responded with the name of a single study. And it turns out that study does not even support the claim on the AEP website; indeed, the study authors have corrected and chastised utility industry lobbyists previously for distorting the study’s conclusions [$ubreq]:

Scientists involved in a major Atlanta-area study on the health effects of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution say the utility group funding the research is “inappropriately” interpreting its initial data as evidence that power-plant emissions have a negligible impact on cardiovascular health, when compared to other PM2.5 sources such as mobile source emissions. …

A second scientist, who was involved in an independent review of [the study], adds, “The problem is not so much the study, as how it is being misinterpreted by utility [representatives] as saying that utility pollution is not bad for your health. I and the ARIES study scientists I’ve spoken to don’t believe that is an appropriate interpretation of the results.

So why are we now hearing these outlandish denials that mercury, particulate matter, and other toxic air pollution are harmful to Americans’ health? Why all the disavowals that cleaning up this pollution will deliver tremendous health benefits — saving lives, avoiding heart attacks and asthma attacks, and avoiding brain poisoning and developmental damages to the unborn?

Barton actually supplied the answer to those questions at the April 15 hearing [PDF]:

The entire premise for going forward with these standards is that you get such a tremendous ratio of benefits to cost because they claim, according to Mr. Walke’s testimony, which he is an honest man and he has got it from somewhere, is $140 billion annually. But if you really don’t have the benefit because you are not having the medical negative, but you really have the cost — and if you don’t think the costs are real, just look at how many factories are closing and going to Mexico and China.

Barton recognizes the benefits of EPA’s mercury and air-toxics standards are so overwhelming that the only way for polluting utility companies to avoid their responsibility for cleaning up that pollution is to pretend the benefits don’t exist. To pretend that power plants’ air pollution is not harmful. To deny that cleaning up that air pollution will deliver significant, cost-effective health benefits to Americans.

Opponents of EPA’s mercury and air toxics standards understand that Americans are sensible and moral people. Americans realize air pollution is harmful and agree that polluters have a legal and moral responsibility to clean it up. The American people support enforcing the law to deliver the resulting clean air benefits to all of us.

All too often, the losing side in political debates in Washington resort to obfuscation and worse, flatly denying the facts when facts are not on their side — to the point of rejecting substantial bodies of peer-reviewed science.

The debate over EPA’s mercury and air toxics standards is no different.

So it comes down to this. Do you believe doctors, scientific facts, and common sense, or the desperate purveyors of denial?

It would be irresponsible to deny clean air to the American people.Photo: Bronx

And so it begins.

Long a rumored dirty secret, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) confirmed today that House Republicans plan to introduce legislation to delay mercury and air toxics standards that will save up to 26,000 lives every year.

The chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy and Power subcommittee told PoliticoPro [$ubreq] today that such a bill would be introduced after the two-week congressional recess.

Whitfield admitted bluntly, “[t]he objective is to delay the implementation of these regulations.”

The EPA regulations he means would reduce mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants, cement plants, industrial boilers, and process heaters. Rep. Whitfield has convened a hearing in his subcommittee tomorrow to examine (i.e., attack) these health standards. Testifying at the hearing will be the Southern Company, DTE Energy, and the Portland Cement Association. Representatives for all have submitted written testimony condemning the clean air standards.

I also will be testifying at that hearing, along with a representative for the Clean Energy Group, representing supportive utility companies that are willing and able to comply with the mercury and air toxics standards for power plants.

I excerpt my summary statement for the subcommittee below, and link to my full testimony here [PDF]. I will write another post about the hearing afterwards.

Power plants, industrial boilers, process heaters, and cement plants are the largest emitters of mercury and scores of other toxic air pollutants that still are failing to comply with basic Clean Air Act requirements for toxic pollution over two decades after the adoption of the 1990 amendments to this landmark statute. This situation is due to unlawful delays and standards by the prior administration that have resulted in the obligation by the present EPA to re-propose and reissue lawful air toxics standards to protect the public.

The EPA’s final and proposed mercury and air toxics standards for these three industrial sectors will deliver enormous public health benefits. Were these standards to be delayed by even a single year, the potential magnitude of extreme health consequences would be as follows:

• 26,000 premature deaths;
• 16,500 non-fatal heart attacks;
• 178,000 asthma attacks;
• 12,000 cases of acute or chronic bronchitis;
• 330,000 cases of upper or lower respiratory symptoms;
• 18,000 hospital admissions and emergency room visits;
• 1,290,000 days when people must miss work or school; and
• 7,750,000 days when people must restrict their activities.

It would be irresponsible to deny these health benefits to the American people.

These EPA rulemakings have been conducted pursuant to clear statutory authorities and court orders, following vacaturs and remands of earlier, unlawful standards. These standards reflect EPA doing its job and not overreaching. Congress has not changed — and should not change — the longstanding statutory authorities requiring the EPA to protect Americans from mercury and other toxic air pollution.

Sponsors of this legislative attack will try to cast delay as something other than a direct assault on health safeguards.

But when delay causes this much death and disease, it’s a public health assault whatever garb the grim reaper wears.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Today, the EPA announced the most important actions to clean up air pollution from dirty coal-burning power plants since the Clean Air Act was last updated in 1990.

EPA’s proposed mercury and air toxics standards for power plants that burn coal and oil are projected to save as many as 17,000 American lives [PDF] every year by 2015. These standards also will prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and there will be 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children every year.

The standards also will avoid more than 12,000 emergency room and hospital visits and prevent 850,000 lost work days every year.

The proposed standards should reduce mercury emissions from power plants burning coal and oil by 91 percent, acid gas pollution by 91 percent, direct particulate matter emissions by 30 percent, and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 53 percent, down to 2.1 million tons of annual SO2 emissions [PDF, pg. 541].

Due to these tremendous health benefits, the proposed standards are estimated to yield monetized benefits of $59 billion to $140 billion annually, compared to annual compliance costs of approximately $10.9 billion. This represents $5 to $13 in health benefits for every $1 spent to reduce pollution.

Further, EPA projects that the proposed standards will create up to 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

More detailed information about the proposed air toxic standards may be found here.

Coming on the heels of an EPA report that projected the Clean Air Act will save approximately 4.2 million lives by 2020 even without the additional life savings from today’s proposal, the Clean Air Act has earned its place as America’s most successful environmental-public health law.

Yet in spite of these enormous public health benefits, industry naysayers have decried the power plant cleanup standards and may only increase those complaints in the coming days and weeks. Some utility industry lobbyists have complained that the expected standards will ask too much, too soon, and that coal-fired power plants already have taken great strides to reduce their air pollution.

So on the day that EPA’s long-anticipated mercury and air toxic standards are being proposed, before some of us pore through the materials that EPA has made available, I thought it would be useful to examine how we got here.

The following Q&A format is designed to address commonly raised issues surrounding why EPA is only now proposing these air toxics standards, some 21 years after the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments.

Q. How long has the Clean Air Act been used to clean up toxic air pollution, and when did Congress adopt the approach that EPA is following with today’s proposal?

A. EPA answers these questions nicely in its “Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act“:

Before the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, EPA regulated air toxics one chemical at a time. This approach did not work well. Between 1970 and 1990, EPA established regulations for only seven pollutants. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments took a completely different approach to reducing toxic air pollutants. The Amendments required EPA to identify categories of industrial sources for 187 listed toxic air pollutants and to take steps to reduce pollution by requiring sources to install controls or change production processes. It makes good sense to regulate by categories of industries rather than one pollutant at a time, since many individual sources release more than one toxic chemical. Developing controls and process changes for industrial source categories can result in major reductions in releases of multiple pollutants at one time.

Q. What approach does the Clean Air Act use to reduce toxic air pollutants?

A. Again, quoting EPA’s guide to the Clean Air Act, “[t]he 1990 Clean Air Act requires EPA to first set regulations using a technology-based or performance-based approach to reduce toxic emissions from industrial sources.” This approach is called the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) program and requires performance standards to be based upon the emissions reductions achieved by the cleanest facilities in an industrial sector, the average of the top 12 percent of lowest emitting plants or equipment. As the agency’s guide explains, “in most cases, EPA does not prescribe a specific control technology, but sets a performance level based on a technology or other practices already used by the better-controlled and lower emitting sources in an industry.”

Q. How many toxic air pollution standards has EPA issued already under the 1990 Clean Air Act, and what types of industrial sources have been covered?

A. EPA has adopted over 120 toxic air pollutant standards under the act, covering literally hundreds of different types of industrial operations and equipment categories. These include chemical plants, oil refineries, hazardous waste incinerators, iron and steel foundries, battery manufacturers, pharmaceutical plants, lead smelters, semiconductor manufacturers, and fiberglass plants, among many others.

Q. Have other industries been reducing mercury emissions by levels comparable to what EPA is proposing power plants must achieve? If so, what pollution control devices have these other industries been using?

A. Yes. Many other types of industries have been reducing mercury emissions and many other toxic air pollutants under the Clean Air Act’s MACT program. For example, municipal and medical waste incinerators have been achieving 90 percent mercury reductions since the late 1990′s using a technology called activated carbon injection that many power plant operators also will employ to meet the proposed mercury standards.

Q. What toxic air pollutants do coal-burning and oil-burning power plants emit?

A. Power plants emit approximately six dozen toxic air pollutants [PDF] out of the 189 toxic air pollutants specifically listed for regulation in the Clean Air Act. These include mercury, arsenic, dioxins, lead, hydrochloric acid, chromium, nickel, and radionuclides.

Q. Why did EPA not start reducing toxic air pollutants from power plants after the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments when it started reducing those pollutants from other types of industries?

A. In 1992 EPA published a list of industrial categories for which it would develop toxic air pollution standards under the law’s new MACT program. NRDC filed suit against EPA alleging that the agency unlawfully omitted power plants from that list. Under the act, EPA was supposed to conduct a health effects study addressing whether the agency should regulate toxic air pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants using MACT standards. The law requires such regulation if EPA determines that it is “appropriate and necessary.” As a result of the original lawsuit, NRDC and EPA entered into a settlement agreement in 1994, under which EPA was required to complete the study and report to Congress by November 1995. Following several delays, EPA submitted the report to Congress [PDF] in February 1998 — but still without making a determination about the appropriateness and necessity of MACT standards. Following notice of intent to file an “unreasonable delay” lawsuit by NRDC and the Sierra Club later in 1998, the original NRDC settlement agreement was modified twice more to require EPA to make the necessary regulatory determination by Dec. 15, 2000. Then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner did so and determined that it was “appropriate and necessary” to reduce toxic air pollutants from fossil fuel-fired power plants using the law’s protective MACT standards.

Q. So why did the Bush administration EPA not issue toxic air pollution standards for coal-fired and oil-fired power plants?

A. Soon after taking office, signs emerged that the Bush administration would not follow the law and issue the MACT standards for power plants required by the Clean Air Act. In a now-notorious April 2001 speech [PDF] that was recorded and transcribed without his awareness, a utility industry lobbyist told his coal industry audience that EPA had been planning to use the agency’s existing authority under the Clean Air Act to require large and prompt reductions in toxic air pollution from coal-burning power plants, namely MACT standards. Never fear, the lobbyist assured his colleagues, he and his friends in the Bush administration White House had a plan: the administration would create what the lobbyist called the “next generation of regulatory programs” for power plants. Predicting precisely what unfolded under the Bush administration, the lobbyist boasted that “the goal here will be to gain a foothold, an irreversible foothold on the next generation of reasonable cost effective SO2 and NOx reduction, plus air toxics that we can all live with and that someone else can’t undo.” Observing that “mercury is the killer,” the lobbyist signalled that eliminating the obligation to comply with MACT standards to reduce mercury and toxic air pollutants would be the very highest priority for the utility industry. And the Bush administration obliged that desire fully.

Q. So what did the Bush administration do instead?

A. In 2004, the Bush administration EPA issued rulemaking proposals that made clear it had no intention of following the law to require MACT standards that would reduce all toxic air pollutants from power plants. Then in early 2005, the administration confirmed that fear by retracting EPA’s prior commitment to protect public health by requiring MACT standards for toxic pollution from power plants, issuing a so-called “rescission rule”. Simultaneously, EPA issued a mercury “cap-and-trade” rule that purported to require significant reductions in power plant mercury emissions but in fact delayed any mercury regulation for 13 years. That rule disclaimed any need to reduce the remaining 70 or so toxic air pollutants from power plants and left power plants’ toxic air pollutants like arsenic, lead, dioxins, acid gases, and heavy metals completely unregulated.

Q. What happened to the Bush EPA mercury rule?

A. In February 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled [PDF] that EPA had illegally evaded the Clean Air Act’s protective safeguards — MACT standards — that should have required deep and timely reductions in toxic air pollution, including mercury, from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. The court further ruled that EPA had illegally substituted a mercury pollution trading scheme for the protections required by the Clean Air Act. The court vacated the EPA rules and made clear that EPA now had a firm legal obligation to adopt MACT standards to reduce all toxic air pollutants from power plants. The unanimous court ruling even went so far as to mock EPA’s defiance of the plain language of the law. The court compared EPA’s actions to the capricious Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, since EPA had — in the court’s words — “substituted [its] desires for the plain text” of the law. See my earlier post on this court ruling here.

Today’s proposed toxic air pollutants standards respond to that court decision and finally follow the law to require reductions in all toxic air pollutants from power plants for the first time since the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments.

May not be safe to enter.

For the first time in the 40 year history of the Clean Air Act, a majority of the House of Representatives has voted to block EPA from implementing and enforcing standards to sharply reduce mercury and other toxic air emissions from a polluting industry.

In one of a long list of irresponsible amendments to last week’s Republican budget, nearly all Republicans and a small group of Democrats voted to block EPA standards to reduce mercury, arsenic, lead, PCBs, dioxins and furans, and heavy metals from cement plants.

Mercury and lead both are dangerous neurotoxins — brain poisons — that harm the developing brains of children and fetuses. Dioxins are known human carcinogens linked to birth defects, reproductive abnormalities, and lung and breast cancer. Arsenic is a known human carcinogen linked to lung and kidney cancer and PCBs are probable human carcinogens linked to liver cancer.

On Feb.17, in a 250-177 vote, the House of Representatives approved an amendment by Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) to deny any funds to EPA to “implement, administer or enforce” mercury and other toxic air pollution standards for all cement plants in the country.

The EPA standards [PDF] that the House voted to block would reduce cement plants’ mercury emissions nationwide by 16,600 pounds [PDF], a 92 percent reduction from projected 2013 emission levels.

Most of the remaining toxic pollutants are metals or organics that are reduced by controlling particulate matter and hydrocarbons, respectively. The EPA standards would further reduce particulate matter by 11,500 tons annually, a 92 percent reduction, and total hydrocarbons by 10,600 tons annually, an 83 percent reduction [PDF].

Were these toxic pollution safeguards allowed to take effect, EPA projects that starting in 2013 and every year thereafter, the standards would avoid [PDF]: up to 2,500 premature deaths; 1,500 heart attacks; 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma; 32,000 cases of upper and lower respiratory symptoms; and 130,000 days when people would have missed miss work.

Instead, the following members of Congress chose to join the mercury and toxic pollution hall of shame by blocking EPA from carrying out and enforcing toxic air pollution standards. These members sided with corporate polluters over America’s children, health, and environment:

Alabama: Robert Aderholt (R), Spencer Bachus (R), Jo Bonner (R), Mo Brooks (R), Martha Roby (R), and Mike Rogers (R)

Alaska: Don Young (R)

Arizona: Jeff Flake (R), Trent Franks (R), Paul Gosar (R), Ben Quayle (R), and David Schweikert (R)

Arkansas: Rick Crawford (R), Timothy Griffin (R), Mike Ross (D), and Steve Womack (R)

California: Brian Bilbray (R), Mary Bono Mack (R), Ken Calvert (R), John Campbell (R), Dennis Cardoza (D), Jim Costa (D), Jeff Denham (R), David Dreier (R), Elton Gallegly (R), Wally Herger (R), Duncan Hunter (R), Darrell Issa (R), Jerry Lewis (R), Dan Lungren (R), Kevin McCarthy (R), Tom McClintock (R), Howard “Buck” McKeon (R), Gary Miller (R), Devin Nunes (R), Dana Rohrabacher (R), and Ed Royce (R)

Colorado: Mike Coffman (R), Cory Gardner (R), Douglas Lamborn (R), and Scott Tipton (R)

Florida: Sandra Adams (R), Gus Bilirakis (R), Vern Buchanan (R), Ander Crenshaw (R), Mario Diaz-Balart (R), Connie Mack (R), John Mica (R), Jeff Miller (R), Rich Nugent (R), Bill Posey (R), David Rivera (R), Tom Rooney (R), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R), Dennis Ross (R), Steve Southerland (R), Cliff Stearns (R), Daniel Webster (R), and Allen West (R)

Georgia: John Barrow (D), Paul Broun (R), Phil Gingrey (R), Tom Graves (R), Jack Kingston (R), Tom Price (R), Austin Scott (R), Lynn Westmoreland (R), and Robert Woodall (R)

Idaho: Raul Labrador (R) and Michael Simpson (R)

Illinois: Judy Biggert (R), Jerry Costello (D), Bob Dold (R), Randy Hultgren (R), Adam Kinzinger (R), Dan Lipinski (D), Donald Manzullo (R), Peter Roskam (R), Bobby Schilling (R), John Shimkus (R), and Joe Walsh (R)

Indiana: Larry Bucshon (R), Dan Burton (R), Joe Donnelly (D), Mike Pence (R), Todd Rokita (R), Marlin Stutzman (R), and Todd Young (R)

Iowa: Steve King (R) and Tom Latham (R)

Kansas: Tim Huelskamp (R), Lynn Jenkins (R), Mike Pompeo (R), and Kevin Yoder (R)

Kentucky: Geoff Davis (R), Brett Guthrie (R), Hal Rogers (R), and Ed Whitfield (R)

Louisiana: Rodney Alexander (R), Charles Boustany (R), Bill Cassidy (R), John Fleming (R), Jeff Landry (R), and Steve Scalise (R)

Maryland: Roscoe Bartlett (R) and Andy Harris (R)

Michigan: Justin Amash (R), Dan Benishek (R), Dave Camp (R), Bill Huizenga (R), Thaddeus McCotter (R), Candice Miller (R), Mike Rogers (R), Fred Upton (R), and Tim Walberg (R)

Minnesota: Michele Bachmann (R), Chip Cravaack (R), John Kline (R), Erik Paulsen (R), and Collin Peterson (D)

Mississippi: Gregg Harper (R), Alan Nunnelee (R), and Steven Palazzo (R)

Missouri: W. Todd Akin (R), Jo Ann Emerson (R), Sam Graves (R), Vicky Hartzler (R), Billy Long (R), and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R)

Montana: Dennis Rehberg (R)

Nebraska: Jeff Fortenberry (R), Adrian Smith (R), and Lee Terry (R)

Nevada: Shelley Berkley (D), Joe Heck (R), and Dean Heller (R)

New Hampshire: Frank Guinta (R)

New Jersey: Rodney Frelinghuysen (R), Scott Garrett (R), and Jon Runyan (R)

New Mexico: Steve Pearce (R)

New York:  Ann Marie Buerkle (R), Chris Gibson (R), Michael Grimm (R), Richard Hanna (R), Nan Hayworth (R), Peter King (R), and Tom Reed (R)

North Carolina: Howard Coble (R), Renee Ellmers (R), Virginia Foxx (R), Walter Jones (R), Larry Kissell (D), Patrick McHenry (R), and Sue Myrick (R)

North Dakota: Rick Berg (R)

Ohio: Steve Austria (R), Steve Chabot (R), Bob Gibbs (R), Jim Renacci (R), Bill Johnson (R), Jim Jordan (R), Steven LaTourette (R), Bob Latta (R), Jean Schmidt (R), Steve Stivers (R), Pat Tiberi (R), and Mike Turner (R)

Oklahoma: Dan Boren (D), Tom Cole (R), James Lankford (R), Frank Lucas (R), and John Sullivan (R)

Oregon: Kurt Schrader (D) and Greg Walden (R)

Pennsylvania: Jason Altmire (D), Lou Barletta (R), Mark Critz (D), Charles Dent (R), Mike Fitzpatrick (R), Jim Gerlach (R), Tim Holden (D), Mike Kelly (R), Tom Marino (R), Pat Meehan (R), Tim Murphy (R), Joseph Pitts (R), Todd Platts (R), Bill Shuster (R), and Glenn Thompson (R)

South Carolina: Jeff Duncan (R), Trey Gowdy (R), Mick Mulvaney (R), Tim Scott (R), and Joe Wilson (R)

South Dakota: Kristi Noem (R)

Tennessee: Diane Black (R), Marsha Blackburn (R), Scott DesJarlais (R), John Duncan (R), Stephen Fincher (R), Chuck Fleischmann (R), and Phil Roe (R)

Texas: Joe Barton (R), Kevin Brady (R), Michael Burgess (R), Francisco Canseco (R), John Carter (R), Mike Conaway (R), Henry Cuellar (D), John Culberson (R), Bill Flores (R), Louie Gohmert (R), Kay Granger (R), Al Green (D), Ralph Hall (R), Jeb Hensarling (R), Sam Johnson (R), Kenny Marchant (R), Michael McCaul (R), Pete Olson (R), Ron Paul (R), Ted Poe (R), Randy Neugebauer (R), Pete Sessions (R), Lamar Smith (R), and Mac Thornberry (R)

Utah: Rob Bishop (R) and Jason Chaffetz (R)

Virginia: Eric Cantor (R), J. Randy Forbes (R), Bob Goodlatte (R), Morgan Griffith (R), Robert Hurt (R), E. Scott Rigell (R), and Rob Wittman (R)

Washington: Doc Hastings (R), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R), and Dave Reichert (R)

West Virginia: Shelley Capito (R), David McKinley (R), and Nick Rahall (D)

Wisconsin: Sean Duffy (R), Ron Kind (D), Tom Petri (R), Reid Ribble (R), Paul Ryan (R), and James Sensenbrenner (R)

Wyoming: Cynthia Lummis (R)

Special gratitude is owed the members who voted against the pernicious Carter amendment and stood up for America’s children and public health, EPA, and the Rule of Law. This is especially true of the courageous seven Republicans who broke with their caucus and voted against the irresponsible Carter amendment: Charlie Bass (N.H.), Timothy Johnson (Ill.), Leonard Lance, (N.J.), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Frank Wolf (Va.), and Bill Young (Fla.). (This gratitude must be tempered, however, by pointing out that all seven of these Republicans voted for passage of the final Republican budget, meaning that they ended up voting for the destructive Carter amendment in the final analysis anyway.)

The members supporting the dirty air amendment have anointed themselves into a toxic hall of shame of their own creation. History should not judge this distinction kindly.

A chicken in every pot and an inhaler for every child.

Today I begin a regular series to highlight recent attempts and harmful actions to weaken protections against air pollution.

Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

Cue the AC/DC.

Abolishing EPA’s ability to cut dangerous global warming pollution: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), joined by 46 cosponsors, introduced a bill in Congress to eliminate the EPA’s ability to reduce any global warming pollution from any pollution sources. Seeking to overrule a Supreme Court decision that recognized the EPA’s authority to address this pollution, the members offered no alternative solution to cut the harmful pollution that causes climate disruption.

Handcuffing EPA to prevent available solutions to cut dangerous global warming pollution: Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), joined by 19 cosponsors, introduced a House bill to prohibit any funding for the EPA to carry out a market-based trading program under the Clean Air Act for greenhouse gases and, ominously, “for other purposes” unspecified; Mr. Poe has not made his bill text available yet. As with Blackburn’s broadside assault against Clean Air Act cleanup standards, Poe offered no alternative solution to cut the harmful pollution that causes climate disruption.

Eradicating standards to cut toxic air pollution from cement plants: Rep. John R. Carter (R-Texas) circulated a letter in the House last week urging his colleagues to cosponsor a resolution overturning existing EPA standards to sharply cut toxic air pollution from cement kilns. The EPA estimates [PDF] its standards will reduce annual emissions of cement plants’ mercury by 16,600 pounds (a 92 percent cut), acid gases by 5,800 tons (97 percent cut), soot pollution by 11,500 tons (92 percent cut) and sulfur dioxide pollution by 110,000 (78 percent cut). With this attack, Carter prefers to allow the following hazards [PDF] to occur every year without the protections afforded by the EPA standards: up to 2,500 premature deaths, 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma, 1,500 heart attacks, 32,000 cases of upper and lower respiratory symptoms, and 130,000 days of lost work. The standards will produce benefits of $6.7 billion to $18 billion annually, yielding benefits that outweigh costs by a factor of 7 to 20:1.

Industry lobbyists’ declaration of war on Clean Air Act health protections: The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) submitted a Jan. 7th wish list [PDF] of attacks on clean air safeguards to a key House Republican chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, after he invited [PDF] industry suggestions for “reforming” regulations by the EPA and other agencies. (Issa is leading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and he also cosponsored the irresponsible bill introduced by Blackburn to abolish entirely the EPA’s authority over greenhouse gas pollution.) The litany of health safeguards that NAM wants to weaken (or eliminate) includes standards for mercury, arsenic, lead, and cancer-causing toxins from industrial plants; protective clean air standards for smog pollution; and standards to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. NAM’s member companies include AT&T, the Bayer Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Campbell Soup Company, Caterpillar, General Electric, Hershey, Merck, Sony, Verizon, Volvo, Weyerhaeuser, and Xerox. One has to ask whether these companies really want to subject the American people to the hazards that these pollutants cause and to prevent the EPA from doing its job? Or is NAM not speaking for these companies when the lobbying group attacks important health standards?