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Policy Integrity has filed comments opposing EPA’s proposal to issue a second stay of the compliance deadlines in the Effluent Rule—a rule that regulates toxic metal discharges from power plants. As we explained in our comments to EPA, EPA has no legal authority for the proposed stay. In addition, EPA failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the stay because it ignored the impact that the stay will have on the benefits of the Effluent Rule.

EPA has suspended the compliance deadlines in a regulation on power plant wastewater discharges, which limits plants from releasing certain toxic metals into lakes and rivers. We submitted a “friend of the court” brief in the legal challenge to the suspension. Our brief argues that the decision to suspend the rule was arbitrary and capricious because EPA focused only on amorphous compliance costs and ignored the effects of pollution that will continue to be discharged while the rule is suspended. As we explain in the brief, it is fundamentally irrational to make a decision based on such a one-sided analysis, and the suspension should be vacated.

We recently submitted comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to delay the effective date of EPA’s amendments to the Risk Management Program for twenty more months and to put off the compliance deadlines indefinitely. The original rule was issued under section 112®(7)(A) of the Clean Air Act and updated chemical accident prevention rules at manufacturing plants, after a fatal explosion at a fertilizer plant in West Texas.

We recently submitted two sets of comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on issues related to the implementation of the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The first comment letter focuses on EPA’s proposed restrictions on the manufacture, processing, and distribution of trichloroethylene (TCE) for use in aerosol degreasing and in spot cleaning in dry cleaning facilities. Our second comment letter focuses on EPA’s proposed process for conducting future risk evaluations under the amended TSCA.

In 2012, EPA issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which limit coal- and oil-fired power plants’ emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. In their most recent challenge to the rule, Petitioners seek to obscure the fact that regulating power plants’ emissions of hazardous air pollutants overwhelmingly benefits society by asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to ignore or discount large portions of EPA’s analysis—namely, its consideration of indirect benefits (sometimes called ancillary benefits or co-benefits) and unquantified benefits. But, as our amicus brief points out, EPA’s consideration of indirect benefits and unquantified direct benefits is consistent with the Clean Air Act, past court decisions, federal cost-benefit guidelines, economic best practices, and regulatory precedent. Overall, we argue that the agency’s cost-benefit analysis was properly conducted and more than satisfies its obligation to consider costs when determining whether regulation of power plants’ hazardous emissions is “appropriate and necessary.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will soon hear arguments in Murray Energy Corp. v. U.S. E.P.A., challenging the EPA’s revised ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Policy Integrity has submitted an amicus brief in support of the EPA for this case.

After the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did not consider costs at the appropriate stage of its regulatory process when crafting the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the EPA was tasked with revising the rule. The agency recently released a supplemental finding that it is appropriate and necessary to regulate hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired electric utility steam generating units, taking the costs of regulation into account. We submitted comments to the agency.