WASHINGTON: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will announce on Wednesday its final rule changing how the agency measures the costs and benefits of proposed new curbs on pollution, a move that is likely to limit the agency’s power to impose stringent future regulations.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler will unveil the final rule at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has been critical of how previous administrations considered benefits to justify tougher regulations.
The final rule comes after the EPA moved in April to revise the cost-benefit analysis used by the Obama administration to write the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule, because it said the cost of compliance with that rule far outweighed the direct public health benefits.
The calculations used by Obama accounted for indirect benefits too, because pollution-control equipment at coal plants would reduce emissions of particulate matter and other harmful substances that come out of smokestacks, in addition to just mercury.
The change to the cost-benefit rule would not kill the mercury regulation, but would prevent the agency from weighing indirect benefits of a regulation in the future.
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