EPA Delays Major Rules

In recent days, the EPA has announced delays of two major rules, at least temporarily. According to a report by the Washington Times and others, EPA has announced that it will not complete final regulations for Utility MACT, originally scheduled to be finalized this calendar year, until March 2013. Less than a week after that decision, EPA announced a settlement with environmental groups that would delay the agency’s Cooling Water Intake Rule by eleven months, with a new completion date of June 27, 2013.

“Although it is difficult to tell at this early date whether these delays will help power consumers in the long run, it is certainly important to have more time for dialogue and fact-funding on these two rules,” explained PACE Executive Director Lance Brown.

Utility MACT has come under fire from a variety of voices, including PACE, for imposing aggressive new standards for coal-fired power generation with little benefit in terms of mercury reduction, the regulation’s stated goal. In total, Utility MACT will affect approximately 1,400 units at almost 600 power plants nationwide, including about 1,100 coal-fired units and some 300 that use oil. According to EPA’s official analysis, however, 99.98% of the benefits from Utility MACT come not from mercury reductions, but from projected improvements in air quality, which are already governed by other EPA rules.

EPA’s Cooling Water Intake Rule has caused concern, as well. The rule would implement more rigorous processes for power plants that use at least two million gallons per day of cooling water, which covers 670 power plants in the United States. In July, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) President Thomas Kuhn expressed in a letter to EPA his organization’s concerns that the Cooling Water Intake rule could “impose requirements that many facilities could only meet by incurring costs that are wildly out of proportion to the benefits.”

EPA’s original timeline for implementation of its Cooling Water Intake Rule was based on a 2010 settlement with environmental groups such as Riverkeeper and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that forced EPA to make changes to cooling water intake regulations under the Clean Water Act by June 27, 2012. The groups argued that the withdrawal and discharge of water by power plants could cause environmental harm to aquatic life and river ecosystems, although such discharges currently undergo stringent testing by regulatory authorities. Recently, however, the groups reached a new settlement that allows EPA to delay implementation of the rule by eleven months.

“The Cooling Water Intake Rule is a great example of the sue-and-settle approach that has come to typify the EPA’s approach to regulation,” said Brown. “Hopefully, the agency will consider the concerns of power consumers as much as it considers the concerns of the environmental industry, and we can have a workable, common sense rule.”