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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Supreme Court Sides with Energy Industry Over EPA Rules

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015   

DENVER – On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed to properly consider costs to industry early in the rule-making process when trying to limit toxic heavy metal pollution from power plants.

The EPA's new rules regulating oil- and coal-fired power plants are still in effect, and will remain so while a lower court reviews the case. Attorney Jim Pew with Earthjustice says the new rules are particularly important for reining in emissions from the oldest plants still in operation.

"This rule does a couple of things," he says. "It sets first-time limits on some of the 'worst of the worst' pollutants. And it sets an industry-wide limit on some of the pollutants that haven't been regulated well enough until now."

Pew adds that power plants are responsible for 50 percent of all U.S. emissions of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. He says more than four million women of childbearing age in the nation are exposed to mercury levels considered harmful for fetal brain development.

The Supreme Court's decision did not dispute EPA conclusions that power plants are the largest industrial polluters, nor that reductions in emissions are feasible. Some power companies have complained that compliance with the new rules will cost them close to $10 billion annually.

The EPA says limiting toxic emissions could save between $37- and $90-billion per year in health benefits. Pew says the new rules are about more than just money.

"It's a big number, but the number looks a lot smaller when you compare it to what the cost is of not controlling this pollution," he says. "Nobody is really disputing that this rule is going to save between 4,000 and 11,000 lives every year."

Pew notes the Supreme Court's decision does not change the EPA's authority to protect the public from toxic pollution. He says it just gives the agency another hoop to jump through.



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