Mercury Rule: Resolution of Disapproval
To Be Filed In Senate By Leahy, Collins

WASHINGTON (June 29) - Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) today (Wednesday) will introduce a resolution of disapproval for the Administration’s controversial new MERCURY RULE. This is the third time that this procedure has been used under the provisions of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The Leahy-Collins resolution of disapproval will be referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. If the committee does not take it up, Leahy in July intends to file a discharge petition. Congress has 60 legislative days (not including days Congress is not in session, or weekend days) from the date Congress received the rule, April 21st. Following are: 1) news backgrounder; 2) Leahy’s floor statement (which he may deliver live today on the Senate floor, depending on the Senate’s schedule); and 3) list of cosponsors of the Leahy-Collins resolution. Text of the resolution is available on request. Leahy has long led in Congress on mercury pollution issues and is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Senate’s work in writing EPA’s annual budgets. Contact: David Carle, 202-224-3693.

S. J. Res. 20 - Resolution of Disapproval.  Full text may be found here.

News Backgrounder
On The Resolution Of Disapproval
Relating To EPA’s Mercury Rule
June 29, 2005

Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), joined by 27 other senators, will introduce a resolution to halt EPA’s rule to delist power plants as a source of hazardous air pollutants, such as mercury, under the Clean Air Act. The resolution will be introduced pursuant to the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

BACKGROUND ON THE CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT -- The discharge petition is the next step in the procedural process under the CRA to ensure the resolution is considered by the full Senate. The resolution of disapproval will be referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. If the resolution of disapproval is not acted on by the Committee, then a discharge petition signed by 30 senators will automatically discharge the resolution. If 30 senators submit a petition for this purpose, the measure is automatically discharged and placed on the Senate calendar, from which it may be called up for floor consideration. Though the CRA is not explicit, the Senate has treated motions to take up and consider disapproval resolutions, by whomever makes such a motion, as privileged matters that are not debatable. That would assure a Senate vote on the resolution.

BACKGROUND ON EPA’S RULE -- The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued two new controversial mercury emissions rules. The first rule (the “delisting” rule) revokes a 2000 EPA decision that it is “necessary and appropriate” to require that each power plant apply technology to reduce mercury emissions. The other scheme gives utilities an extra 13 years before they would have to install any mercury-specific controls on power plants. Further, many plants will never have to install controls if they choose to simply buy their way out by purchasing allowances from other plants. The Leahy/Collins resolution deals only with EPA’s “delisting” rule.

MERCURY’S THREATS TO PUBLIC HEALTH -- Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that damages fetuses' and children's developing nervous systems. At least 44 states have issued warnings urging residents to avoid or limit their consumption of mercury-laden fish caught in local waters, and the federal government has recommended that children and women of childbearing age eat no more than two meals of low-mercury fish per week and avoid eating certain fish altogether.

Recent analyses show that the estimate of infants with unsafe mercury levels in their blood has doubled to 630,000. The National Academy of Sciences has confirmed scientific research demonstrating that maternal consumption of unsafe levels of mercury in fish can cause neuro-developmental harm in children, resulting in learning disabilities, poor motor function, mental retardation, seizures and cerebral palsy.

While Administration officials claimed stronger safeguards would exceed the benefits to public health, they failed to consider an EPA-funded, peer-reviewed Harvard University study showing that more stringent limits on power plant mercury pollution are both cost effective and necessary to protect public health. While ignoring the new EPA-funded Harvard study, EPA clearly considered input from polluting industries. In fact, EPA’s first proposal for these rules lifted exact texts from memorandum provided by utility industry lobbyists.

The resolution is offered to ensure that the health and safety of the American public is fully considered, before EPA is able to rescind its statutory commitment to protect public health from the dangers of mercury pollution. Leahy, chief sponsor of the resolution, believes that it is wrong to leave power plants as the only source of mercury and other toxic air pollution that is allowed to avoid rigorous emissions standards under the Clean Air Act. Doing that, he believes, poses undue risks to the public’s health that the nation need not and should not accept.

This petition, he noted, will now allow the full Senate to debate the merits of the EPA rule.

# # # # #

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
On The Introduction Of A Resolution
To Disapprove The Administration’s Mercury Rule
June 29, 2005

Mr. President, along with Senator Collins and 28 of our colleagues, today I am introducing this resolution to halt the Bush Administration’s flawed and dangerous new rule on toxic mercury emissions.  I am pleased that another leading cosponsor of this resolution is the Ranking Member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator Jeffords.

The Bush Administration’s new rule will continue to allow mercury, a substance so toxic that it causes birth defects and IQ loss, to continue to poison children and pregnant women.  This disastrous rule should not be allowed to stand as the law of the land.

The bipartisan work that produced the Clean Air Act and the 1990 Amendments established a process for us to begin cleaning up the toxic mercury spewing out of dirty power plants across the country.  The 1990 Amendments require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to control each power plant's emissions of mercury and other toxics by 2008 at the latest.  The Act requires each plant to use the "maximum achievable control technology" on every generating unit.  That is the law of the land.  Anything less means more pollution.

But instead of working to enforce and implement the Clean Air Act, as two previous Administrations had, the Bush Administration has turned the Clean Air Act on its head.  With this rule the Administration revokes a 2000 EPA finding that it is “necessary and appropriate” to require that each power plant apply technology to reduce mercury emissions. 

Let me repeat those plain, startling facts:  By revoking the earlier EPA finding and deciding instead to coddle the biggest mercury polluters, the Administration is saying it is no longer necessary or appropriate to adequately control mercury emissions.  Although I am somewhat impressed that they can make this statement with straight faces, I am appalled at their audacious disregard for the health of the American people, and, like the scientific community, I am baffled by their gymnastic arguments.

The plain and simple truth is that this rule will allow more mercury into our environment than does the current law.  Hundreds of the oldest, dirtiest power plants will not even control mercury emissions for more than a decade.  That is what this rule gives us:  More pollution, for longer than the Clean Air Act allows.

This rule is all the more shameful because the evidence of public health and environmental damage from mercury and other toxics is clear enough for action right now.  We do not need to wait ten or 20 years to know the facts about mercury’s threats to human health.  In fact EPA itself admits these threats.  Look at EPA’s own estimate of the number of newborns at risk of elevated mercury exposure, which has doubled to 630,000.  EPA also found that one in six pregnant women has mercury levels in her blood above EPA’s safe threshold.  The National Academy of Sciences has confirmed scientific research showing that maternal consumption of unsafe levels of mercury in fish can cause neuro-developmental harm in children, resulting in learning disabilities, poor motor function, mental retardation, seizures and cerebral palsy. 

Yet it seems the majority in Congress and this Administration want to avoid any public daylight on this flawed rule.  The Environment and Public Works Committee has refused to even hold a single hearing on this rule.  Their aim is to keep the public in the dark, and I would guess that most Americans in fact do not yet know what EPA and the big polluters have been up to with this rule.

One reason for the Administration’s lack of candor clearly is the discovery that this rule has polluting industries’ fingerprints all over it.  EPA’s first proposal for these rules lifted exact texts from memorandum provided by utility industry lobbyists.  Another reason may be because the American people would find a process where the lobbyists are shut in and the public is shut out, where the scientific and economic analysis was manipulated, and where the public’s health was ignored. 

But the Administration’s arrogance does not stop there.  EPA’s own Inspector General and the General Accountability Office criticized almost every aspect of how EPA drafted this rule.  Unfortunately, their recommendations to improve it were also ignored.  So were more than 680,000 public comments – a record for any EPA rule.  So were the comments of many state environment departments, attorneys general, doctors, educators, sportsmen groups and EPA’s own advisory committees.  And, although it should not come as a surprise after four years working with this Administration, the comments of 45 Senate and 184 House members were also ignored.

Many of us in the Senate have spent the past two years – working with three different administrators – trying to make the Administration follow the Clean Air Act and produce a rule that puts the public’s health over the profits of special interests.  A rule that heeds the science and encourages available technologies to solve this problem.  They failed on all fronts, big time.

Instead they produced a rule that will do nothing for at least a decade, despite years of analysis by EPA showing the need for quick action.  According to EPA’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis, we will be lucky if one percent of power plant capacity will have mercury controls by 2015, and only three percent by 2020. 

As a Vermonter I know it is “appropriate and necessary” to limit the pollution plumes from grandfathered power plants.  You cannot even see my state on EPA’s maps showing mercury pollution because so much of it is being dumped on us from upwind power plants.  Vermonters and New Englanders have been waiting for decades for EPA to take action so that our lakes can be cleaned up.

For all their talk of family values, the Administration has yet again put the value of corporate contributions -- not families -- first.  It is not a family value to tell a whole generation of women that their health is not important.  It is not a family value to put another generation of young kids at risk of learning disabilities.  These mercury rules do just that.

It is time to put people first, and to stop letting the big polluters and the special interests write the rules and run the show over at EPA.

This resolution will ensure that the health and safety of U.S. citizens are fully considered, before EPA rescinds its commitment to protect public health from the dangers of mercury pollution.  To leave mercury pollution from power plants as the only source of toxic air pollution that is allowed to avoid rigorous emissions standards under the Clean Air Act is a risk to the public’s health that we need not, and should not, accept.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

 # # # # #

Cosponsors Of Leahy-Collins
Resolution To Disapprove The Administration’s Mercury Rule