EPA Issues First National Standards for Mercury and Air Toxics
12.21.11 4:41 PMIn a press release issued today, the U.S. EPA announced that it has issued the first national standards regulating power plant emissions of mercury and toxic air pollutants like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which are being issued in response to a court deadline, are based on the latest data and provide industry significant flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach and use of already existing technologies.
The standards are the product of some 20 years for drafting and compromise. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments passed by a bipartisan Congress mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury. To meet this requirement, EPA worked extensively with stakeholders, including industry, to minimize cost and maximize flexibilities in these final standards. There were more than 900,000 public comments that helped inform the final standards being announced today. Part of this feedback encouraged EPA to ensure the standards focused on readily available and widely deployed pollution control technologies, that are not only manufactured by companies in the United States, but also support short-term and long-term jobs. EPA estimates that manufacturing, engineering, installing and maintaining the pollution controls to meet these standards will provide employment for thousands, potentially including 46,000 short-term construction jobs and 8,0a00 long-term utility jobs.
As part of the commitment to maximize flexibilities under the law, the standards are accompanied by a Presidential Memorandum that directs EPA to use tools provided in the Clean Air Act to implement the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability. For example, under these standards, EPA is not only providing the standard three years for compliance, but also encouraging permitting authorities to make a fourth year broadly available for technology installations, and if still more time is needed, providing a well-defined pathway to address any localized reliability problems should they arise.
Today, more than half of all coal-fired power plants already deploy pollution control technologies that will help them meet these achievable standards. Once final, these standards will level the playing field by ensuring the remaining plants—about 40 percent of all coal fired power plants—take similar steps to decrease emissions of these pollutants.
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