EPA's mercury standard manipulations

The Bush Administration's first-term epistemology of "reality-making" versus "reality-basing" seems to be alive and well. The Environmental Protection Agency's leadership, beholden to this philosophy of science, has likewise fallen on its face right out of the gate. And--of course--it's ultimately Bill Clinton's fault, we're told. This all evolves around the effort to finalize, by March, the Bush Administration's Clean Air Mercury Rule. It has involved the agency's political leadership pressuring agency scientists to rewrite conclusions so that they coalesce with Administration-Industry preferences.

The EPA's Inspector General, Clinton-appointee Nikki Tinsley, has produced a 54-page report on the EPA leadership's effort to dilute mercury standards in the rule. The IG site. From the Associated Press:

Nikki Tinsley’s report said the EPA based its mercury pollution limits on an analysis submitted by Western Energy Supply and Transmission Associates [WEST Associates], a research and advocacy group representing 17 coal-fired utilities in eight Western states.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set the limits based on the most advanced pollution controls used by industry. Tinsley said agency workers were instructed by “EPA senior management” to develop a standard compared with other regulations and a White House legislative plan, “instead of basing the standard on an unbiased determination” of the limits.

Industry lobbyists have advanced the counter-argument that Tinsley's office--since Tinsley is an accountant--is scientifically unqualified to make that determination. This red herring ignores what Tinsley is actually criticizing: political intervention into scientific work; circumvention of prior executive and statutory requirements; and privileging industry preferences while not meeting obligations to assess the impact on children. It has everything to do with the public integrity and political legitimacy of her agency--an inspector general's function--rather than an assessment of the science itself. The counter-argument also conflates Tinsley's background with that of her entire office, which is sure to include scientific experts, given that it monitors the EPA of all things. (Also, since the EPA's air administrator, Jeffrey Holmstead, is a former timber and utility lawyer who has a reputation for subverting the Clean Air Act, and not much else . . . .)

A little background, in the late-1990s, the EPA committed itself to an aggressive airborne mercury-reduction effort. Using mandatory industry reporting requirements, better monitoring techniques, and seeking to get the adoption of mercury-reducing technology introduced into coal-fired power plants, the policy was clear: coal-fired utility plants were the primary source of mercury emisions in the US; mercury emissions were a problem; mercury emissions would be reduced. More on the Clinton-era effort here. Also, the EPA's current Clean Air Mercury Rule site.

I think that around 2000, about 50 tons of mercury was released each year by power plants, and there wasn't any substantial regulatory oversight of such emissions. Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that finds its way into water from the air. It essentially poisons the food chain top to bottom. In humans it is particularly dangerous for children, affecting fetal development and post-natal neurological development. It resides in the blood. Apparently, the EPA itself estimates that 8% of child-carrying women have enough mercury in their system to endanger the child's development.

The original EPA scheme was to lower emissions from the unregulated 48-50 tons to around 15 tons per year by 2018. The 15 tons standard is perceived as the lowest achievable level, and the policy calls for seeking the maximally lowest level. The industry preference is 34 tons. (The reduction mechanism is primarily a Kyoto-style cap-and-trade scheme; the IG doesn't criticize this aspect, but thinks its standards and measures are improvable.) Looking at 1999 state-by-state levels, it seems that the highest emitters are in the Rust Belt and the South.

WEST Associates has a singularly unhelpful website, and I haven't been able to find specific details of their submission to the EPA. Hopefully someone is filing an FOIA request with the agency (and with Tinsley, since she no doubt has a copy).

One of the original and much-touted objectives of this effort was for industry reporting of emission levels, which the EPA was to publicly release. However, the only data I've found on the EPA's website are the 1999 numbers (PDF here and PDF here). I don't think there is any good reason for statistical tables to not be published in searchable HTML format. At any rate, since public information is a stated policy objective here, the EPA should have its own dedicated webpage giving this information in and uptodate manner. The agency's geographical representation of emission density is based on 1996 data. This indicates that a stated policy goal, public disclosure, in the formulation of mercury regulation is being thwarted. Incredible.

(From here, I'm looking at this April 2004 Excel doc, "State Mercury Allocations - Revisions." This document gives state-by-state quotas up to the original cap of 15 tons by 2018. It's worth a look. It projects 2018 state-by-state emission quotas.)

Tinsley's 54-page report is in PDF here. It begins:

Evidence indicates that senior EPA management instructed EPA staff to develop a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standard for mercury that would result in national emissions of 34 tons annually, instead of basing the standards on an unbiased determination of what the top performing units were achieving in practice.

The established policy standard requires the lowest maximally achievable level of mercury emissions. EPA leadership, however, did not base their 34-ton cap on that standard. Tinsley devotes her second chapter to the political shenanigans. From page 13:

Some staff told us that they heard these specific directions and others told us they heard in different meetings during rule development that the application of the MACT floor to utilities should equal 34 tons per year.... These statements were further corraborated by internal EPA e-mails, which specifically identified 34 tons per year as the number despite the fact that prior modelling did not result in 34 tons.

And then:

Documentation that we reviewed indicated that the EPA conducted at least three Integrated Planning Model (IPM) runs in order to reach the pre-determined target for national mercury emissions of 34 tons.

The first two IPM runs actually yielded results significantly lower than 34 tons/year. They were then scotched by EPA's senior management and suppressed from release. The third IPM run resulted in a 31 ton result, which management then released, while also declaring that the modelling underestimated actual emissions. Then:

The emission limits shown in Run #3 above, ultimately proposed as the MACT standard, were based on a multi-variability analysis submitted by WEST Associates....

What I find interesting is that at the end of the chapter, after concluding the rule development process was "compromised," Tinsley recommends that the Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, our dear Jeffrey Holmstead, "conduct an unbiased analysis of the mercury emissions data...". To me, given the absence of a recommendation for better oversight, and given that it implies this administrator is specifically responsible for the process, we are being led to believe that Tinsley is implicating Holmstead's own oversight of the rule development process.

The problem is, if the EPA issues a stringent reduction scheme that actually works, it will serve to invalidate Bush's broader Clear Skies policy, which is why the EPA is sticking to its guns even after Holmstead's ham-handed cronyism has backfired.

It's also important to note the ideological justification for minimizing the significance of utility-produced mercury, as it forms a background assumption that isn't always expressed: Since mercury blows into the US from other countries, and is even released by volcanoes, it's unfair and anti-business to blame it all on American utilities. Fair enough; but this also serves as a rationalization for administrator-lobbyists who want to escape being blamed for endangering children while promoting policy inaction as well as scientific sabotage.

Comments

[BEHZADI]

MERCURY CONSUMPTION CONTROL IN ASIA'S COUNTRY
PLEASE SEND TO ME MERCURY STANDARD LEVEL IN AIR AND BLOOD
BEST REGARDS

[Enweka Obina]

To whom it may concern,

I'm workig on Assesment of food crop mercury uptake can you please send to my email box the standard of mercury for plant crops. I want to compare them with my result. I'm working with maize, amaranthus and okro and pepper. I need this urgently.

Thank you