House Votes to Protect Against Increased Toxic Pollution Including Mercury

The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to put an end to funding an EPA proposal that would have potentially opened the door to extensive increases in the emission of toxic materials including mercury from major sources. An excerpt from EarthJustice follows.

Included in the Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations bill for the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, important amendments were approved, including: [...]

An end to funding a regulation proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency that would allow major toxic air polluters to avoid meeting control requirements under the Clean Air Act. EPA's proposal would have eliminated the so-called "once in, always in" rule, allowing facilities that are currently subject to the Clean Air Act's highly protective emission standards for toxic pollutants like mercury, lead, and dioxins to avoid controls if their emissions fell below certain ton-per-year thresholds. If the rule were finalized, many industries could significantly increase their toxic emissions, placing children and families in neighboring communities at risk. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), passed by a 252 – 178 margin. [...]

"Instead of doing the job that Congress gave it -- protecting public health and the environment -- this EPA is using taxpayer dollars to roll back environmental protections to benefit powerfully connected industries," said Earthjustice attorney James Pew. "The country owes a big debt of gratitude to Representative Johnson and the members who voted to stop this abuse. If this rule went through, it would expose millions of Americans across the country to increased emissions of the most toxic pollutants in existence."

What appears to be at stake here is that if a toxics regulated facility were to reduce its toxic emissions enough to fall below the regulated level they would come off the list of regulated facilities. But once they were off the list they could then increase emissions of toxics even higher than before without regulatory consequences. Instead of "once in, always in" it would become "once out, always out". This is my take on the subject and I could be wrong.