[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 89 (Wednesday, June 29, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7640-S7641]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Ms. Collins, Mr. Jeffords, Mrs. Boxer, 
        Mr. Kerry, Mr. Biden, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Carper, Mr. 
        Rockefeller, Mr. Corzine, Mr. Dayton, Mr. Reid, Mr. Dodd, Mrs. 
        Clinton, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Feingold, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Harkin, 
        Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Obama, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Levin, 
        Mr. Lieberman, Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Reed, Mr. 
        Sarbanes, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Akaka, and Ms. Snowe):
  S.J. Res. 20. A joint resolution disapproving a rule promulgated by 
the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to delist coal 
and oil-direct utility units from the source category list under the 
Clean Air Act; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
  Mr. LEAHY. 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 10 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 1 in 6 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 Government 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 4 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 2 years--working with 3 
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 1 percent of power plant capacity will have mercury controls 
by 2015, and only 3 percent by 2020.

[[Page S7641]]

  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.

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