A Colorado coal company on Friday made it official: It’s trying to undo all limits on mercury emissions of coal-fired power plants.
“EPA cannot continue to regulate coal fired power plants under section 112 after finding that there is no necessary and appropriate basis for such regulation,” Westmoreland Mining wrote in a Friday court document outlining its expected legal attack.
Just for good measure, it also suggested the “previously promulgated” Obama-era limits be vacated in light of the Trump EPA’s “necessary and appropriate” finding.
When the Trump EPA earlier this year declared it was not “necessary and appropriate” to have regulated mercury from coal plants, the agency stressed that it was not undoing the actual numerical limits, meaning the nation’s power plants — all of which have been in compliance for years — couldn’t just turn off their equipment. But environmentalists said that reasoning amounted to a house of cards that effectively invited someone opposed to regulating coal plants’ emissions, like a coal company, to argue in a lawsuit that the legal underpinning’s demise meant the actual limits would have to be tossed as well.
EPA did not return a request for comment over the weekend.
Source: POLITICO