Shame!
the inspector general (ig) of the us Environmental Protection Agency (epa) has slammed epa for proposing weak mercury emission standards for coal power plants and so please the Bush administration. The ig's office is an independent one within the epa; it aims to improve epa 's efficiency. To ensure such independence, Congress provides it separate funding. The epa, however, is unmoved by the ig 's latest reprimand.
In a report dated February 3, 2005, ig Nikki Tinsley said: "Evidence indicates that epa senior management instructed epa staff to develop a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (mact) standard for mercury that would result in national emissions of 34 tonnes annually, instead of basing the standard on an unbiased determination of what the top performing units were achieving in practice.' Environmentalists allege the epa staff was earlier aiming at achieving 90 per cent reduction in mercury emissions, but us president George W Bush's political appointees at the agency ordered its experts to develop weak standards. The result: reduction toned down to a meagre 29 per cent (from 48 tonnes to 34 tonnes). This is precisely the quantum of reduction the Bush administration's Clear Skies legislation had mooted.
"We also found that epa's rule development process did not comply with certain agency and executive order requirements, including not fully analysing the cost-benefit of regulatory alternatives and not fully assessing the rule's impact on children's health,' the report adds. But epa spokesperson Cynthia Bergman disputed the report, saying Tinsley had simply "disagreed' with the agency's approach; epa would not re-do the proposal. It will make the rule final by mid-March 2005. "We stand by the calculation,' she added. The danger from mercury pollution has assumed alarming proportions in the us : one in every six women of childbearing age has enough mercury in her blood to risk her unborn child.
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