Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments defending EPA’s previously invalidated Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR), effectively putting one of President Bush’s worst air quality decisions out of its misery.

CAMR “would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury pollution to persist under a weak cap-and-trade program that would not have taken full effect until well beyond 2020,” according to a statement by a coalition of environmental groups. An appeals court struck down the rule last year, finding that it ignored the plain language requirements of the Clean Air Act which calls for much stricter regulation.

The electric utility industry appealed the decision to the Supreme Court – but the Court declined to hear the case thereby upholding the appeals court ruling.

The environmental coalition has more background on the rule and the unsavory process by which it was developed:

The EPA rules generated controversy from the moment they were proposed in 2004, when it was discovered that industry attorneys -- from the law firm from which EPA’s political management hailed -- had drafted key language that EPA included verbatim in its proposal to let power plant companies off the hook. EPA’s internal auditor in the Office of Inspector General later discovered that EPA’s senior political management had ordered staff to work backwards from a pre-determined political outcome, “instead of basing the standard on an unbiased determination of what the top performing [power plant] units were achieving in practice.”

The emissions that coal-fired power plants spew contain high-levels of mercury. Emissions then drift down into rivers and streams where mercury is taken in by fish. The mercury bioaccumulates, amassing into greater and greater concentrations, as it moves up the food chain. When humans consume fish, they are exposed to high levels of the toxin which can impair neurological development, especially in fetuses and infants. This is why women of child-bearing age are often advised to limit consumption of certain fish.

So what now? EPA does not have an existing mercury regulation to fall back on. However, some reduction in mercury emissions is expected under a separate EPA rule (the Clean Air Interstate Rule, which is the subject of its own legal drama).

Still, new regulations are needed to control mercury, and the issue is likely to move to the forefront for President Obama’s EPA.

Image by Flickr user jem;
Used under a Creative Commons license.