Somewhat surprisingly to many, the Supreme Court has accepted several challenges brought by the utility industry and a coalition of nearly two dozen states agreed to review the EPA’s first-ever standards requiring power plants to reduce mercury emissions and other pollutants. Share the facts at CFACT.org: cfact.org/2015/01/19/supreme-court-could-alter-obamacare-epa/ The court finding will determine if the EPA should have considered costs their requirements will impose before issuing them. The power companies and states project an added $9.6 billion annual compliance burden. A ruling that forces the EPA to weigh cost impacts of its rulings can have implications impacting a variety of other planned regulatory agendas. Included are separately proposed carbon emission restrictions for new and existing power plants, along with a tighter national ground-level ozone standard. Although the Clean Air Act used to issue pollution limits specifically says the agency can only consider what best science says, not what it costs to get there, Justice Antonin Scalia noted regarding that the law does provide for cost considerations in other areas of implementing such rules. Explaining this, he wrote that public health costs of a tight ozone standard may also “offset the health gains achieved in cleaning the air — for example, by closing down whole industries and thereby impoverishing the workers and consumers dependent upon those industries.” Courts are loathe to overturn executive actions, yet at some point must. Where will the constitutional line be drawn?
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 13:45:02 +0000
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