Trump EPA finalizes rollback making it harder to enact new public health rules

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Wed, 2020-12-09 18:37 — mike kraft

Trump EPA finalizes rollback making it harder to enact new public health rules The Trump administration is finalizing a rule Wednesday making it harder to enact public health protections, by changing the way the Environmental Protection Agency calculates the costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution. Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis Washington Post

The Trump administration finalized a rule Wednesday that could make it more difficult to enact public health protections, by changing the way the Environmental Protection Agency calculates the costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution.

The new cost-benefit requirements, which apply to all future Clean Air Act rules, instruct the agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, such as illnesses and deaths avoided by a potential regulation. In other words, if reducing emissions from power plants also saves tens of thousands of lives each year by cutting soot, those “co-benefits” should be not be counted.

“This is all about transparency and conducting our work in a transparent fashion” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wednesday, as he announced the rule during a webinar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Our goal with this rule is to help the public better understand the why of a rulemaking, in addition to the what.” He argued that the agency’s past approach “has meant inconsistent rules and a disoriented private sector.”

The move is one of several major environmental rollbacks that the administration is pushing through before President Trump leaves office next month. Earlier this week, it rejected calls to tighten national standards for fine particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, which ranks as the country’s most widespread deadly air pollutant. The EPA also plans to finalize a rule in coming weeks that will restrict the kinds of scientific studies the agency can use in crafting public health rules.

Trump's rolled back more than 125 environmental policies. Nearly 50 more are on the way.

The EPA’s proposal has faced withering criticism from environmental advocates, who suggested it will not withstand legal challenges. The incoming administration is also likely to overturn the rule, although this would take time because there are legal procedures that must be followed to eliminate an existing regulation. ...

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