Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new rules today to curb mercury emissions from the nation's power plants. The standards apply to roughly 600 coal- or oil-fueled power facilities. They will have to either reduce their emissions or shut down.
The battle over the rules stretches back two decades. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said today the new regulations of multiple pollutants would save lives and clean the air.
LISA JACKSON, Environmental Protection Agency: And this is a suite of air toxic standards. It is mercury. It is arsenic. It is cadmium. It is chromium. It is cyanide. It is hydrochloric acid. It is hydrofluoric acid. And because the pollution control technology that will go on these plants will also get some soot out of the air, it means, by addressing some toxics, we're actually addressing a suite of toxics and getting a lot of health benefits.
GWEN IFILL: But there's a reason the rules have taken so long to take effect.
For more on that, we get two views.
Scott Segal is director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an energy industry trade group, and John Walke is clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
COMMENT: Ah yes. Another example of corporate greed ahead of the health of people.
The power companies who fought these rules are just interested in the bottom-line in their books. Note, in this piece the inference that some power plants ARE already upgrading and complying. It just the power companies that have been fighting the necessary changes that will now be forced to comply or shut down. They would have better served if they had spent money on the necessary plant upgrades instead of spending it on lawyers, lobbyist, and consultants to fight the rules.
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