EDF Lunch and Lecture

On July 23, 2015 I attended a lunch and lecture at the Environmental Defense Fund offices on Park Avenue in New York City. The lecture and discussion was headed by EDF staff attorney Jim Tripp. The bulk of the talk was about the Michigan v. EPA and the recent Supreme Court ruling on mercury emissions from coal fired power plants. In this case the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the EPA’s regulations on mercury emissions because they found the EPA did not take the cost of regulation into effect and therefore was not “appropriate and necessary”. He described how mercury is just one of the fine particulates that are emitted in coal fired power plants. To eliminate mercury the plant would have to eliminate all of the fine particulates and that would have an “ancillary benefit” that would exceed the cost. The challenge was to present the cost benefit analysis of eliminating all the particulates to get to the mercury and they came up short in the eyes of the court.

Mr. Tripp also gave a short history of the Clean Air Act. He described how some of the language, such as “appropriate and necessary” and “major modification”, in the law has been the subject of several court cases. He also described the Massachusetts v. EPA case where the Supreme Court held that the carbon dioxide was an “air pollutant” as defined by the Clean Air Act. This decision has led to the Clean Power Plan ruling expected this summer.

Gary Keir