More EPA news

Adding to & side-baring our post about the Supreme Court's accepting certiorari for the global warming/ environmental protection case, American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, we see in the New York Times this morning that "the Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

"The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency," the Times said, "will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks… Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs."

"The delayed smog rule," the article reported further, "would lower the allowable concentration of airborne ozone to 60 to 70 parts per billion from the current level of 75 parts per billion, putting several hundred cities in violation of air pollution standards. The agency says that the new rule would save thousands of lives per year but cost businesses and municipalities as much as $90 billion annually… The boiler rule would affect 200,000 industrial boilers, heaters and solid waste incinerators and is intended to cut emissions of mercury and other dangerous pollutants in half.

"Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, described the rules delay as a technical and tactical decision. She said she was delaying them for a matter of months merely to get 'further interpretation' of scientific and health studies of their effects. An agency official said the delays were not a response to Congressional threats to curb the agency’s power or cut its budget."