EDF, Allies Urge D.C. Circuit to Uphold Strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards

(Washington, D.C. – November 20, 2024) EPA’s strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are achievable, affordable, legally sound, and vital for protecting public health from potentially deadly air pollution, a broad group of health and environmental groups – including Environmental Defense Fund – has told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Fossil fuel companies and a group of states led by North Dakota and West Virginia have sued to overturn the strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which reduce toxic pollution spewed into our air from coal-fired power plants. 

EDF and its allied groups filed a brief with the court last night defending the standards. In their brief the groups argue that the challenge to the standards contradicts the Clean Air Act and controlling D.C. Circuit precedent, as well as ignoring Congress’s deliberate decision in establishing the regulatory framework that EPA must implement. 

The brief also points out that:

“The new standards require emissions reductions only from a small fraction of plants lagging far behind their peers. The updated standards nonetheless deliver substantial health benefits because these few laggard plants emit large volumes of toxic pollution.”

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a successful clean air program that limits dangerous smokestack pollution from coal-fired power plants. The plants emit mercury, which is linked to brain damage in children and heart disease in adults, and cancer-causing arsenic, chromium and nickel. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were first adopted more than a decade ago, and since then they have saved more than 160,000 lives – at a fraction of what power companies initially claimed it would cost. 

EPA strengthened the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in April to make them more protective in addressing cancer-causing toxics, require continuous monitoring systems for key toxic pollutants, and close a loophole that allowed power plants that burned one type of especially dirty coal – lignite coal – to emit three times more mercury than other plants.

Both the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court have denied requests by fossil fuel companies and their allies to stay the standards while the court considers legal challenges. The D.C. Circuit has now begun hearing the case on the merits.

EDF was joined in defending the standards by Air Alliance Houston, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, Clean Air Council, Clean Air Task Force, Clean Wisconsin, Downwinders at Risk, Earthjustice, Environmental Integrity Project, Montana Environmental Information Center, Natural Resources Council of Maine, Natural Resources Defense Council, Ohio Environmental Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sierra Club, and Southern Environmental Law Center.

Eighteen states and cities also filed a brief in defense of the strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, as did the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School as an amicus curiae in support of the standards. 

EDF has developed a map of the top 30 mercury-polluting power plants in the country. You can see the map and read more in our blog post, We need to close a mercury pollution loophole for lignite coal plants.