Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. In its latest
Speaker 1: move to reverse Obama era environmental policies, the Trump administration
Speaker 1: is proposing a dramatic shift in the way it measures
Speaker 1: the benefits of limiting mercury pollution from power plants. Joining
Speaker 1: me to discuss the moves as Charles Warren, head of
Speaker 1: the environmental practice at Cramer Levin and former regional administrator
Speaker 1: of the e p A Chuck. The e p A
Speaker 1: is now assessing that mercury mandates cost far more than
Speaker 1: the potential benefits, and they say the health benefits of
Speaker 1: cutting mercury range from about four million to six million annually.
Speaker 1: The Obama administration had an additional eighty billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Why the disparity, Well, June, the cost benefit analysis is
Speaker 1: always a tricky thing. And the reason there's a disparity
Speaker 1: in what they're saying and what the Obama administration is
Speaker 1: saying is that the Obama administration took in all the benefits,
Speaker 1: the health benefits that were related to putting controls on
Speaker 1: for mercury, and what it was was, you get a
Speaker 1: control of mercury, which has certain health benefits which are lower,
Speaker 1: but you also get control of particulate matter, which are
Speaker 1: these bits that float around in the air and that
Speaker 1: caused respiratory and lung problems, and that adds up to
Speaker 1: many more billions, and that gives you a cost benefit.
Speaker 1: That's where the benefits are greater than the costs. And
Speaker 1: the Trump administrations saying no, you can't look at those
Speaker 1: what they call cod benefits. You can only look at
Speaker 1: the benefits of controlling mercury itself. And that's where there's
Speaker 1: a big, the big disparity here. And I think what
Speaker 1: they're really trying to do here is set a precedent
Speaker 1: for further analysis of these kinds of regulations so they
Speaker 1: can just use the benefits that are directly attributable to
Speaker 1: the polluting they're controlling by the particular regulation. Well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: which kind of analysis do you think is more on
Speaker 1: the mark? Well, I guess if you're saying you here's
Speaker 1: regulation A that it happens to regulate mercury, but it
Speaker 1: also results because of the technology that's required to be
Speaker 1: put on, you know, for the on the on the plants.
Speaker 1: It also regulates other things, And so why shouldn't you
Speaker 1: take into account all the health benefits that come from
Speaker 1: the fact that you've issued this regulation. It seems to
Speaker 1: me it doesn't make sense to say, well, you may
Speaker 1: have all these other health benefits, but the fact that
Speaker 1: you're not have an issue the regulation just cifically regulate
Speaker 1: them but only for mercury, that you shouldn't count them
Speaker 1: makes no sense to me, because you have to look
Speaker 1: at the overall health picture, because the idea of these
Speaker 1: regulations is to improve public health. How far does it
Speaker 1: have to go before this actually changes the way they
Speaker 1: assess the benefits? Is it proposal? Is it going to
Speaker 1: have to go through a rule change. Yes. What they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're not seeking two actually repeal the regulation
Speaker 1: at this time, because, first of all, the utilities don't
Speaker 1: want it repealed. They've already spent the money the regulation
Speaker 1: was enacted in, they've spent the money to comply, they've
Speaker 1: already put on the control equipment, so it makes no
Speaker 1: sense to repeal it now. They put out a proposal.
Speaker 1: If it when final, they would like to use that,
Speaker 1: as I indicated before, as a precedent for new regulations.
Speaker 1: And so that so obviously the final regulation is going
Speaker 1: to be challenged on the basis that they did not
Speaker 1: calculate the health benefits adequately. The federal rules to limit
Speaker 1: mercury are one of the signature environmental achievements by the
Speaker 1: Obama administration. Let's take a look back at the last
Speaker 1: two years and what's coming up, because the New York
Speaker 1: Times that a study in reports that something like seventy
Speaker 1: eight environmental rules are going to be changed due to
Speaker 1: Trump's deregulation. Yeah, they Well, I think when you look
Speaker 1: at the study, you have to say, Okay, these are
Speaker 1: what the Trump administration has proposed, and the question is
Speaker 1: how many of those are actually going to go into effects,
Speaker 1: And many of them are challenged and and and as
Speaker 1: we've seen, I mean, they don't necessarily pass muster because
Speaker 1: in order to change regulations, you have to have a
Speaker 1: real basis to change it and show that the evidence
Speaker 1: that you have proves your case. And usually a lot
Speaker 1: of times it hasn't happened that way. Because the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has offered fairly thin evidence to replay the some
Speaker 1: of these regulations, but they're still trying and and and
Speaker 1: I think as we look ahead, they're going to be
Speaker 1: pushing further ahead on some of the initiatives that they
Speaker 1: have started on now. So Chuck, looking ahead, what is
Speaker 1: the biggest environmental rollback that the Trump administration has actually
Speaker 1: been able to accomplish. Well, let's see the biggest. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest rollback so far is that they stopped
Speaker 1: the Clean Power Plan. They haven't actually replaced it yet,
Speaker 1: but they really stopped it. And that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a major initiative of the Obama administration and uh and
Speaker 1: it has wide ranging effects on greenhouse gases for power plans.
Speaker 1: And so that's been in limbo now for several years.
Speaker 1: And I think that's setting the effort to control greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases back by that at a time. So so that's
Speaker 1: been That's That's what I would say is the greatest
Speaker 1: impact that they've had. That's Charles Warren, head of the
Speaker 1: environmental practice at Kramer Levin. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the
Speaker 1: show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: Slash Podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg. Yeah,