Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized new federal standards on toxic pollutants and mercury emissions from coal power plants Wednesday, a move being praised by environmentalists but criticized by others, who predict lost jobs and a strain on the nation’s power grid.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, at an event at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, announced that for the first time U.S. coal and oil-fired power plant operators must limit their emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.

“I am glad to be here to mark the finalization of a clean air rule that has been 20 years in the making, and is now ready to start improving our health, protecting our children, and cleaning up our air,” Jackson said. “Under the Clean Air Act these standards will require American power plants to put in place proven and widely available pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases. In and of itself, this is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children…”

All qualities which mean nothing to people who paper their souls with greenbacks and pimp for profits above all else on this tawdry planet.

“These standards rank among the three or four most significant environmental achievements in the EPA’s history,” said John Walke, clean air director of the National Resources Defense Council. “This rule making represents a generational achievement.”

The new regulations are among the most wide-reaching to come from the EPA during Barack Obama’s administration. They include separate limits for mercury emissions, acid gasses, and other pollutants from several metals…

According to an EPA analysis, the larger economic benefits of the reduced pollution will more than pay for the short-term clean-up costs. The EPA also predicts more jobs will be created than lost as power plants invest million of dollars in upgrades.

It also estimates health costs — as a result of less exposure to these toxins — will be reduced to between $59 billion and $140 billion by 2016, and the new regulations will prevent 17,000 premature deaths each year…

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group traditionally sympathetic to Republicans, has aired ads urging listeners not to “let the EPA turn out the lights on the American economy…”

If memory serves me right, the US Chamber of Commerce didn’t spent a cent on whining about sub-prime derivatives and sleazy Wall Street practices that dumped the world’s economy into the crapper a few years back. Anyone sense something hypocritical about that?