As if Bush’s EPA needed another black eye in its handling of mercury pollution rules, it has one.
When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.
What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.
That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule. Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study’s author.
It’d be shocking if it weren’t so darn routine by now. Seriously, in this example a federal agency funds a comprehensive research examination at Harvard, submits it to a peer-review process, reads its analysis … and then promptly hides it because the administration wanted to see a different conclusion. It’s simply the way the Bush gang does business.
To be fair, I should note the administration’s defense. Al McGartland, director of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, said the Harvard analysis was submitted too late to be considered in crafting the new administration policy. Is this accurate? Not according to all available evidence.
Interviews and documents, however, show that the EPA received the study results by the Jan. 3 deadline, and that officials had been briefed about its methodology as early as last August. EPA officials referred to some aspects of the Harvard study in a briefing for The Washington Post on Feb. 2.
McGartland also said the Harvard analysis was “flawed.” True? Doesn’t sound like it.
[T]he EPA staff member involved with developing the rule said the reference deleted from rule-making documents would have told the public about the Harvard results. “The idea was to say Harvard School of Public Health had quantified these [cardiac] benefits and the amount of these benefits was — ” a blank that was to be filled in with a figure in the billions once the final report became available, said the staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation….
Harvard’s Hammitt, who was cautious in describing his findings, readily acknowledged the uncertainties in such analyses. But he questioned the EPA’s decision to ignore a study that the agency had paid for and that agency scientists Jacqueline Moya and Rita Schoeny had reviewed.
“If they think there is no significant effect of U.S. power plants on the marine fish we eat, they ought to make that case as opposed to just ignoring it,” he said. The fact that U.S. contribution to mercury in oceans “is a small part of the problem doesn’t mean it is a part of the problem that should be ignored.”
In Bush’s America, that’s exactly what it means.