Coal-fueled power plants are the nation’s largest contributor of airborne mercury, a toxin so potent that relatively small amounts can damage the nervous system, the heart, kidneys and liver in adults as well as cause serious brain-development damage in a fetus or young child. Removing this toxin, however, became more difficult as the smokestack emissions became mixed with politics in the Bush administration, which sought to delay and loosen standards for mercury.

Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said recently that she was unaware during her tenure that crucial analyses of mercury removal were delayed by political appointees at the agency, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. They were due last December, but career staff members were prevented from getting them done by political appointees, according to the story. Those analyses would, among other things, model the feasibility and cost of installing maximum achievable control technology (MACT) to meet standards for reducing emissions, something the industry, which is said to have helped write the agency’s current proposal for mercury pollution control, did not want.

The current EPA administrator, Michael O. Leavitt, said his agency would conduct further analysis in preparation for adopting a final rule in December. This is encouraging, but the agency has not yet classified mercury under its hazardous air pollutant standards, which would require MACT standards rather than the less stringent limits for other pollutants under cap-and-trade rules.

Mr. Leavitt prefers the cap-and-trade model, which focuses more on outcomes than process for reducing pollutants, and his office points to the difficulties of applying a single technology to all power plants and to the absence of any technology that would produce reductions on the scale contemplated by the Clean Air Act. But the current cap-and-trade proposal envisions far lesser reductions – 70 percent reduction by 2018 – than what the Clean Air Act would require under MACT – a 90 percent reduction by 2007. Further, cap and trade doesn’t eliminate “hot spots” of mercury, places of increased deposition from plants that have purchased mercury credits.

As to whether the Clean Air Act reductions are possible, the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, an association of state air quality control divisions, last fall concluded, “Toxic mercury emissions from power plants could be reduced by over 90 percent – from 48 tons annually down to only 7 tons – through a combination of benefits achieved from existing air pollution controls and utilization of commercially available mercury reduction technologies … without undue economic burden.”

Testimony from industry last year before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works also supported these reductions. And so did a study by the National Environmental Trust. Using federal data, it concluded that “50 power plants, with about 150 boiler units, are already achieving mercury emissions reductions of at least 90 percent, without even installing the best controls.”

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Mr. Leavitt did not create the delays at the EPA and deserves the benefit of the doubt in Congress, but he inherited an agency that repeatedly withheld key information or failed to perform tests that may have pointed toward increased regulation. Sen. Susan Collins, who with Sen. Olympia Snowe and many other senators, wants the MACT standards to be used for mercury, recently noted the EPA itself in 2001 described current technologies that could reduce emissions from coal-fired plants by 99 percent for new sources and 98 percent for existing sources. “Inexplicably,” she wrote to Mr. Leavitt, “the proposed Utility Mercury Reductions Rule does not reflect this technological capability.”

House Democrats would go even further. After reading a new EPA advisory concluding the estimated number of infants exposed to high levels of mercury is likely double the 320,000 previously believed, Rep. Tom Allen joined others in requesting an investigation by the EPA inspector general “into allegations of undue industry influence in the rule-making process.”

This is a difficult request in an area of policy where Democrats hope to highlight the president’s weaknesses. But given the lack of cooperation from the administration, members of Congress have few other options. Mr. Leavitt seems to understand this entirely, and should promote cooperation with Congress and take steps to dramatically toughen the agency’s mercury standards to meet the rules of the Clean Air Act.