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