EPA to permit increased lead, mercury, arsenic levels

Plagued by scandal, a disastrous war, a crushing national debt, and a looming election, the corporatist GOP seems determined to enact every looney plan they can get away with. The election this November is looking more important with every news cycle.

A proposal to revise how the Environmental Protection Agency regulates airborne toxic emissions from industrial plants has sparked an outcry from the agency's regional offices, with a majority suggesting that the change would be "detrimental to the environment."

The proposed rule, whose wording was disclosed yesterday by the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), would change the emissions standards for oil refineries, hazardous waste incinerators, chemical plants, steel mills and other plants that discharge thousands of pounds of airborne toxins such as arsenic, mercury and lead. (. . .)

An internal EPA memo summarizing the position of eight of the agency's 10 regional offices, dated Dec. 13, contended the change could conceivably result in an increase in toxic emissions. Seven of the offices agreed that the proposal would allow polluters to "virtually avoid regulation and greatly complicate any enforcement."

Individual regional offices occasionally object to proposed policy shifts by EPA headquarters, but it is rare for such a large number of regional offices to join forces in such a forceful rebuke.