The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday said new pollution controls for boilers and incinerators will save thousands of lives every year but at half the cost of an earlier proposal that industry and lawmakers had strongly criticized.
EPA was under pressure from industries and members of Congress to revise the earlier proposal. McCarthy said information the agency collected during a comment period led to major changes.
Biomass plants, which burn wood chips or other plant material, will be required to install equipment that captures soot, but won't have to add expensive scrubbers. That's because biomass plants don't emit large amounts of the hazardous materials such as mercury that scrubbers are designed to collect, McCarthy said.
Coal-fired boilers will be required to add the extra equipment so that they control both soot and the toxic pollutants. About 1,000 of the 200,000 boilers covered by the rules run on coal.
One of the strongest opponents to the initial rule draft, the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, said the final rule was an improvement but still "a terrible disappointment."
TVNL Comment: Industry interests will aways prevail over health concers for Americans. The source headline of this article claimed these rules were 'set' rather than 'revised.' Not so.