Invoking an obscure provision, it said power plants and others could write to ask for exemptions to mercury, arsenic and other restrictions and that “the president will make a decision.”
Last year, the Biden administration required coal- and oil-burning power plants to greatly reduce emissions of toxic chemicals including mercury, which can harm babies’ brains and cause heart disease in adults.
Now, the Trump administration is offering companies an extraordinary out: Send an email, and they might be given permission by President Trump to bypass the new restrictions, as well as other major clean-air rules.
The Environmental Protection Agency this week said it was invoking an obscure section of the Clean Air Act that enables the president to temporarily exempt industrial facilities from new rules if the technology required to meet those rules isn’t available, or if it’s in the interest of national security.
In its notice to companies, the agency provided a template for companies to use to get approvals, including what to write in the email’s subject line. Then “the president will make a decision on the merits,” said the notice, issued by the E.P.A. on Monday.
Joseph Goffman, former executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who served as E.P.A. assistant administrator for air pollution under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he feared the President Trump was “setting up a rubber stamp process” that would allow companies to avoid a long list of rules on air pollution.