Challenge to mercury laws loses

The EPA rules violate the Clean Air Act, resolution proponents say.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate narrowly turned back a challenge to the Bush administration's strategy on mercury pollution Tuesday, leaving intact federal rules that give power plants flexibility in how they reduce emissions of the dangerous toxin.
With a 51-47 vote, the Senate defeated a resolution to void Environmental Protection Agency rules finalized last March. The Democrats and nine Republicans who supported the repeal contended the EPA approach was too slow and too weak in dealing with a pollutant that can cause serious neurological damage to newborn and young children.
The White House insisted its market-based approach to curtailing mercury pollution is effective and founded on sound science, and warned that President Bush would veto any legislation that overturned the EPA rules.
The debate highlighted two very different approaches to environmental protection. The administration rules, backed by the utility industry, would set a nationwide cap on mercury emissions and put a ceiling on allowable pollution for each state. But individual plants, through a cap-and-trade system, can avoid cleanups by buying pollution credits from plants that are under allowable levels.
The utility industry says this method was successful in reducing acid rain in the 1990s.
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