In a reversal, the agency plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives, documents show.
Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times.
It’s a seismic shift
that runs counter to the E.P.A.’s mission statement, which says the agency’s core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment, environmental law experts said.
The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants
from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air.
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E.P.A. would no longer take health effects into account in the cost-benefit analyses necessary for clean-air regulations, according to the documents. Instead, the agency would estimate only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.
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“If you’re only considering the costs to industry and you’re ignoring the benefits, then you can’t justify any regulations that protect public health, which is the very reason that E.P.A. was set up,” said Mr. Revesz, who led the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
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James Goodwin, the interim co-executive director and policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, an advocacy group, said the move appeared to ignore the 2015 Supreme Court case Michigan v. E.P.A. In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that if an agency considers the benefits of a regulation, it must also consider the costs, and vice versa.
“Scalia was making the point that you can’t judge a regulation’s reasonableness just by looking at one side of the ledger,” Mr. Goodwin said.
