Senate Defeats Inhofe Measure to Overturn EPA’s Coal-Plant Rule

The Senate rejected a measure that
would overturn a U.S. regulation to cut mercury and other toxic
emissions from coal-fired power plants, a rule that is among the
most expensive issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, sponsored the
resolution, which failed today 46-53. The administration of
President Barack Obama had threatened to veto the bill had it
passed both houses, citing the health and economic gains of
cleaning up pollution.

Bill supporters said the EPA’s rule, estimated to cost $9.6
billion when implemented, is imposing outsize costs on coal
producers and electricity consumers struggling in a slumping
economy.

“We have this agency stepping way beyond its boundaries,”
Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who supported the
measure, said before the vote. “It’s putting a tremendous
burden on our working Americans.”

The EPA’s regulation, issued in December, would force
producers such as Southern Co. (SO) (SO) to install pollution-control
devices or shut coal plants and substitute natural gas or wind
generation. Most of the 1,100 U.S. plants already comply, the
agency said when the rule was issued.

Five Republicans voted against Inhofe’s bill, including
Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, and five Democrats voted in
favor, including Manchin and Virginia Senators James Webb and
Mark Warner.

Save Lives

The EPA says the standard will save lives and create as
much as $90 billion in annual benefits. It will also boost
employment as power producers install scrubbing systems made by
companies such as Babcock Wilcox Co. (BWC) (BWC) or Alstom SA (ALO), the agency
said.

The business community has been split over the rule. Some
companies such as Chicago-based Exelon Corp. (EXC) (EXC) that have already
installed improved pollution controls in anticipation of the
rule backed it because it would level the playing field among
individual companies.

The rule was accompanied by a presidential memorandum that
directs the EPA to use authority in the law to give power
companies more time beyond the three-year deadline to install
equipment or shut old plants.

“The EPA has been very

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