22 States Ticked At ChimpCo Mercury Standards, Setting Own Policies

[hatrack]

EDIT

The trend of states bucking the Bush administration became apparent Friday, the deadline for states to submit their plans for reducing toxic mercury emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency. States' responses were tallied by the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.

"At least 22 states have gone beyond EPA's rule in three ways," said Bill Becker, the association's executive director. "They have either adopted more stringent regulations, accelerated compliance deadlines or restricted interstate trading of mercury. Some have done more than one of those."

States most frequently chose to require cuts of up to 90 percent in mercury pollution, speed up federal requirements by about three to five years or reject the administration's decision to let companies turn to the marketplace to buy and sell rights to emit mercury. Becker estimated that the tougher state rules would generally add about $1 a month to the average household's utility bills.

The rest of the states are roughly split among those accepting EPA's regulations as sufficient and those that are still trying to figure out what they plan to do, according to Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade association that favors the EPA approach.

EDIT

http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/ap/2006/11/17/ap3186847.html

[YankeyMCC]

1. States really do need to pick up the slack

In fact I'm coming to the conclusion this is in fact the best way - for states and localities to move forward with sound ecological plans - despite the apparent problems that can come with multiple small plans (state and local) vs a few large plans (national). Somethings will have to be done at a national and global level but I think many if not most issues can and will be addressed at more local levels, states are capable of cooperating at regional and even international levels too and we will need some flexibility for trying different systems in order to find the best systems.