INSTITUTE INDEX: Courts weigh polluter challenges to cleaner air

By Sue Sturgis / December 13, 2013

(Photo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikipedia.)

Number of cases U.S. courts heard this week challenging Environmental Protection Agency rules limiting health-damaging air pollution from power plants: 2

Number of the nation's coal- and oil-burning power plants that would be covered by the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), a rule being challenged by numerous polluting companies and a number of polluting states, with arguments in the case heard this week at the D.C. Court of Appeals: 1,400

Year by which MATS, if allowed to stand, would come into force: 2016

Value of health benefits MATS could generate each year: $90 billion

Estimated number of premature deaths MATS could prevent annually: up to 11,000

Number of states led by Texas that, along with industry groups, are behind a challenge to the EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution rule that was heard this week at the U.S. Supreme Court: 14

Estimated number of premature deaths that would prevented annually by the cross-state rule: 34,000

Estimated number of deaths the cross-state rule would prevent in the South* alone: 15,587

Estimated number of sick days the cross-state rule would prevent each year: 1.8 million

Estimated annual costs of the cross-state rule in 2014: $800 million

Estimated value of annual health benefits from the cross-state rule: up to $280 billion

Date on which governors of eight Northeastern states petitioned the EPA to force tighter rules on coal plant pollution in nine Rust Belt and Appalachian states: 12/9/2013

Percent of ozone air pollution in New England and the mid-Atlantic coming from upwind states: 70 to 98

Estimated percent of asthma-triggering ozone pollution affecting New Haven, Conn. that comes from outside the state: 93

Percentage points by which Connecticut's asthma rate consistently exceeds the national average: 2

* Facing South counts among the 13 Southern states Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

(Click on figure to go to source.)

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