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Supreme Court Air Pollution Ruling Has Little Effect On Northwest Power Plants

<p>Portland General Electric's coal-fired Boardman Power Plant along the Columbia River. </p>

Portland General Electric's coal-fired Boardman Power Plant along the Columbia River.

Monday's Supreme Court decision to reject the Environmental Protection Agency's air pollution rules won't have any immediate effect on Northwest power plants, and its long-term effects are still unclear.

The court ruled the EPA should have considered the cost of mercury and toxic air pollution limits earlier in the regulatory process. With that, the judges sent the rule back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for review.

Melissa Powers, associate professor at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, said the lower court could invalidate the rule or send it back to the EPA to be reconsidered. But in the meantime, the rule remains in effect for coal-fired power plants, many of which have already complied with it by shutting down or adding pollution controls.

"What it actually does right now is, frankly, nothing," she said. "Even if it were to go away, which is very unlikely, everything else that is in process or already implemented has really changed the economic prospects for coal."

Northwest utilities have already decided to close their coal plants in Oregon and Washington, based largely on other air pollution regulations such as limits on pollutants that cause regional haze, she said.

Steve Corson, spokesman for Portland General Electric, said the rule in question is one of many regulations that affect his company's power plant operations and the decision to shut down its Boardman coal-fired power plant in 2020.

"It's not like we're going to suddenly turn off our emissions controls as a result of something like this," he said. "Nothing happens now, in terms of our operation of our plants or emissions controls."

PacifiCorp spokesman Ry Schwark said until the lower court weighs in it's hard to know what effect the Supreme Court ruling might have on his company's power plants. PacifiCorp runs numerous coal plants in Rocky Mountain states that deliver power to the Pacific Northwest.

"It's not clear to us where this is going to end up," he said. "While it does say you need to consider the cost in the equation, it doesn't tell us what the equation is."

Powers, the professor, said that while the Supreme Court ruling isn't likely to have much effect on the ground in the Northwest, it could have broader implications for air pollution regulation down the line. The rule in question is at the heart of a legal dispute over the EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan, which aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Challengers to the Clean Power Plan argue the EPA is attempting to regulate power plant emissions that are already regulated under the Clean Air Act, in violation of the statute's provisions. If the lower court invalidates the EPA's mercury and toxic air pollution rule, Powers said, that would essentially resolve the dispute by removing the alleged duplicate regulation.

"The pall of legal uncertainty that's hanging over the Clean Power Plan will go away if this regulation is invalidated," she said.

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