The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a plan in December to reduce mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants. Regrettably, the proposal contradicts an earlier EPA ruling that mercury-a human neurotoxin-must be regulated as a hazardous air pollutant.

Now, despite mounting scientific evidence and government-backed warnings, mercury would be reclassified to avoid tough requirements that hold individual facilities accountable. The new plan does not reflect state-of-the-art control technology and gives polluters the option of paying others to reduce their mercury emissions instead of meeting standards. Such a trading scheme could leave the dirtiest plants unaffected at the expense of downwind communities.

Under the new plan, power plants could significantly delay their installation of mercury controls. Annual emissions would be capped at 15 tons by 2018. An alternate EPA proposal that was simultaneously announced would regulate mercury as a hazardous air pollutant, but only to a cap of 34 tons by 2009. By comparison, full implementation of the existing Clean Air Act would limit mercury pollution from power plants to 5 tons a year by 2008.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest industrial source of mercury emissions, producing more than one-third of all mercury pollution in the U.S. According to a recent study, Michigan ranks second nationally in terms of mercury "hot spots" (areas with dangerous levels of pollution).