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HOUSTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules on weekday that would for the first time set emissions from coal-fired noesis plants, including limiting mercury, lead, element and acid pedal pollution.

Environmental and medical groups praised the move, which came in response to a court-ordered deadline, locution the newborn regulations will remove toxins from the air that contribute to respiratory illnesses, birth defects and developmental problems in children.

There are currently no limits on how such metal or another pollutants crapper be free from a noesis plant's respiration stacks. The EPA said the newborn regulations — which would go into effect by 2014 — would turn metal emissions from these noesis plants by 91 percent.

This accepted that "will save lives, preclude illnesses and promote vital scheme opportunities across the country," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, who invited ordinal graders to attend the circumstance in Washington, D.C. where she signed the proposal. She said the offering could become accumulation by New 2011 or primeval 2012.

Such rules would have the greatest effect on Texas, which is bag to more coal-fired noesis plants than any another state. Texas has at small 17 coal-fired plants and about a dozen more in different stages of the permitting process.

The newborn rules order noesis plants to install technologies that would limit the emissions. Industry has argued that instalment the technologies would be pricey and could significantly process energy rates paying by consumers.

Jackson said the EPA's models institute instalment the technologies would process rates about $3 to $4 a month, though it could be less depending on render costs. For example, she said, a New milker bourgeois that already installed dirtying selection technologies recently low its rates.

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