Specific illnesses and health issues associated with and contributed to by Mercury and toxic air pollutants are named by
The President as “Neurological damage, cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health risks.”
According to a survey published by the Associated Press, up to 32 factories could close as a result of this rule but none of
the factories closing name the MATS rule as the only reason these factory owners and operators are aware that their
equipment is outdated “ We always knew there was a chance we could get shut down," said Robert Skaggs, who has
worked at a 50-year-old power plant for 10 years in Chamois, MO and is also an alderman in the town of 400. "It's pretty obvious. Our plant is an old plant."
Workers too have anticipated the change and many have begun looking for other jobs often with the assistance of their
retiring companies who will try to place non-retirable personnel in other areas.
The updating of factories that will not close will create new jobs in our country. According to the memorandum “The
Mats Rule can be implemented through the use of demonstrated, existing pollution control technologies. The United
states is a global market leader in the design and manufacture of these technologies, and it is anticipated that U.S. firms
and workers will provide much of the equipment and labor needed to meet the substantial investment in pollution control that the standards are expected to spur.”
The growth inspired by the Mat rule has been anticipated and predicted by the Obama administration, Environmentalists, and citizens seeing the need for change to protect our electrical grid operators, whose job is to weigh the effects on
what a proposed retirement will have on reliability.
When asked by reporters if closing so many power plants and factories at once could cause unreliable electric service he
res