WASHINGTON -- Two weeks before a court-ordered deadline for writing rules controlling mercury pollution from power plants, the Bush administration is considering abandoning the rules in favor of a new plan that would allow electric companies to swap pollution credits.

The agency had been working for three years to meet a Dec. 15 deadline for setting standards that would require industry to install the best available technology for scrubbing the toxic metal from power plant smoke. But the White House Office of Management and Budget is circulating documents saying the EPA erred when, in the closing days of the Clinton administration, it declared that mercury is the kind of toxic substance for which the Clean Air Act requires strict pollution controls.

The documents, made public by environmental organizations, state that instead of requiring specific controls, the agency should set overall mercury limits and allow individual power companies to meet the limits however they wish. Companies that exceed the goals would be issued credits, which they could sell to those which do not.

"This would be a slam-dunk victory for the dirty electric power industry," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. "It shows that [EPA Administrator Michael] Leavitt is taking orders from the White House, which is influenced by the power companies that want to gut the mercury requirements."

Scrapping Clinton rule

The strict mercury controls are being resisted by coal-burning power companies, including Southern Co. in Atlanta.

At a speech to EPA employees Tuesday, Leavitt said the agency would soon "move forward with the first-ever regulations addressing mercury emissions from power plants." He gave no details.

Jeffrey Holmstead, head of the EPA's air office, told The Associated Press that the proposed system for swapping pollution credits is "our favored approach because it gets us greater [emission] reductions."

The proposed policy revision would rescind a legal document signed by Carol Browner, EPA administrator under President Clinton, on Dec. 20, 2000, a month before President Bush took office.

In that document, Browner said the EPA had concluded that mercury should be regulated under a Clean Air Act provision that requires "maximum achievable control technologies" for dealing with toxic substances in the air.

After she signed the document, a federal judge approved an agreement between the EPA and environmental groups establishing Dec. 15 as the date the agency had to propose the new control standards. The judge's order also sets Dec. 15, 2004, as the date the standards must go into effect.

The revised plan under consideration would reduce the annual output of mercury pollution from power plants from the current 48 tons to about 34 tons. The amount of reduction is even less than the power companies had proposed.

Felice Stadler, a mercury expert with the National Wildlife Federation, said the looser mercury standards would satisfy the court order requiring the EPA to propose mercury controls by Dec. 15, but at no real cost to industry.

"It's a dream come true for energy companies and a nightmare for children's health," Stadler said.

'Insult to public health'

The National Academy of Sciences has declared that mercury, when consumed, usually in fish, by pregnant women, disrupts the development of brain cells in their babies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 8 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury in their blood exceeding levels considered safe by the EPA.

Most states, including Georgia, have issued advisories against eating fish from rivers and lakes known to be polluted with mercury.

"EPA's proposal is an insult to public health and the environment," said Bill Becker, executive director of the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials. "At a time when 41 states have fish consumption advisories due to mercury poisoning, it is unconscionable that EPA is proposing to postpone and weaken regulatory protection," he said.

Utilities question cost

The largest single source of mercury pollution in the United States is smoke from coal burned at power plants, according to the EPA.

Once released from smokestacks, a portion of the mercury falls back to the ground and washes into streams and builds up in the tissues of fish, scientists say.

Stadler said that even if the EPA policy "revision" is thrown out by the courts, years of litigation would give the power companies additional time to avoid compliance with Clean Air Act provisions against toxic air pollution.

While environmental groups have been pressing the EPA to write a tough set of rules controlling mercury pollution, the power industry and its supporters in Congress have questioned whether the cost can be justified.

Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a group of utilities that have lobbied against existing air pollution regulations and in favor of Bush's Clear Skies Initiative, said that if the EPA reversed its policy on mercury, it would regulate the metal under a different section of the Clean Air Act.

The other section, he said, would allow control under a "cap-and-trade" plan in which companies that do not wish to reduce mercury pollution would be allowed to buy credits that others receive for exceeding the requirements.

Staff writer Charles Seabrook contributed to this article.