WASHINGTON >> The Biden administration Friday restored the legal foundation of an Obama-era regulation governing mercury, a pollutant from power plants that can damage brain development in babies and cause heart disease in adults.

The regulation had been stripped away by the Trump administration. Its revival paves the way for the federal government to set even stricter controls on mercury emissions, something the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden is expected to do.

“For years, mercury and air toxics standards have protected the health of American communities nationwide, especially children, low-income communities, and communities of color who often and unjustly live near power plants,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said. “This finding ensures the continuation of these critical, lifesaving protections while advancing President Biden’s commitment to making science-based decisions and protecting the health and well-being of all people and all communities.”

Regan did not say if or when the EPA will publish a stronger mercury regulation, although the agency has begun the legal process required for reviewing and updating the current standard.

The regulatory action announced Friday is one in a series of moves by the Biden administration to first restore and then strengthen the many environmental rules that were erased or weakened under President Donald Trump.

While Democrats in Congress last year passed the nation’s first major climate law, the midterm takeover of the House of Representatives by Republicans effectively ensures that no new climate or pollution control legislation will be enacted in the remainder of Biden’s first term.

He is instead expected to lean on his executive authority to implement the rest of his climate agenda.

In 2021, the EPA restored and slightly strengthened an Obama-era limit on auto pollution that had been gutted by the agency under Trump. It is expected as soon as next month to unveil a set of much tougher rules on car and truck pollution that would be designed to accelerate the nation’s transition to all-electric vehicles.

The EPA has limited mercury emissions from coal plants since 2012. But during the Trump administration, the agency concluded that the rule’s cost to industry outweighed its benefits and therefore it was no longer “appropriate and necessary.”

That finding allowed the Trump administration to stop enforcing the mercury limit, even though it remained on the books.

Many environmental law experts saw the Trump administration’s actions as a first step toward eliminating other pollution limits.