EPA Facts

Category Archive: Uncategorized

  1. Report: EPA Rules Threaten Power to 44 Million Homes

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    Much ink has been spilled over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed carbon cuts for new and existing power plants. And for good reason: the regulations are crucial to President Obama’s promise to bankrupt the coal industry.

    But carbon is just one part of EPA’s anti-energy agenda. The agency is also imposing draconian cuts in mercury emissions (Mercury and Air Toxics Rule) and pollution that crosses state lines (Cross State Air Pollution Rule)—even though our air is cleaner than it’s been in decades. By EPA’s own admission, its mercury rule could be the single most expensive regulation in U.S. history with compliance costs nearing $10 billion per year.

    A new report shows the rule could be even more expensive than originally thought. The report, conducted by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), finds that EPA’s mercury and cross-state pollution rules could shutter 73 gigawatts of electrical generating capacity, mostly from coal-fired power plants. That’s enough energy to power more than 44 million homes, or every home in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, according to IER.

    The costs of complying with EPA’s rules will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher utility bills, while many coal workers will likely lose their jobs. But the pain doesn’t stop there: experts warn that the expected coal plant closures will strain the electric grid, posing an “increased risk of entering emergency operating conditions,” or even blackouts.

    As we have explained before, the president is using EPA to fulfill his campaign promise to make electricity rates “necessarily skyrocket.” President Obama’s name may never again appear on a ballot for public office, but the American public will feel the effects of his costly policies for years to come.

  2. New Report Highlights Revolving Door Between EPA and Green Activist Groups

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    One month after EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe was forced to explain his colleague’s workplace porn-watching habits to the House Oversight Committee, he took a new job with the green activist group Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. A new report from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute suggests that he took his EPA rolodex with him.

    The report details the size and scope of the revolving door between the EPA and green activist groups (see table below). The door is so big that every member of EPA leadership who is not a career bureaucrat – including 6 of 10 regional administrators – has previously worked for at least one green activist group. Perciasepe, for example, was the former Chief Operating Officer of the National Audubon Society. (Perciasepe’s revolving door is especially well-lubricated: Before Audubon, he had a previous stint at the EPA.)

    The report documents how this revolving door has led to an EPA “rife with conflicts of interest.” EPA emails, obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, illustrate that EPA employees continued to liaise, collude, and take direction from their friends and former colleagues in the environmentalist movement – to such a degree that the report claims it was the EPA’s “modus operandi.”

    The emails show that the EPA and green activist groups colluded on:

    • Regulations and permits
    • State level bureaucratic decisions
    • Regulatory commenting and public hearings
    • Shielding EPA regulations from congressional review
    • Pushing favored political candidates
    • Generally promoting a shared agenda

    “Example after example clearly show that senior leadership in the EPA, made up exclusively of career bureaucrats and former, and likely future green group activists, operate on behalf of the green groups, and do so to the exclusion of other legitimate stakeholders and the public at large,” said the report’s author Chris Horner.

    Former Region 6 administrator Al Armendariz’s example is instructive of countless others: Emails show that he was in constant contact with former colleagues at the green activist group WildEarth Guardians and involved in high-level meetings with the Sierra Club while he was involved in important EPA regulatory decision making. Such access to Armendariz gave these green groups undue influence over the agency’s regulatory agenda.

    Armendariz was subsequently forced to resign in disgrace after admitting that his philosophy was to “crucify” conventional energy companies. But based on this report, such a statement may have just been an informal job application. His revolving door came full circle: He left to lead the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.

    Name Role at EPA Previous Employer
    Nancy Stoner Interim Assistant Administrator of Water National Resource Defense Council (NRDC)
    Glenn Paulson Chief Scientist National Resource Defense Council (NRDC)
    Michael L. Goo Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy National Resource Defense Council (NRDC)
    Bob Perciasepe Deputy Administrator Audubon Society
    Cynthia Giles Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Conservation Law Foundation’s Advocacy Center
    Michelle J. DePass Assistant Administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
    Curt Spalding Region 1 director Save the Bay and Narragansett Bay Keeper.
    Judith A. Enck Region 2 director New York PIRG and Environmental Advocates of New York.
    Susan Hedman Region 5 director Environmental Law and Policy Center and Center for Global Change.
    Karl Brooks Region 7 director Idaho Conservation League.
    James B. Martin Region 9 director Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the NRDC and International Fund for Animal Welfare

     

  3. EPA’s Next Regulatory Conquest: Ozone

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    Unsated by its recently proposed carbon regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pressing on in search of its next regulatory conquest: ozone.

    Ozone is one of the six common air pollutants that the 1970 Clean Air Act gave the Agency power to regulate. Set at a maximum of 125 parts per billion (ppb) in 1979, ozone has continually faced stiffer regulations as its atmospheric presence has fallen: 84 ppb in 1997 and 75 ppb in 2008. Now the EPA plans to regulate it further still: to 60 ppb, a regulation that the EPA estimates will be one of the biggest in history, costing the economy $90 billion annually.

    In addition to being extremely costly, this regulation is unnecessary. In 2008, even the Agency deemed, and a federal court agreed, that ozone at 75 ppb is safe for human health. In fact, such a stringent new standard verges on the ozone levels that already occur naturally in the atmosphere. For instance, ozone exists at 71 ppb at Big Bend National Park in Texas, where there is no man-made pollution.

    To justify such stringent regulations, the EPA is using dubious science. The overwhelming majority of scientific evidence – hundreds of scientific studies – say ozone is safe at 75 ppb and no further health benefits will accrue with a more stringent standard. But the EPA refuses to evaluate all the scientific studies – called a “weight-of-evidence” analysis. Instead, it cherry-picks studies that confirm its position and ignores ones that do not.

    Drs. Sonja Sax and Julie Goodman, of the Harvard School of Public Health, criticize EPA ozone science further. They say the EPA does not adequately control for smoking or health problems in the participants in its ozone studies. This results in biased and unrealistic conclusions that indicate ozone causes more health problems than what the science supports:

    The EPA considers worst-case scenarios arguably to protect the most sensitive people in a population. However, in its ozone health-risk and exposure assessment, the EPA makes many “worst-case” assumptions that could not all occur at one time, leading to an unrealistic scenario that overestimates risks.

    But bad science, huge cost, and intangible benefits have never stopped the EPA’s regulatory army before. In fact, little can stop a federal agency hell-bent on achieving a political agenda.

  4. EPA’s Political Agenda Threatens America’s Electric Grid

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    The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed carbon emission rule for existing power plants will help fulfill the president’s promise to bankrupt the coal industry and make electricity rates “necessarily skyrocket.” An overlooked but no less important aspect of the rule is its threat to America’s electric grid.

    Testifying today before a House energy panel, FERC Commissioner Philip Moller warned Americans that “markets would need to be fundamentally altered and redesigned to implement EPA’s proposal.” Moeller’s warning merely echoes the stated policy objectives of EPA’s political brass. As ex-EPA official and convicted fraudster John Beale revealed in a pre-sentencing deposition, he and Administrator Gina McCarthy have conspired to “modify the DNA of the capitalist system.”

    Part of this plan involves killing coal. Coal is America’s single largest source of electricity, supplying about 40 percent of the nation’s power. EPA’s proposed carbon emission limits, combined with other costly EPA rules and market forces, threaten to shut down coal plants across the country. The resulting lack of supply will make it more difficult for utilities to keep the lights on—especially during winter when heat and power are needed most.

    Remember last winter’s polar vortex? To ensure reliability as temperatures plunged across the Northeast and Midwest, American Electric Power, which serves much of the Midwest, needed to run 89 percent of its coal-fired generating capacity that is slated to retire due to EPA rules. Next year, we may not be so lucky: Moeller predicts that EPA’s rules could cause rolling blackouts in parts of the country if temperatures drop too low. Even The New York Times fretted: “Coal to the Rescue, but Maybe Not Next Winter.”

    EPA’s coal-killing carbon emission rule brings the Obama-McCarthy-Beale triumvirate one step closer to fundamentally transforming America. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of American families who just want light at night and heat during winter.

  5. EPA Public Hearings on Carbon Regulations Packed with Bused-In Green Activists

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    Green activists have rarely had numbers on their side. The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose their radical agenda to eliminate traditional sources of energy. Their solution: shout louder and use one of their biggest assets, a core group of cult-like followers with lots of time of their hands.

    On issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to regulations on new power plants, big green has been able to overcome the sensible majority through alarmist rhetoric and back room deals with sympathetic bureaucrats. Such is the case with the EPA’s recently proposed carbon regulations. As they did during the EPA’s last “listening tour”, green activists (led by the Sierra Club) plan to pack this week’s hearings full of their supporters in order to drown out any opposition.

    “Across the country, Sierra Club members will turn out in force at the EPA hearings this week,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said Monday. “We anticipate busloads of our members to join each hearing from each of the surrounding areas.”

    These public hearings, taking place over the next few days in Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C, supposedly give interested parties the opportunity to comment on the plan that seeks to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Given that the hearings are unlikely to influence the EPA to alter the proposed rules and largely bypass the most impacted areas of the county (i.e. coal country), these sessions are little more than a victory lap for the environmental activists who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting coal and wrote the framework for the new EPA rules.

    Now that they’ve crippled the coal industry, big green can devote more attention to eliminating natural gas. What the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council used to call a “bridge fuel” to move the country away from coal is now the target of coordinated national, state, and local anti-fracking campaigns. It may not be too much longer before the Sierra Club is busing in activists to spew falsehoods about how fracking causes faucets to light on fire.

  6. EPA Lives Vicariously Through Kardashian

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    The EPA Office of Water’s Twitter account is a rather dull affair, mostly consisting of tweets clarifying the regulatory environment regarding ponds and puddles. So it came as a bit of a surprise Monday night when it bizarrely tweeted: “I’m now a C-List celebrity in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Come join me and become famous too by playing on iPhone.”

    It certainly livened up the feed. It was shared over 2,800 times before it was swiftly deleted. The game’s developer, Glu Games, even responded: “Keep at it @EPAwater, you’ll get there. #AList #WillowPapeIsTheWorst #KimKardashianGame.”

    The incident follows a long string of similar gaffes made by EPA employees (like the recent revelation that a career official spent most of his workdays watching porn.) It’s unclear how much time EPA employees waste playing this game “on the clock,” but given its popularity and their propensity to do so in other areas, we wouldn’t be surprised if it were significant.

    Apparently, living vicariously through Kim Kardashian is a lot easier than facing the reality of the impact of EPA regulations.

  7. Congressional Subcommittee Moves to Rein in EPA by Cutting Funding

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    Like parents trying to control a wild teenager by canceling the credit card, Congress has moved to rein in the EPA by cutting its funding. It’s no secret that the EPA has been increasingly testing the limits of its congressional mandate of late. Some argue that its latest carbon regulations, for example, essentially institute a cap and trade regime on the nation despite the fact that Congress defeated similar legislation in 2010.

    In response to the agency’s overreach, the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies approved legislation last week to cut EPA funding by 9 percent, or about $717 million, to $7.5 billion–still bigger than the entire annual budgets of 10 states. The bill particularly targets administrative funding, cutting Gina McCarthy’s Office of the Administrator, the Office of Congressional Affairs, and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer by 50 percent.

    In addition to the spending cuts, the bill includes several legislative riders that aim to restrict the Agency’s regulatory power. One rider, for example, would stop it from moving forward with its carbon regulations – widely considered to be among the costliest in American history. It would also stop earlier regulations on new power plants and a rule to redefine the government’s jurisdiction over bodies of water.

    These congressional measures should serve as a shot across the bow of the EPA’s regulatory agenda. But given the Agency’s vast regulatory arsenal, a simple shot likely will do little to impede its activism – not to mention its waste, fraud, and abuse.

     

  8. EPA Moves to Consolidate Collections Power

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    UPDATE: The EPA has withdrawn its direct final rule asserting wage garnishment powers after receiving adverse public comments. EPA retains the authority to propose a new rule with a standard notice and comment period.

    Perhaps jealous of the air office’s recent carbon power grab, the EPA’s enforcement division is flexing its muscle. It is moving to consolidate its collections powers by granting itself the ability to garnish wages of environmental violators without the traditional court order.

    No one accuses EPA enforcement of being weak. It recently fined Wyoming homeowner Andy Johnson $75,000 a day for building a pond on his rural Wyoming property. And the fines it’s collected since 2009 have increased by more than 160 percent to $252 million a year. However, sovereignty over its collections would empower it further, as the threat of more easily garnished wages will incentivize the accused into agreeing to expensive settlements rather than fighting EPA decisions.

    More ominously, this authority – espoused under the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 – allows the agency to be judge, jury, and executioner in wage garnishment cases. The move also shifts the burden of proof from the accuser to the accused, who now must prove his or her innocence to avoid wage garnishment.

    The rule would have automatically taken effect Sept. 2 if the agency received no adverse comments by Aug 1.

  9. EPA Outsources Mandate to NRDC

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    The recent string of personnel and occupational embarrassments at the EPA leaves the impression that analytical reasoning may not be one of the Agency’s strong suits. So it’s little surprise that when it came to devising one of the most costly and complex regulations in the nation’s history – the recently proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP) – it turned to its partner, the environmental activist group the NRDC, to lay the policy framework.

    The New York Times reported yesterday that this framework was the product of just three NRDC members who came together in 2010 with the goal of building a carbon emissions policy for the EPA. By 2012, they had a 110 page document that, with the help of their Washington insider status, they successfully peddled to state legislatures, the EPA, and the Obama Administration.

    While the Times blithely acknowledges the close relationship between the two organizations, it ignores the obvious subsequent question: Should the EPA, a federal agency tasked with a scientific mission, outsource its mandate to the NRDC, a radical environmental organization with an extreme policy-focused mission?

    The EPA tried to answer this question by distancing itself from the NRDC, saying on its blog that the CPP was the product of “literally thousands” of thoughtful stakeholders, not “one group or even one sector.” It protests too much. Aside from the similarities of the two proposals, the organizations’ long history of collusion indicts them in this instance. (They engage extensively in so-called “sue-and-settle” advocacy and maintain a “revolving door” so big that former NRDC workers at the EPA and in friendly offices on the Hill are known as the “NRDC Mafia” – to take just two examples.)

    “They were the first out of the gate,” a former EPA top official gave as the explanation for why the EPA used the NRDC’s proposal. “And the first out of the gate frames the debate.” Perhaps. But given their special relationship, it’s likely that the EPA would be willing to ride the NRDC’s horse no matter when it breaks, leaving the rest of us to suffer the consequences of an EPA that does the bidding of one specific lobby.

  10. EPA Listening Tour Skips Affected Audiences… Again

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    Last week, the EPA doubled the number of public hearings on its recently proposed Clean Power Plan because of the public outcry that has ensued since its unveiling. Trouble is, these new hearings take place in the same old cities – Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C, all of which are relatively unaffected by the legislation.

    Such hearings ostensibly give the public an opportunity to present data, views, and arguments concerning the proposed legislation. (And with a regulation like this one that is expected to be one of the costliest in the nation’s history, there are many affected voices to be heard.) But in reality, they are little more than an Agency box ticking exercise on route to implementation. This is doubly true when the audiences come from friendly cities.

    Experts agree that coal producing states will bear the brunt of the legislation’s impact, given that there is little hope of meeting its requirements without retiring coal plants. This means that the economies of coal dependent states like Wyoming, West Virginia, and Kentucky, which produce over 60 percent of the nation’s coal, will be hardest hit. In fact, a recent report from SNL Energy says that EPA regulations are already causing a “free fall” in coal employment here.

    Doesn’t the EPA think that the citizens of these states may have a thing or two to say about the legislation? Apparently not, for it scheduled no public hearings there.

    Avoiding affected audiences is becoming a tradition at the EPA. Its recent 11 city listening tour that followed last year’s proposed legislation on new power plants largely avoided the top 10 coal producing states. Instead, the hearings occurred in environmentalist hotbeds like San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Boston, where they were packed with anti-coal activists from the Sierra Club. Such an apparently concerted effort to avoid affected constituents while still going through the procedural motions is part and parcel of the EPA’s larger eyes wide shut philosophy.