The day after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released far-reaching new standards for power plants that could have a crippling effect on West Virginia’s economy, U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, grilled EPA officials at a House hearing before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
“Some time ago, it had long been my belief that the EPA could be a positive force in the permitting process for surface coal mining in West Virginia. After years of battles in courtrooms that left coal miners and coal communities in a long, tenuous limbo, this EPA had an opportunity to help achieve a center point that would provide for both energy development and environmental preservation. But it has utterly failed,” said Rahall. “Instead, this EPA took an extra-legal approach, choosing to step over the bounds of the law to promote an ideological agenda and, in so doing, to push opposing parties even further from the balance we have all sought for so long.”
The Committee received testimony from Nancy Stony, Acting Assistant Administrator of the Office of Water of EPA, and Mathy Stanislaus, Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response of EPA.
Rahall heralded last week’s decision by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson who found that the EPA had overreached its authorities under the Clean Water Act when it attempted to retroactively veto Arch Coal’s permit for the Spruce Mine.
“It is not just politicians and not just coal miners and coal executives, now it is the courts who are saying that, in its treatment of coal mining in the Appalachian States, the EPA has twisted the law, circumvented the Congress, and trampled on the right of the people to know what their government is doing,” said Rahall. “In America, no agency can hide its actions under some veil of secrecy, but the EPA sure has tried. In February, the EPA's own Inspector General issued a report criticizing the agency for its failure to keep a public record of its activities and decisions regarding coal mine permitting in Appalachia.”
Rahall echoed concerns raised by the IG about lapses in record-keeping and called on the Administration to work with the State of West Virginia and local communities to ensure that jobs are protected in its pursuit to preserve the environment.
“As a result of its record-keeping lapses, no one – not other agencies, not the States, not permittees, and not even EPA itself – knows with any certainty the status of pending permits or what it takes to gain a permit,” said Rahall. “This nation is ill-served by an agency that is so driven by ideology that it cannot even follow the law. It is disconcerting that we are here in this Committee, once again, appealing to the Environmental Protection Agency to work with the Congress, our State regulatory agencies, and other Federal agencies. But it is absurd that, for the sake of the environment, the economy, and our national energy needs, we are calling on this agency to simply adhere to the law.”