Governor Tomblin this week moved to join West Virginia with twenty-one other states in challenging President Obama's EPA and its latest attack on jobs and our nation’s coal industry.
Governor Tomblin has directed West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw to join a Petition for Review in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging the EPA's MACT Rule. This rule has already caused electric utilities to announce plans to shut down coal-fired power plants in West Virginia.
EPA is misrepresenting the status of these rules! They seem to want everyone to believe these are “proposed”, but the true facts are that these rules became effective upon publication in the Federal Register! Because of the EPA’s contrived endangerment finding several months ago which identified CO2 as a hazardous pollutant, these rules take immediate effect! Also, they want everyone to believe these rules only apply to “new” power plants, but when an existing plant has to modify or change anything, EPA can decide they will be subject to the “New Source Review” and treated as a new power plant. What do you suppose EPA would decide?
So EPA is telling everyone that these “crippling” rules, for which there is no current technology available to allow compliance, are subject to comment although they are already in effect! Can you imagine how much credence they (EPA) will give to comments! Another “end-around” Congress!
"This is a shining example of the EPA, an un-elected federal bureaucracy, making policy without regard to the economic impact of its decisions," said Governor Tomblin. "I will continue to fight for West Virginia jobs and against the EPA's ideologically driven, job-killing agenda."
Last year, the State of West Virginia joined twenty-four other states and the Territory of Guam in filing a brief, as amici curiae, in the underlying MACT Rule litigation. The MACT rule regulates emissions of air pollutants from coal-fired electric plants.
THE FACTS:
- ·America’s coal-burning power plants emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year.
- ·forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year
- ·Cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons
- ·Chinese power plants eject 400 tons
- ·Volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.
- ·Since our power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe, eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% in our atmosphere.
THE COST:
According to Americans for Prosperity, “This rule will impose significant costs on the American economy. The EPA itself estimates annual compliance costs of $11 billion, but independent estimates range much higher. NERA Economic Consulting predicts that the rule will cost the electricity-generation industry $17.8 billion per year, shutting down coal plants and driving up electricity prices by 12 percent nationwide and as much as 24 percent in certain regions. This will ultimately cost the American economy more than 1.4 million jobs. Shutting down coal plants and causing electricity prices to rise even higher is simply the wrong thing to do when American families are already suffering from high energy prices.”
We urge you to contact Senators Rockefeller and Manchin and ask them to sponsor Senator Inhofe’s Congressional Review Act (SJR 37).
Senator Rockefeller: rockefeller@senate.gov
Senator Manchin: manchin@senate.gov