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EPA Needs More Time to Reconsider Boiler MACT Rules

By: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Diary)  |  February 16th, 2012 at 06:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

American workers and the industries that employ them face an ill-thought out and incomplete set of Boiler MACT regulations costing $14 billion to implement.  Given current economic realities, these regulations place at risk the jobs of your constituents and 200,000 working Americans across the country. With the economic climate as it is now, we cannot afford to lose too many more American manufacturing jobs.

The EPA asked for proper time to reconsider the Boiler MACT rules, and even attempted to stay the rules to have more time to clarify them. The forest products industry, for example, is compiling additional data at the EPA’s request, but may not have time to complete needed testing. The courts have made it clear that only Congress can give the EPA the time they have asked for and need to provide clarity. As a result, this legal uncertainty is a cloud over American businesses, which must be able to plan for the future in these uncertain economic times. Our communities deserve environmental rules that have been fully considered, and will hold up scientifically in the long term.

American businesses, workers, and citizens deserve regulations that have been given full diligence and consideration, not the haphazard rules which were thrown together last year. The size, scope and complexity of these rules require five years for compliance. The current rule allows for two to three years.

EPA has acknowledged that significant portions of the Boiler MACT rules require changes to be achievable under real-world operating conditions.  At the same time, the rules and EPA’s administrative stay are being challenged in court.  Legislation is the only way to guarantee EPA has the time they say they need to fix these rules, as well as to correct the Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials rule to clearly define fuels that are traditionally used in boilers, such as carbon-neutral, renewable biomass residuals.

Rep. Morgan Griffith’s (R-VA) bill H.R. 2250, of which I am a cosponsor, initiated the Boiler MACT legislation along with its Senate counterpart, S.1392, and enjoys broad support in Congress. The legislation passed the House by a vote of 275-142, with no Republican opposition and 41 Democrats in support. The Senate Boiler MACT bill (S. 1392) currently has 41 bipartisan cosponsors. This is an issue that affects each of us, but none more so than the hundreds of thousands of workers in critical American industries.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers represents Washington’s 5th Congressional District.

COMMENTS

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  • DerKrieger

    What is needed is for the EPA to be nuked from high orbit.

    In all seriousness, what is to prevent states from telling their impacted industries that since there is no constitutional authority for the EPA that they should simply ignore EPA diktats?

    I think the days of taking orders from DC are coming to an end.

    • dudette

      your post is music to my ears. Why and how and when did Congress give up its job of legislating and hand it over to agencies immune to voters? This all has to stop now. We are done being ruled ouside of the constitutional limits of government. But will people wake up in time?

  • macwell

    at the epa, ya know those government guys that are supposed to keep us safe. In this case i don’t think the end justifies the means. This is another example of the few dictating what the rest of us can eat, drink, smoke, chew, what we can do with our property, or in most cases, what you cannot do with it.
    When is this madness going to end?
    When we the people, stop being the silent majority and take America back from the hands of those who don’t like her, let alone love her. We have a president who wishes to “fundamentally transform” America.
    Into what?
    He hasn’t quite said yet.
    I suppose we’re have to guess.
    The reason America has been allowed to get to the point she’s in is the career politician.
    The band of lawyers and thieves who we laughingly refer to as Congress. These people, who we trusted to speak in our stead think only about their next election, their next stock tip, their next fundraiser. We have been lied to, stolen from, and made fools of for more than 50 years and have stood by and allowed it.
    We’re guilty.
    We must make amends in November. We must begin to rid Washington DC of all career politicians, federal, state, and local.
    We must demand an end of the lobby.
    We must make it more of a duty to serve in Congress, not a tasty career.
    Congress was never meant to be a career. It was never meant to be run by all lawyers.
    We may only have one more chance to right this wrong, in November.
    We must get rid of Obama first, but we must break up the good old boys club that is Congress.

  • dajeeps

    Wasn’t it supposed to put just about all of this on hold until 2013? It’s probably sitting over in the Senate collecting dust.

    • http://www.gmsplace.com/ civil truth

      …where it can be hidden from the public view.

  • crbarker3

    EPA’s MACT rules are clearly over-the-top, but Congress has delegated its authority in this area to an agency that is populated by “environmentalists.” They are not bad people, but they are not acting in the interests of the public, and the overseers that are appointed to rein them in have also become as stridently anti-business as the people in the agency. It’s even worse at the EPA “regions” — where the rubber meets the road. There, in the field, the agents are usually not only stridently anti-business, they have the power that comes from the insecurity of the petty bureaucrat. Thus, the EPA and its regions have become an unsupervised regulatory monster — like the quangos before them — that are completely out of control and destroying US business.