Reject EPA Boiler MACT Mandates
The Environmental Protection Agency's onerous regulations are the bane
of many economically important industries such as lumber, oil, energy,
manufacturing, paper, and even agriculture. With the current
anti-regulatory political climate, an opportunity exists to address the
unaccountable EPA's issuance of rules known as Boiler MACT. Although
the EPA itself had already temporarily postponed the implementation of
these rules back in May, Rep. H. Morgan Griffith (R-W.V.) introduced
in June H.R. 2250, the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, that has received
support from 123 cosponsors for a proposal that would make null and
void the Boiler MACT rules, as they currently are detailed. A
companion bill, S. 1392, was introduced in the Senate on July 20 and
already has 29 cosponsors.
In laymen's terms, the Boiler MACT (maximum achievable control
technology) rules would set emission standards -- mercury, dioxin,
hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter -- emanating
from all incinerators and boilers used mostly in large institutions
like colleges, hospitals, churches, corporate farms, municipal
buildings, manufacturing plants and waste management systems. The EPA
claims the authority to regulate this falls under the Clean Air Act.
Critics point out that the formulas used by the EPA are faulty because
they are based on “best performing” emission levels for each pollutant,
meaning a plant could pass on one pollutant and fail completely on
another. Another area of concern is the way the EPA reached its
“health-based standard,” as it treated all emissions at any level of
exposure as causing health concerns. Then there's the “energy
assessment” that the EPA insists existing facilities must undergo in
order to reveal areas of conservation, citing once again the supposed
authority under the Clean Air Act. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has said
that in the case of Boiler MACT, the EPA has moved forward with
standards that are “completely divorced from technological realities.”
The typical government-styled complexity of the 276-page regulations
for various types of boilers run by an assortment of fuels was pegged
by the EPA as costing in direct capital, $9.5 billion. However, the
Council of Industrial Boiler Owners differed with a much higher figure
of $20 billion. Either way, the costs will be passed on to consumers in
the form of much higher prices. At a time when the economy is more than
struggling, and job security very precarious -- the Commerce Department
predicted a loss of 40,000 jobs due to Boiler MACT -- so the impact of
such rules would be economically destructive.
Congress definitely needs to be proactive in the case of the EPA's
overly-stringent regulation of boilers and incinerators. Unfortunately
H.R. 2250 and S. 1392 seem to be fine in theory, but are lacking in any
lasting bite because as it now stands they would give the EPA and
lawmakers more time to review and resubmit regulations for the boilers
and incinerators instead of rejecting this entire EPA regulatory scheme
that is so damaging to the economy and jobs.
Tell your Congressman that while it's a good idea to slow down the
EPA under H.R. 2250 and S. 1392, it would be even better to eliminate all the
heavy-handed mandates of the EPA by reversing the EPA's usurpations
of the Clean Air Act that Congress never intended. As Sen. Inhofe so
expertly understands, “Congress didn't give EPA the authority to set
mandates that can't be achieved or pursue a regulatory agenda that
hurts the very people it's supposedly trying to protect.” Adding, “The
Clean Air Act needs to be updated to undo years of bureaucratic overreach
and messy court rulings. It needs to be updated ... to stop politicians
from using it to pursue a reckless political agenda that hurts working
families.”
