As communities battle toxic air, business shapes EPA and state regulation

When the top environmental regulator in Kansas rejected its bid to build two new power units in 2007, citing health concerns, Sunflower Electric Power Corp. refused to take no for an answer. When the governor vetoed bills that would have paved the way for construction in 2008 and 2009, Sunfloweragain refused to relent.

The company’s persistence paid off. In 2009, the new governor approved construction of a new coal plant in the tiny city of Holcomb, so long as Kansas legislators backed renewable energy policies at the same time. The state regulator who initially denied Sunflower’s permit? He was let go.

Sunflower said it won the permit on merit, and that political influence was not a factor.

Yet the company’s success is a telling snapshot of how, when industry flexes its muscles over Clean Air Act issues, it often wins. From Kansas to Louisiana to Texas, Wisconsin and Ohio, community groups have fought new plants, expansions and chronic emissions – only to see industry score victories with regulators and politicians.

“We’re not protecting public health today,” said Jim Tarr, an air pollution consultant in California who worked as an engineer for the Texas Air Control Board in the 1970s. “One of the primary reasons we’re not is that the environmental agencies have been co-opted by the people doing the polluting.”

Industry’s influence plays out at every step of the process: From the campaign contributions it spreads to sway policy to its role shaping clean air rules to its resistance to enforcement actions brought by regulators.

Its reach is deeper than most realize.

Two just-published reports – one from academic researchers, the other from the Environmental Protection Agency’s own inspector general – detail industry’s role in shaping Clean Air Act regulations meant to protect communities from dirty air.

The academics’ study – Rulemaking in the Shade: An Empirical Study of EPA’s Air Toxic Emission Standards – examined the level of input by industry and public interest groups at key stages as the EPA wrote rules for more than 100 major industries. Those stages: Before a proposed rule was published; once notice was given and the public weighed in; and during the final rule-writing process.

The results surprised even the study’s authors:

• At the early, pre-proposal stage, industry had an average of 84 informal communications with the EPA per rule compared to less than 1 for public interest groups;
• During the public comment period, industry provided more than 8 of every 10 comments;
• Changes to the final rule favored industry 4-1 over those benefiting public interest groups.

“We expected imbalance in engagement, but did not imagine it would be that badly skewed,” said co-author Wendy Wagner, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

For every two industry comments, she said, one change was made weakening the final rule.

Industry said its motivation is no secret.

“It’s survival,” said Robert Bessette, president of the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, a trade group representing manufacturers that use boilers to power their operations. “Industry, when pushed up against the wall, reacts.”

The council is pushing back against a proposed EPA rule to curb toxic emissions from boilers – an effort that includes prodding Congress to pass legislation and meeting with the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget, Bessette said.

Political contributions help ease industry’s access. Thirteen states house three-fourths of the nation’s most worrisome air polluters – facilities listed on an EPA “watch list” of alleged violators that haven’t faced timely enforcement. Those companies, their corporate parents and executives have made nearly $60 million in overall state campaign contributions since 2006, the Center for Public Integrity found.

Facilities in the six congressional districts with the greatest number of watch list sites contributed $120,350 to their federal representatives since 2006.

Uneven state enforcement

In some states, industry influence is clear.

The EPA IG’s recent report, EPA Must Improve Oversight of State Enforcement, documents breakdowns in Clean Air Act enforcement that can translate into fewer health protections for communities in the shadow of power plants, refineries and chemical manufacturers.

“When neither states nor EPA takes enforcement actions when needed, these health benefits are not realized and premature deaths and illnesses are not prevented to the extent that they could be,” the IG concluded. “As a result, EPA cannot assure that Americans in all states are equally protected from the health effects of pollution or that enforcement of regulated entities is consistent nationwide.”

The IG said a culture of protecting industry was clear in some states with the weakest records of enforcing the Clean Air Act, such as Louisiana.

“State, EPA regional, and external interview responses attributed Louisiana’s poor performance to several factors, including a lack of resources, natural disasters, and a culture in which the state agency is expected to protect industry,” the IG found.

The EPA did not respond to the Center’s questions about Rulemaking in the Shade. In its reply to the IG’s report, the agency questioned some of the research methodology – but ultimately agreed “that state enforcement performance varies widely across the country.”

“We also agree that there are steps EPA Headquarters and regional offices can and should take to strengthen our oversight and address longstanding state performance issues,” the EPA replied.

That industry weighs in with frequency and success is no surprise to environmental activists, people who live near plant fence-lines and some political leaders who have long tangled with Big Oil.

“The fight that industry wages against any kind of threat to their pollution is across the board,” said James “Jim” Cox, a retired state senator from southwest Louisiana. “It boils down to the control the industry has of the community. It’s a jobs situation. It’s a well-organized lobbying situation.”

Health fears in Mossville

One long-running battle centers on Mossville, a small African-American community founded in the 1790s across from Lake Charles, La.

Fourteen major industrial facilities surround the community, including an oil refinery, a coal plant, chemical manufacturers and one of the largest clusters of vinyl production facilities in the United States.

For 15 years, residents have been asking government and industry to relocate them from the powerful odors and toxic chemicals released by the plants, citing reports showing dangerous levels of dioxins in the air. Dioxins, researchers say, can cause cancer and reproductive damage and slow child development.

In 1998, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that Mossville residents had an average dioxin blood level three times above that in the typical U.S. community.

The report, however, did not identify the source of the exposure. A later ATSDR report said residents in the neighboring parishes of Calcasieu and Lafayette had typical blood dioxin levels. But, residents say, that report included a larger group outside Mossville. Their health fears continue.

Wilma Subra, a chemist from Louisiana who studied the community, produced a report linking dioxin levels to local industry.

As Mossville residents pressed for answers, the government continued to issue permits fueling industry’s growth. The EPA’s enforcement website lists more than a dozen facilities in Lake Charles out of compliance with the Clean Air Act.

In 2005, the people of Mossville filed an environmental racism petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States. When the commission accepted the complaint last year, it became the first such U.S. case to move forward.

“Filing the human rights petition is really our last resort,” said one of the community’s lawyers, Monique Harden, co-director of the public interest law firm Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

“It’s been 15 years of evolving strategies,” Harden said. “Residents want a voluntary relocation program that they help to develop. They want medical care services. They want pollution reduction and cleanup of contaminated sites. So it’s been years of trying to get both the industry in the Mossville area and governmental agencies to meet the community on these remedies.”

Some residents have been relocated, but the petition seeks a more far-reaching move-out for those who want it. It asks that the U.S. “refrain from issuing environmental permits and other approvals that would allow any increase in pollution.”

Lake Charles-area companies deny causing any harm to residents, saying they strive to curtail emissions.

“We strongly support efforts to reduce dioxins in the environment,” Georgia Gulf Corp., which makes a raw ingredient in polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, wrote on the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre website.

“Our industry is responsible for quality products that consumers want, buy and use every day. Medical supplies, medicines and pharmaceutical products, computer keyboards, PVC pipe, automobile dashboards, toys and sporting goods and food wrap are products Louisiana plants help make, and these products in turn help Louisianans enjoy a healthy and productive lifestyle,” the company wrote.

Echoing other facilities, PPG Industries said it operates “in a manner that is protective of public health, safety and the environment.” ConocoPhillips, the world’s fifth-largest refiner, declined an interview request but cited its website, saying it is committed to working with its neighbors.

‘They love their polluters’

In some communities, activists feel like lone wolves.

In Longview, in East Texas, the Eastman Chemical Co. plant is among the top national emitters of ethylene glycol, chloromethane and chloroform – compounds that can damage the nervous system, liver, kidneys or lungs. EPA records show $420,004 in Clean Air Act penalties levied in the last five years against Eastman, which manufactures more than 40 major chemical and polymer products.

Eastman said it diligently monitors emissions and its Longview site meets air-quality standards. “Protecting air quality is an essential and complex part of Eastman’s environmental program,” the company said in a statement. “The men and women at Eastman not only strive to improve Eastman’s compliance with the Clean Air Act because it is the law, but also because we and our families live in the adjacent communities.”

Over a five-year period from August 2005 to August 2010, no residents filed complaints about the facility with the Tyler office of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, records show.

That is not surprising, some say, in a region proud of the economic jolt industry provides, where Eastman Road runs astride the plant and where, in 2009, the Texas Chemical Council awarded Eastman its “Excellence in Caring for Texas” award. The plant employs more than 1,500, placing it among the largest employers in a region replete with industry.

Tammy Cromer-Campbell, a professional photographer and environmental activist, is a rare breed in Longview: a critic who stands up against pollution. She said the mission has been lonely. “They love their polluters,” Cromer-Campbell said with a laugh while driving near Longview’s industrial hub.

A co-founder of a group called WECAN – Working Effectively for Clean Air Now – she rose up at meetings of the Northeast Texas Air Care, a cooperative association of local governments and industries. Cromer-Campbell found herself the outsider looking in.

“Whenever I go to those meetings, I don’t have a crowd of people behind me, supporting me. It’s all industry,” she said. “I got burnt out. We couldn’t get a lot of other people to join me.”

Picking up the slack

Some Texas officials are frustrated, too.

Two veteran lawyers with the Harris County Attorney’s Office – whose jurisdiction includes Houston and the nation’s largest petrochemical complex – seem to be in perpetual conflict with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

One, Terry O’Rourke, called the agency “a lap dog for polluters” and said state regulators are too quick to overlook companies that poison the air and water. O’Rourke said his office, which represents the Harris County Pollution Control Services Department, has picked up the slack.

“We have to stop the pollution at its source,” said O’Rourke, who began prosecuting polluters as an assistant state attorney general in 1973. “You do it the same way you write speeding tickets. If you don’t enforce the law, everybody will be driving 100 miles per hour.”

His colleague, Rock Owens, said the TCEQ “treats the regulated community as if they are customers. It’s always with an eye toward the convenience and the bottom line of the major players.”

Owens cited a recent example. On five occasions from April 2008 through March 2010, according to a civil complaint drafted by the county attorney’s office, a Shell Chemical plant east of Houston “illegally released over eight tons of toxic petrochemicals into the air in Harris County, including known carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene. . .”

Shell, however, failed to report the releases to the county within 24 hours, as required. The TCEQ fined Shell $71,900 for one of the incidents in 2008. Owens’s office deemed this insufficient and went after Shell, preparing a complaint in 2010 that sought more than $6 million in penalties.

The case was settled this year, with Shell agreeing to pay $500,000 to the county. O’Rourke said he remains annoyed the TCEQ didn’t move more aggressively.

“That, to me, is fundamentally offensive,” O’Rourke said. “TCEQ slapped their wrist. We’ve got kids who play in schoolyards in the shadow of these [plants]. Most of them are black and brown, and a lot of them are poor. Just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they should have to breathe crap.”

He added: “We can have the largest petrochemical complex in the United States and still have a clean environment. They are not incompatible.”

In a written statement, Shell said that while it “disputes the claims and allegations made by Harris County, we are complying with the settlement in the interest of securing a timely and effective resolution to this matter.”

The TCEQ said in a statement that it has fined Shell more than $1.4 million over the past five years as a result of 26 enforcement orders, many involving “unauthorized emissions and failure to comply with permitted emission limits.”

The TCEQ “emphasizes compliance to protect our citizens from harm, coupled with swift, sure and firm enforcement for those who do not comply,” the statement said.

Owens scoffed at the amount of the TCEQ penalties, saying large companies like Shell consider them “just another part of doing business in Texas. Pay a little fine, go about your way – that’s not an effective deterrent.”

Shell, which reported profits of $18.6 billion in 2010, cited $7 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2011 alone.

Working Washington

Big industry pays big lobbying fees to press its agenda in Washington.

The Washington lobby shop for San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp., for instance, spent $496,000 in the first three quarters of this year pressing environmental issues ranging from air and water quality to fuel specifications.

The company also hired outside lobbyists to work the aisles of Congress and federal agencies, according to Senate lobbying disclosure records.

One firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, spent $140,000 lobbying for Valero on “clean air, energy legislation and other environmental issues relating to the refining industry.” Among the lobbyists is a former acting general counsel for the EPA.

Six Valero plants – five refineries and one ethanol plant – are on the EPA’s November Clean Air Act watch list.

Still, the company’s message to its shareholders has been reassuring. Even if “one or more [enforcement actions] were decided against us, we believe that there would be no material effect on our financial position or results of operations,” Valero said in its 2010 annual report.

A Valero spokesman declined to comment, saying, “Our advocacy efforts are outlined in required filings.”

‘There were abuses’

Industry often prevails over critics – and, sometimes, regulators.

In Holcomb, Kan., residents so far have been unable to stop the Sunflower power plant even after the state initially shot it down.

After Roderick Bremby, then head of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, denied Sunflower’s initial permit application, project supporters pushed bills in the state legislature clearing the way for construction.

In 2008 and 2009, Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the bills.

Less than a month after an April 2009 veto, Sebelius left to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson took over, and, by May 4, had struck a deal with Sunflower.

Before the plant could be built, it had to get a permit – a lengthy process allowing public input. The clock was ticking: If the permit wasn’t issued by January 2011, new rules would require the plant to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In November 2010, as the January deadline loomed, Parkinson fired Bremby.

In a statement the week after the firing, Parkinson said the decision wasn’t related to the Sunflower permit. “When evaluating the permit application,” Parkinson said, “what I have told the acting Secretary is simply this: I don’t care whether you approve the permit or not, but I do care that Kansas follows the laws and regulations governing the process.”

But Bremby, who is now commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services, said during a speech at a Kansas community college this February that the permit approval process “was not a benign, pristine, routine bureaucratic process. Unfortunately, there were abuses.”

On Dec. 16, 2010, the Kansas department approved Sunflower’s permit.

Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, soon challenged the permit in court, accusing state officials of rushing the permitting process because of pressure from Sunflower and the governor’s office. The result, the firm alleged, was a flawed permit.

Among the concerns expressed in Earthjustice’s legal brief: State regulators allowed Sunflower to underestimate the amount of toxic air pollution it would release, shielding it from requirements to install better pollution controls.

Sunflower spokesperson Cindy Hertel said the permit “was thoroughly vetted” by state regulators. “As far as influencing anyone, we certainly did not,” she said.

Some in Holcomb want the new plant for the economic boost Sunflower promises will come, but others are worried. Lee Messenger, who lives a few miles from the current plant and the proposed site for the new one, fears the expansion will drain the town’s water supply and pollute the air.

“We don’t get a chance to vote on anything,” said Messenger, 81. “These politicians like to think we elected them to take care of us. But they take care of themselves first. “

Kansas regulators declined to comment on Sunflower’s permit, citing the ongoing court case. In a brief, lawyers with the state attorney general’s office wrote, “The accusations of political bias and procedural impropriety are factually unsupportable in the administrative record.”

Business-friendly regulators

Some grassroots groups worry that state environmental agencies lean too heavily toward business interests.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker swept into the governor’s office in 2010 on a message of job creation. Soon after, he appointed Cathy Stepp, a former Republican state senator, to head the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Stepp had been a vocal critic of the department she now leads. In June 2009, she posted on aconservative blog that some who worked at the state agency “tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, Karner blue butterflies, etc. … So, since they’re unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.”

The department’s No. 2 official, Matt Moroney, said that before joining the department, Stepp “was representing a constituency. She was listening closely to some of her business friends and looking at how to improve DNR.”

Her current job, he said, “is a completely different role for her.” Stepp has focused on cutting waste and streamlining the agency. This October, department officials testified in favor of a bill in the state legislature that would restrict the number of times regulators could ask companies for more information on a permit application. It would also impose stricter time limits for the department to approve permits.

Environmental groups say the department’s new approach, coupled with tightening budgets, will undermine attempts to curb pollution. “They are going to these public hearings and advocating for taking their own authority away,” said Shahla Werner, director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter. “It’s surreal to watch.”

Paint-eating pollution

Middletown, Ohio, has lived under the cloud of AK Steel for nearly a century. The largest employer in the Ohio town 40 miles north of Cincinnati, AK Steel has for decades pumped out pollution that takes the paint off residents’ cars and settles in their siding, some say.

“It got into people’s gardens, and kids playing in the yard would come in with their feet black from the soot,” said longtime resident Rachael Belz.

In 2000, the Department of Justice sued AK Steel over violations of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency joined the suit, which settled out of court and required the company to clean up Dicks Creek, which runs between the facility and a neighboring school. AK Steel committed to $66 million in pollution-control upgrades.

The facility remains on the EPA’s Clean Air Act watch list, and some say problems linger. “We still have soot in our house,” said Belz, who suffers from asthma. “You can’t sit outside on your porch for more than 10 to 15 minutes without crap flying into your coffee.”

An AK Steel spokesman said the company does not know why it is on the watch list and has complied with regulations. He declined further comment.

During the civil case, residents launched a campaign to pressure the company to meet its promises. Elected officials, community organizer Belz said, made themselves scarce.

But politicians, from the city council to the governor’s office to U.S. Rep. John Boehner – a regular beneficiary of AK Steel contributions – were on hand to cheer the company’s 2010 expansion plan. Boehner did not reply to interview requests.

“We do our campaigns in part,” Belz said, “because we can’t count on our politicians.”

Paul Abowd, Rachael Marcus and Fred Schulte contributed to this report.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

2011 has been a big year for cleaner air in the Midwest, because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken several long-overdue steps.

In October, the EPA finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, a Clean Air Act standard designed to prevent pollution from power plants in one state from crossing borders and harming health and air quality in downwind states. The result will protect hundreds of millions of Americans, providing up to $280 billion in benefits by preventing tens of thousands of premature deaths, asthma and heart attacks, and millions of lost days of school or work due to illness.

This December, EPA will put in place Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a second important effort to protect Midwesterners and all Americans from toxic air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases from power plant smokestacks. While mercury is a neurotoxin that especially hurts women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, the other toxic metals can cause cancer.

Taken together, MATS and the Cross-State Rule launch the next phase in the Clean Air Act’s 40-year record of creating a healthier, more prosperous nation.

These changes also will boost our economy. When the EPA rolls out the mercury rule in December, it will end more than two decades of delay and uncertainty utilities have faced since Congress directed the agency to set standards reducing toxic air emissions. Today, 44 percent of coal-powered plants don’t use modern pollution control technology.

The EPA’s rules will level the playing field for plants that have already installed or are planning to invest in air pollution controls to meet the updated clean air safeguards, thus closing a competitive gap and strengthening the market for cleaner electricity production.

EPA’s analysis shows that new jobs will be created as more power plants install modern pollution-control equipment. That technology — often designed and produced by American companies — will need to be installed, operated and maintained by American builders, workers and engineers. The EPA estimates that the power plant mercury and toxics standards will support 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

Beginning in 2012, the EPA will expand the Cross State Rule’s proven air-quality standards to Kansas and help our downwind neighbors better control pollution emitted by power companies in our area.

Farther east, utilities have been working toward the emission reductions goals envisioned in the rule by installing pollution-control equipment to meet previous market regulatory programs. Those efforts proved the technology and market do work.

Utilities serving more than 2 million Kansans have sued to block the EPA’s Cross-State rule. The utilities asked the EPA to retract our new rules before Jan. 1. If not, the power companies have threatened brownouts, rolling blackouts and targeted service interruptions to big industries.

Kansans also should know that in the EPA’s 40-year history, there have been no instances in which the Clean Air Act has contributed to electric grid reliability problems, and should any arise, the Clean Air Act gives us the tools to address them on a case-by-case basis.

EPA’s analysis and studies by other utility groups have indicated that it will be largely the oldest, dirtiest plans that shut down because they would no longer make economic sense to continue operations. Our analysis shows there is adequate power-generating capacity remaining.

For more than 40 years, the Clean Air Act’s common-sense pollution controls have made our families healthier by promoting economic competition and innovation. With two important updates to the Clean Air Act in 2011, we are working to write the next chapter in that history of success.

By doing that, the EPA’s clean air work helps meet this generation’s responsibility to leave our kids a world as healthy and full of opportunity as the one we inherited from our parents.

Karl Brooks is administrator for the U.S. EPA’s Region 7 which includes Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and nine tribal nations.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Release Date: 11/15/2011
Contact Information: EPA Press Office, press@epa.gov, 202-564-6794

As prepared for delivery.

Hello and thank you for having me here today. For an EPA Administrator, coming to Wisconsin is like coming back to the source of everything we do. It was the leadership of Gaylord Nelson and the people who supported him in this state that took a burgeoning environmental movement and translated it in the first Earth Day in 1970. And that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency – as well as many other changes. After the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act were all passed in quick succession.

That was amazing progress in a short amount of time. The Civil Rights movement had been a high-profile movement for almost two decades. The anti-war movement had also been going for years and would continue for many more years. By contrast, the modern environmental movement went from its Inauguration in the first Earth Day to a sweeping set of new environmental protections in about six years.

People were energized at an unprecedented level. The teach-in that Gaylord Nelson proposed in 1969 resulted in 20 million people – one on every 10 Americans in those days – standing up for their health and their environment. My staff and I have been at this for almost three years and I just recently passed 13,000 Facebook fans – and I think that’s pretty good.

That rapid pace of progress speaks to something that we need to remember today, and that I will talk about later: which is that environmental and health threats are unambiguous, nonpartisan concerns. They affect us whether we live in a red state or a blue state. Contrary to more divisive issues, people of all backgrounds want swift action when they see these threats in their communities. This movement got started when it became clear that the forces of the market were not going to be enough to stop Los Angeles from becoming the smog capital of the world, or prevent situations like the Santa Barbara oil spill and burning pollution the Cuyahoga River Fire.

The American people demanded a new mechanism for preventing pollution. The EPA was created and a suite of environmental laws was passed so that government could set and enforce standards. That was a bipartisan effort. The EPA was created by Richard Nixon – as everyone knows, a Republican. Its first Administrator was a Republican, and many of the great advances that have happened over the years have happened with bipartisan support.

When I came into this job in 2009, my ambition was – in the face of a new generation of environmental challenges – to facilitate advances like what we saw in the early 1970s. And to do so with the same kind of bipartisan support. I’m proud to be part of an EPA that has mobilized science and the law to create modern and innovative protections for the health of the American people. I’m also proud to be working for a president who has said that “we can’t wait” on these issues.

We came into office during a historic economic crisis. It would have been easy to tell the EPA to sit and wait. But President Obama knows that the choice between our economy and our environment is a false choice – and he directed us to hit the ground running.

One of our earliest steps was to resume work on the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. This is the first administration to officially recognize that greenhouse gases pose a threat to our health and welfare, and to take action under the Clean Air Act to address that threat. We also took swift steps to institute national fuel economy standards that save drivers money and cut carbon pollution. President Obama called that “the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” It has also given clarity to the American auto industry, which can invest in the innovations – and workers – to build the most fuel-efficient vehicles in our history. Last year both Chrysler and General Motors announced plans to hire 1,000 workers – each – to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

We’ve also taken long overdue steps to limit mercury pollution from power plants; invested in water infrastructure and community cleanups; we’ve taken steps to support innovative products like biofuels that Great Lakes Bioenergy is working on, or the cutting edge water technology being developed not far from here in Milwaukee; and we’ve instituted historic efforts to protect America’s waters. That includes setting a new standard for care in the Great Lakes and ensuring a strong future for those vital waters.

Unfortunately, many of these advances, as well as many of our fundamental environmental protections, are under threat. Since the beginning of this year, Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has orchestrated 170 votes against environmental protection. That is almost a vote for every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation’s environmental laws. Much of this has happened in response to myths and misleading information.

One example is an assertion made by lobbying and industry groups that the EPA is putting forward a “train wreck” of regulations that will hobble our economy. That claim has been repeated in major news outlets and on the floor of Congress. In fact, one of the bills restricting clean air protections was named “The TRAIN Act.” The claim is founded on an American Legislative Executive Council report that details regulations the EPA never actually proposed.

You may have heard that EPA intends to triple its budget and add 230,000 new regulators to cut greenhouse gas emissions from sources like cows and backyard grills. In truth, we put forward a “Tailoring Rule” months ago – a commonsense plan to tailor greenhouse standards to exempt small sources, like local businesses, from regulations. A massive expansion was never a possibility – and the people citing the 230,000 figure know it. That number comes from an administration document explaining why the Tailoring Rule is necessary.

To be fair to my colleagues in Washington, they’re not getting a whole lot of help. Some of you may have seen not long ago a Wall St. Journal op-ed, written by a long-time climate denier who performed a comprehensive study on the data he cast doubt on. After years of denial and skepticism, he looked at the data. His conclusion was, and I quote, “Global warming is real.” Contrary to the “climategate” scandal over emails from a handful of researchers – which was covered often on major news networks – the conversion of a key climate-denier, and the affirmation of the science got most of its attention in a short segment on The Daily Show.

You begin to see why we are witnessing an unprecedented effort to rollback the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and our nation’s waste-disposal laws; to see why, less than three years after a coal ash spill that covered 300 acres of Tennessee country the House majority passed legislation preventing EPA from regulating coal ash. You see why, less than two years after the Deepwater Horizon BP spill, the best idea industry groups like the American Petroleum Institute have for creating jobs is to de-regulate drilling. And you see how, after the second-hottest summer on record, followed by a foot of late-October snow on the East Coast and the reversal of a leading climate skeptic, people are still working to stop the EPA from taking vital steps to cut carbon pollution.

We all remember “too big to fail”; this pseudo jobs plan to protect polluters might well be called “too dirty to fail.” How we respond will mean the difference between sickness and health — in some cases, life and death — for hundreds of thousands of people. That is not hyperbole. Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects brain development in unborn children and young people. Lead has similar effects. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds contribute to the ozone alert days when seniors, asthmatics and people with respiratory problems are at serious risk if they do nothing more dangerous than step outside and breathe the air.

“Too dirty to fail” puts our nation into what President Obama calls a “race to the bottom” for the weakest health protections and the most loopholes in our environmental policies. For those of you born after 1970, it would be the first time in your lives that the health and environmental protections you grew up with are not steadily improved, but deliberately weakened. The result will be more asthma, more respiratory illness and more premature deaths. What there won’t be is any clear path to new jobs.

We have seen 200 percent growth in our GDP over the 40 years of EPA’s existence. After all that time and all that growth, it is clear that we can have a clean environment and a growing economy. No credible economist links our current economic crisis – or any economic crisis – to clean-air and clean-water standards. Just last week, a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrated that when ozone in the air was reduced by 10 parts per billion, outdoor farm workers increased their productivity by 4.2 percent. That kind of reduction nationwide could mean $1.1 billion in economic benefits for the agricultural sector of our economy.

A story in the Washington Post yesterday quoted economists who said that the effect of government regulations on jobs is minimal. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that is collected from business executives, only 0.3 percent of layoffs in 2010 were because of “government regulations/intervention.” That story even quoted the chief executive of American Electric Power Co – one of the largest coal-based utilities in the nation – saying that when regulations require pollution control technology, AEP has to hire plumbers, electricians and others. His words were, “Jobs are created in the process – no question about that.” An AEP plant in Conesville, Ohio employed 1,000 temporary workers installing pollution controls, and created 40 permanent jobs to operate and maintain that technology.

As for the notion that eliminating regulation equals a plan for job creation, a former economist from the Reagan White House recently said of that idea – and I quote – “It’s just nonsense. It’s just made up.” A strategy to grow our economy by simply doing less is not sufficient to the challenges we face. President Obama has directed federal agencies to review regulations to eliminate unnecessary burdens for businesses and ensure that vital health protections remain intact. But that is not the beginning and end of our plan. The President also sent the American Jobs Act to congress, proposing investments in teachers and first responders. That bill also contains provisions for an Infrastructure Bank that would put $10 billion into transportation, energy and water infrastructure – creating jobs that strengthen the foundations of our economy.

We also know that smart regulations can lead to new jobs. As the CEO of AEP indicated in the Washington Post, we can put Americans to work retrofitting outdated, dirty plants with updated pollution control technology. There are about 1,100 coal-fired units across the country, and more than 40 percent do not use pollution controls to limit emissions. The nation’s first-ever standards for mercury and other pollutants from power plants – that EPA will finalize no later than December 16 – are estimated to create 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term jobs through modernizing power plants. Those jobs come with health benefits estimated as high as $140 billion per year by 2016.

Looking back 20 years after the first Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson wrote in a letter to The Wilderness Society that, quote, “The purpose of Earth Day was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and, finally, force this issue permanently into the political arena.”

Today we need that same nationwide concern mobilized to pull these issues out of the political gridlock of the day. We saw a glimmer of hope last week when the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to stop EPA from implementing a rule that will protect more than 200 million Americans. They affirmed that protecting health is nonpartisan – something that unites us across our divisions.

But there are still two visions competing right now for the future of our environment and our economy. One says that we can rely on science, the law and innovation to protect our health and the environment and grow a clean, sustainable economy. The alternative vision says that moving forward requires rolling back standards for clean air and clean water. It says we have to increase protection for big polluters while reducing safeguards for the rest of us.

After 40 years of progress, the American people still believe in the first vision. A majority of Americans believe the economic and health benefits of clean air rules outweigh costs. More than half of Republican voters recently said they oppose a Congressional proposal to stop the EPA from enacting new limits on air pollution from power plants. More than three-quarters of Americans support new EPA standards for mercury and air toxics.

Just like back in 1970, we need your help. Students, parents, educators and young people have always driven the environmental movement. You can once again answer those who claim that our success is served by eliminating longstanding health protections and turning our future over to big polluters. It is time to stop politicizing our air and water and put an end to “Too Dirty to Fail.” We are going to continue to count on talented, dedicated people from places like this University to be part of that effort. Thank you very much.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

For Republicans, the EPA ranks up there with the IRS as one of the most-reviled agencies in Washington, calling it a ‘jobs killer.’ The record of the Obama EPA, though, is more nuanced.

Newt Gingrich and Michele Bach­mann want to abolish it. Rick Perry vows that he would declare a moratorium on all its activities the moment he becomes president. Herman Cain wants it replaced by an independent commission.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), clearly, is not on many Republicans’ Christmas card list. In their debates and in speeches, the GOP presidential candidates have crystallized conservatives’ charge against the agency: Its regulations kill jobs.

Under a Democratic president – and at a time of economic turbulence – the EPA faces harsh criticism from the political right for being heavy-handed. But unraveling its actual impact on the economy suggests that its influence is more nuanced, according to several economic analyses.

To be sure, President Obama’s EPA has undertaken several key environmental initiatives, such as ozone and greenhouse-gas regulation. But attempts to paint these new rules as economic game changers often overstate their importance, say several independent economists.

“There’s certainly a lot of use of this phrase that ‘new environmental regulations are job killers’ or the flip side: We can ‘grow the economy by focusing on green jobs,’ ” says Wayne Gray, an economist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “But either perspective misses the scale of the cost of environmental regulations, which just are not a very large scale of costs for most in the economy.”

Among the moves by the Obama EPA that businesses say are most damaging:

•It proposed in January 2010 to tighten standards for smog-forming ozone, though Mr. Obamabacked off on Sept. 3, bowing to the “importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” The proposal could be reimplemented in 2013 if Obama is reelected.

•It is expected to unveil next month a “toxics rule” under the Clean Air Act that would require power plant operators to filter out mercury and other pollutants.

•Its studies found that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health, meaning that it must regulate them, according to a US Supreme Court ruling.

•It revised a rule put in place by the George W. Bush EPA but overturned by the courts that reduces permissible smokestack emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in Eastern states. The rules are scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, 2012.

Scores of power plants and as many as 1.6 million jobs would be lost between 2012 and 2020 if the EPA proceeds with air- and water-quality regulations, according to a recent study by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

“In the area of energy, EPA has been very, very aggressive, much of this based on their global-warming campaign, and the effect is troubling on the energy sector,” says Diane Katz, a research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation. “If coal plants are closing down because they can’t meet standards EPA is setting, well, those are jobs lost.”

That could be true, some economists say. But others say that industry-paid studies (as is the one cited above) often include questionable assumptions and economic models not validated by broad peer review. They also note that jobs could also be created, not just destroyed, by regulation. The EPA’s rules are required to undergo a transparent cost-benefit analysis that is peer reviewed by others. But business groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, say the EPA analysis is flawed.

An economic analysis of the “toxics rule” by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that studies policy effects on low- and middle-income workers, suggests that it “would have a modest positive net impact on overall employment, likely leading to the creation of 28,000 to 158,000 jobs between now and 2015.”

A February report by University of Massachusettseconomists came to similar conclusions. Investments driven by the EPA’s new air-quality rules on ozone and toxics “will create nearly 1.5 million jobs, or nearly 300,000 jobs a year on average, over the next five years.”

Some business executives acknowledge that regulations can spur hiring. “We have to hire plumbers, electricians, painters, folks who do that kind of work when you retrofit a plant. Jobs are created in the process – no question about that,” Mike Morris, chief executive officer of American Electric Power, recently told The Washington Post.

But most business leaders reject the notion that EPA regulations have benefits. John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, said that “establishing these new ozone standards would be tantamount to putting ‘not open for business’ signs in counties across the country at precisely the wrong moment, when unemployment is high and on the rise.”

Republicans in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives agree, seeking to undo the actions of the Obama EPA. Since 2010, the House has weighed 17 measures to reduce or restrict environmental controls, approving 10, according to the League of Conservation Voters.

Most will have no effect because the Senate won’t pass them. But the trend shows Republican fervor. In the Senate on Nov. 10, a resolution to roll back the EPA’s smokestack emissions regulations failed, 41 to 56. Its sponsor was Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky, whose state produces a lot of coal. The EPA, he argued, was issuing “radical, extremist regulations” that kill jobs.

Many economists reject such language as overstatement. Though environmental regulation has become more stringent, US manufacturers have faced only a moderate increase in their spending on pollution controls, says Dr. Gray of Clark University. Those costs, for instance, have risen from roughly 0.3 percent of total manufacturing shipments in 1973 to 0.4 percent in 2005.

Some highly polluting and highly regulated industries do face higher pollution-control costs. But even oil refining spent only about 1 percent of its shipments to comply with environmental regulations in 2005, Gray explains.

The numbers aren’t big enough to cause serious economic hardship. “The idea that environmental regulations would wipe out an industry or have a serious impact is implausible,” Gray says. “Early estimates of cleanup costs are invariably wildly overstated.”

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

An Environmental Protection Agency official has accused lawyers representing a Kansas agency of lying to the state Supreme Court about support for a permit that would allow a $2.8 billion coal-fired power plant to be built in southwest Kansas.

In a letter this week to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, EPA Region 7 administrator Karl Brooks took issue with KDHE claims in written arguments to the Supreme Court last month that the EPA didn’t have a problem with the permit for construction of the Sunflower plant near Holcomb.

“EPA has no substantial objection to the issuance of the construction permit,” attorneys for KDHE wrote.

Brooks’ letter said, “Kansas incorrectly informed the court” that EPA did not object.

The Sierra Club and Earthjustice have filed a lawsuit seeking to block construction of the power plant, which has been the subject of a six-year battle between supporters who say the plant is needed and environmentalists who believe the coal-fired plant will create harmful greenhouse gases.

Lawyers for the two groups argued in a filing with the court that the state permit issued by KDHE to Sunflower Electric Power Corp. did not comply with the Clean Air Act.

The brief claims the permit does not include enforceable limits on nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide pollution, failed to follow requirements to consider use of best available control technology and denied the public a fair opportunity to participate in the agency’s evaluation.

The state says the pollution levels it allowed in a permit for the plant are safe for humans, but the Sierra Club said in its lawsuit that those levels aren’t safe.

The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday (http://bit.ly/sfmvfv ) that the EPA says it has voiced its opposition to the permit in letters and discussions over the past two years.

Brooks’ letter said KDHE failed to tell the Supreme Court that it had received three letters from the EPA saying the permit was not strict enough.

Both KDHE and Sunflower Electric declined to comment on the issue. The EPA said Brooks’ letter speaks for itself.

The Sierra Club said it plans to make a big deal out of the inaccurate Kansas statement when it files its own arguments with the court.

“EPA has consistently told the state that the permit needed more stringent limits on certain pollutants,” Stephanie Cole, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, told The Star in an interview. “KDHE not only ignored EPA’s request to amend the permit to include the more stringent limits, but now KDHE is actually attempting to mischaracterize EPA’s position to the court.”

The project has been the center of political and legal disputes since 2006. Supporters of the project say the plant will bring crucial jobs and economic development to western Kansas. Opponents contend the plant will pollute, draw down water reserves and provide electricity that isn’t needed in Kansas. Colorado residents will receive much of the electricity.

___

Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

As one of the largest electricity generators in the U.S., we, at Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), believe that EPA’s air pollutant regulations should be viewed as an opportunity to modernize the nation’s electric power infrastructure. PSEG has been a long-time advocate of these Clean Air Act regulations and has put its money where its mouth is, investing over one and a half billion dollars in improvements to its coal-fired plants. These regulations will not only improve air quality for our nation’s citizens, but will also create jobs and an active marketplace for emissions trading.

Frankly, action is long overdue. The air pollutant regulations proposed by EPA are in response to the D.C. Circuit’s rejection of two rules (the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) and the Clean Air Mercury Rule) originally proposed by the Bush Administration. Thus, these regulations do not come out of the blue. The regulatory process for regulating toxic air emissions commenced over two decades ago, and the court concluded CAIR was “fundamentally flawed” in 2008.

For our part at PSEG, we believed it made good business sense to be proactive in positioning our generation fleet to meet what the rules would require.  During the past five years, we have invested more than $2 billion to replace inefficient, older generating units and upgrade our existing facilities in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. These air quality standards are achievable with the appropriate investment. For example, nearly 60 percent of all coal-fired boilers that submitted data to EPA are currently achieving the Utility Toxics Rule’s proposed mercury standards. Existing pollution control technologies have demonstrated their mettle, and they need to be further deployed throughout the nation.

Our experience shows that it is possible to clean the air, create jobs, and power the economy at the same time. For example, our New Jersey coal plants with their various pollution-control systems have been able to reduce, by over 90 percent, emissions of mercury, acid gases and soot. Installing the systems created approximately 1,600 construction jobs and enabled us to add dozens of full-time positions. We are proud of these results and proud to have facilities that are among the cleanest coal stations in America.

Reliability is a critical consideration at all times in the electric power industry. We believe our industry is capable of meeting these clean air rules while maintaining electric system reliability. The U.S. bulk power system, at an aggregate level, has adequate spare capacity to absorb potential retirements. Many of the uncontrolled units, which are most likely to retire, are smaller, inefficient units and companies are already making retirement decisions independent of the Utility Toxics Rule due to fundamental economics. Moreover, the electric industry has a proven track record of adding additional generating capacity and transmission solutions when and where needed and of coordinating effectively to address reliability concerns.

The Clean Air Act gives affected sources three years from the issuance of the final rules to comply with the regulations. Further, if there are isolated reliability issues in areas of heavy demand as a result of implementing the air regulations affecting the electric sector, existing risk management procedures under the Clean Air Act, the Federal Power Act, and other statutes already provide EPA, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the President with tools to address unforeseen impacts on electric system reliability on an individual basis.

Simply put, the time is overdue to implement the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Doing so will help provide much needed certainty to invest in capital-intensive projects such as power plants that operate for 40 years or longer. Having these regulations in place will make it clear what the energy industry needs to do. In contrast, any significant delay for these rules will only perpetuate uncertainty where clarity is needed. The time for action is now.

Ralph Izzo is Chairman, President and CEO of Public Service Enterprise Group

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Last week (Tuesday, October 18th, to be exact) marked the fourth year since then-Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment Rod Bremby issued the historic denial of air quality permits for the proposed 1400 MW Holcomb Station coal-fired expansion sought by Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (of Kansas), Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association (based in Colorado), and Golden Spread Electric Cooperative (of Texas).

That Was Then

Bremby cited the (then) recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and the United Nations IPCC reports on global climate change and its impacts upon human health and the environment among his reasons for the denial.  His decision also cited Kansas statutory authority clearly delegated to the KDHE Secretary for such decisions.  His decision was the first instance in the United States of a public official blocking coal plant construction based in part upon concern for health and environmental impacts from climate change caused by coal-fired power plant emissions.

Pro-coal forces in Kansas and elsewhere immediately launched an assault on then-Governor Sebelius, with paid advertisements in national media linking the decision to support for foreign dictators and hyperbolic claims that Bremby acted “illegally” and “against the will of Kansans.”  The ads were blasted by observers everywhere as false information and fear-mongering, and subsequent multiple, bi-partisan polls in Kansas showed clear and overwhelming public opposition to the proposed coal plant project with its emphasis upon unneeded electricity generation, imported resources, pollution of Kansas, and value and economic impact for other states.

The Sebelius administration spent significant political capital defeating multiple versions of pro-coal and anti-regulatory wish-list legislation in 2008 and 2009.   As late as April of 2009, then-Lt. Governor Parkinson repeatedly and publicly called out the lies and misinformation project supporters were using to justify their efforts.

In the wake of the 2008 national elections, the pro-pollution and climate change denial machine (generously funded and guided by Kansas’ own Koch brothers) increased efforts to undermine established scientific consensus regarding climate change and human-caused drivers of global warming.  Using climate change denial and the economic recession as a kind of Trojan horse, the pro-pollution, anti-health crowd has undertaken a concerted effort to not simply stop regulation or valuation of greenhouse gases, but to undo 40 years of federal public health and environmental protections – protections that have coincided with unprecedented overall economic growth and prosperity in the United States.

Sunflower Electric and its allies dodged continuous questions about the project (from financial mismanagement, to “clean coal” falsehoods, to demand realities, to water consumption) and threw everything and the kitchen sink at the decision and support for it, including personally naming Bremby, Sebelius, and Parkinson in a frivolous federal lawsuit.   Yet, the project remained stalled for legal, regulatory, financial, and other reasons.  Golden Spread moved on, and developed wind and natural gas assets to meet its relatively small need for future generation capacity.

Public and administrative support for Bremby’s decision stood firm until Sebelius departed for a Presidential cabinet appointment.  Immediately upon being sworn in as governor, Parkinson announced his own secret deal with Sunflower Electric that gave pro-pollution advocates everything they had ever wanted (and that he had previously called “dishonest” and “unnecessary”), including a 900 MW coal plant at the Holcomb Station and a complete stripping of state responsibility for air quality.  Of note, Bremby never signed the settlement agreement and KDHE was never involved in the development of the deal.  Parkinson then embarked upon a process of collusion and political pressure that saw the project permitted before the end of 2010 despite unprecedented public opposition – ultimately firing Bremby in order to clear that path.

This Is Now

In mid-2011, former KDHE Secretary Bremby accepted an offer by the governor of Connecticut to apply his considerable talents and commitment to public service on behalf of that state’s citizens.

Former Governor Parkinson is now a highly paid lobbyist in Washington, DC, and former Sunflower Electric Power Corporation CEO Earl Watkins has retired.

The Bloomberg Foundation (of New York City’s Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg) recently donated $50 million to Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

And a Republican sweep of statewide elected offices and Congressional seats leaves Kansas with the most conservative (and pro-polluter) public leadership in the state’s modern history.

Meanwhile, the pesky reality that, due to massive unpaid taxpayer loans, Sunflower Electric is essentially a federal government entitlement project did not escape the attention of a federal District Judge, who ruled that Sunflower Electric and the Rural Utilities Service of USDA had violated federal law in pushing the Holcomb Station coal-fired expansion forward at taxpayer risk and without legally-required review. Remediation in that case is pending, as is a Kansas Supreme Court review of a legal challenge to the KDHE permit and process for the project.

According to the permit granted by KDHE, the proposed plant is not state of the art or clean, as claimed, but will in fact be one of the dirtiest plants in the nation.

Electricity demand is down and, even accounting for the recession, projections are for much lower demand than utilities had been claiming.

None of the primary project partners can demonstrate a need for coal-fired generation from the project – it appears to be essentially a merchant plant designed to benefit Tri-State since it will be phased for the Western Grid and will be owned entirely by Tri-State.

The much-touted jobs and economic benefit from the project are years away at best, since there is no need for the plant’s capacity and Tri-State has publicly stated construction will not begin prior to 2016, at the earliest.  Still, Kansas elected officials continue to help Tri-State delay the project while blaming “environmental extremists” for the delays.

The fundamental science that informs the worldwide observations of global warming caused by anthropogenic climate change continue to be confirmed, including by a recent study funded in part by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation.

Kansas’ relative ranking in achievable wind energy capacity has increased.  Recent tall tower data for Kansas from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows even more wind density than previously measured, with wind generation capacity factors in southwestern Kansas reaching over 50% in some instances.  Wind farm and transmission development in Kansas continue apace, regardless of the proposed Holcomb Expansion coal-fired project.

Lower prices and increased supply have made natural gas cost-competitive with long-term coal contracts, and its cleaner emissions portfolio beats coal’s performance (and cost) under increasing public health and environmental protections.  Natural gas is also a much better partner for renewable energy integration than coal.

In spite of deceptive and misleading partisan political tactics, modern and necessary public health and environmental protections (most developed under previous Republican administrations, many focused on power plant emissions) continue to be implemented and supported by a significant bi-partisan majority of Americans.

The regulatory uncertainty caused by partisan political opposition to carbon regulation or valuation, in the context of virtual certainty by key actors in capital finance markets and energy policy circles that greenhouse gases must and will be regulated in the future, has created significant overhanging risk, halting most investment in new coal plants and making the economics of coal plant retrofits questionable.

Efforts continue to obscure the facts, derail the rule of law, and deny the public interest in order to benefit the coal plant project and its special interest allies.  All in all, though, it seems that Mr. Bremby’s decision four years ago remains as visionary and important an act of public service now as it was in October of 2007.

Scott Allegrucci is the Executive Director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Paul Krugman’s column in The New York TimesThursday laments one of the many ironies of our time: Politicians in Washington are finally talking about job creation, but Republicans (and some Democrats, I’m sure) pin their hopes for employment on environmental deregulation. As Krugman points out, “Serious economic analysis actually says that we need more protection, not less.”

By serious economic analysis, Krugman means peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals over the last few decades that have probed the relationship between environmental regulations, employment, and economic growth. He doesn’t mean the American Petroleum Institute’s latest report that purports to show job growth potential through … wait for it … relaxing restrictions on oil and gas extraction. He means the latest findings by Yale University economist William Nordhaus, published in the American Economic Review [PDF], the top-ranked journal in economics, that finds that the economic cost of air pollution exceeds the value added of coal-fired electric generation by a factor of nearly six to one. And this estimate doesn’t include the economic damages from climate change. Pollution-related costs impede productivity and growth in the U.S. economy. Imposing more of these costs on society through deregulation is not only undesirable, it is bad economic policy.

So let’s review what economists do know [PDF] about the relationship between environmental regulation and jobs. The oft-cited concern is that environmental regulations will increase production costs, raising product prices and decreasing the quantity of goods and services demanded. The good news, however, is that empirical evidence finds little support for wide-scale job losses or relocations arising from strengthening of environmental policies in the U.S.

The economics research on this topic extends back over the last few decades. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 marked the last significant package of environmental regulation passed in the U.S., and the creation of NAFTA in 1994 presented new opportunities for U.S. firms to relocate abroad to avoid environmental regulations. Thus, there is extensive literature that covers a long time period that evaluates how environmental regulations impact businesses, employment, and income.

The economics literature covering this history supports three conclusions. The first conclusion is that businesses are unlikely to relocate to avoid compliance with environmental regulations. The empirical evidence shows that there has been little movement by U.S. firms to other countries to escape environmental regulatory burdens. Nor has there been a migration of new investment in dirty industries to developing countries with lax regulations, the so-called “pollution havens”. Over the last few decades of the neoliberal era, both dirty and clean industries have relocated outside of the U.S., but that movement has been driven mostly by the pursuit of lower wage and benefit costs (especially health costs), which comprise a much higher percentage of their total costs (Goodstein 1999; Gallagher 2006 [PDF]). What the research has found is that environmental compliance costs are generally below 2 percent of total business costs (Jaffe et al. 1995 [PDF]); the potential savings are just not large enough to compel relocation to escape environmental regulations alone. Economists searching for evidence of widespread flight of polluting industries to different countries or different states within the U.S. have yet to uncover evidence of a trend. (This is not to say that firms that leave the U.S. in pursuit of lower labor costs behave as good environmental citizens abroad).

The second major conclusion economists have drawn from studies examining the impacts of regulations on businesses and competitiveness at the national or regional level is that that plant closings and layoffs as a result of environmental regulations are actually rare. Numerous independent studies show this. Layoffs that can be attributed to environmental regulations account for only one-tenth of 1 percent of all mass layoffs (of over 50 employees) nationwide. This is equivalent to roughly 1,000 to 3,000 jobs per year across the entire country. For example, less than 7,000 jobs were lost between 1990 and 1997 as a direct result of the Clean Air Act Amendments. Over that same period, 10 million U.S. workers were laid off for non-environmental reasons (Goodstein 1999). Among the reasons for major layoffs, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, environmental and safety-related shutdowns are among the least common, accounting for about 0.1 percent of job losses (Goodstein 1999). A study of the heavily regulated steel, petroleum, plastics, and pulp and paper industries concluded that, “while environmental spending clearly has consequences for business and labor, the hypothesis that such spending significantly reduces employment in heavily polluting industries is not supported by the data” (Morgenstern et al., 2002, p. 25).

The third major conclusion is that at the economy-wide level, there seems to be no real trade-off between environmental regulation and growth. Environmental regulation leads to a very slow shift in the composition of spending: Jobs are gained as workers produce, install, and maintain cleanup equipment and engage in retrofits, and are lost as firms pass on those cost increases to consumers, who have to cut back their purchase of goods and services from that sector. Environmental regulation begins a slow shift away from the products of dirty industry. An example would be the shift into new recycling jobs and out of waste disposal jobs, as the percentage of waste recycled in the U.S. rose significantly in the 1990s.

While job loss can be catastrophic to an individual worker, net job loss (or gain) is the variable that should drive public policy. Small job loss in a particular plant or industry because of a change in regulatory environment is just noise against the backdrop of the millions of employed and unemployed in the U.S. economy. And, the handful of job losses has to be compared to the jobs gained elsewhere in the economy as a result of the new regulations. For example, a recent reportfinds that coal ash regulations can create as many as 28,000 jobs.

As with all public policy, changes in environmental regulations create winners and losers. Specific businesses or industries may be disproportionately impacted (for example, the coal workers from national carbon legislation). Labor market conditions in the U.S. will continue to be more heavily influenced by larger structural changes in the U.S. and global economy than any proposed regulatory changes. If we want to get to the heart of the unemployment problem in the U.S., we need to explore these structural issues. Exploiting the public’s deep need for job creation to promote an anti-regulatory agenda is dishonest and dangerous.

Cross-posted from Real Climate Economics.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Release date: 09/22/2011

Contact Information: EPA Press Office, press@epa.gov, 202-564-6794

As prepared for delivery.

Chairman Stearns, Ranking Member DeGette and Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to testify on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory process.

It is a priority of the EPA and of this Administration, to ensure that our regulatory system is guided by science and that it protects human health and the environment in a pragmatic and cost effective manner.

One means by which this Administration has made this priority clear is through Executive Order 13563, which includes a directive for federal agencies to develop a regulatory retrospective plan for periodic review of existing significant regulations. Under that directive, EPA has developed a plan which includes 35 priority regulatory reviews. Recent reforms, already finalized or formally proposed, are estimated to save up to $1.5 billion over the next 5 years.

But let me be clear: the core mission of the EPA is protection of public health and the environment. That mission was established in recognition of a fundamental fact of American life – regulations can and do improve the lives of people. We need these rules to hold polluters accountable and keep us safe. For more than 40 years, the Agency has carried out its mission and established a proven track record that a healthy environment and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

The Clean Air Act is one of the most successful environmental laws in American history and provides an illustrative example of this point.

For 40 years, the nation’s Clean Air Act has made steady progress in reducing the threats posed by pollution and allowing us to breathe easier. In the last year alone, programs implemented pursuant to the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 are estimated to have saved over 160,000 lives; spared Americans more than 100,000 hospital visits; and prevented millions of cases of respiratory problems, including bronchitis and asthma.

Few of the regulations that gave us these huge gains in public health were uncontroversial at the time they were developed. Most major rules have been adopted amidst claims that they would be bad for the economy and bad for employment.

In contrast to doomsday predictions, history has shown, again and again, that we can clean up pollution, create jobs, and grow our economy all at the same time. Over the same 40 years since the Clean Air Act was passed, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States grew by more than 200 percent.

Some would have us believe that “job killing” describes EPA’s regulations. It is misleading to say that enforcement of our nation’s environmental laws is bad for the economy and employment. It isn’t.

Families should never have to choose between a job and a healthy environment. They are entitled to both.

We must regulate sensibly – in a manner that does not create undue burdens and that carefully considers both the benefits and the costs. However, in doing so, we must not lose sight of the reasons for implementation of environmental regulations: These regulations are necessary to ensure that Americans have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Americans are no less entitled to a safe, clean environment during difficult economic times than they are in a more prosperous economy.

As President Obama recently stated in his Joint Address to Congress, “…what we can’t do…is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades…We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom where we try to offer the…worst pollution standards.”

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Anti-science ideology isn’t completely new in the U.S. — there is a dismaying history of irrational, pseudoscientific, or downright anti-scientific thinking and political culture here. But it seems to be gaining momentum — even as it runs counter to America’s scientific and technological strengths. Such strengths, in fact, underpin our economic and political strengths.

I’m not talking about honest scientific skepticism and questioning – indeed, that is the very basis of good science. I’m talking about a disturbing combination of two factors: political cowardice hiding behind scientific skepticism; and political pandering to special interests by rejecting science, knowledge, and reason in favor of ideology, religion, or narrow economic self-interest.

Sadly and with few brave exceptions, some politicians are active and aggressive at using false, misleading, or discredited science, or explicitly ignoring good science, in setting public policy to support ideology. History tells us this never leads to a good outcome. The Soviets let Lysenkoist ideology pollute their biological and genetic sciences in the 1930s, and they’ve never recovered. We saw it with the long, successful effort of the tobacco industry and their allies to confuse the public and delay regulations to protect public health, leading to millions of unnecessary cancer deaths. We saw it with the veto by Richard Nixon of the Clean Water Act (overridden with the help of some brave and influential Republican senators). And we see it now, in full flower, on the issue of climate change.

Here is what the science conclusively tells us: climate change is real, it is already underway, and it is largely due to human activities. These findings are acknowledged by every single major scientific organization in the areas of climate, meteorology, geology, physics, chemistry, atmospheric science, and hydrology, as well as every single National Academy of Sciences, including our own, created by Abraham Lincoln as an independent non-governmental organization to provide the best scientific advice to the government.

To quote from an open letter from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published in the leading journal Science:

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modeling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial — scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That’s what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of “well-established theories” and are often spoken of as “facts.”

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14 billion years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today’s organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong.Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

By pretending that the science is bad, some politicians are trying to avoid the truly difficult policy debates that are their responsibility. And they are simultaneously using claims of budget problems to destroy the nation’s climate research capabilities and stop efforts to improve the science. For example, cuts in NOAA’s budget aimed at eliminating anything “climate” related are likely to lead to a gap in satellite coverage of extreme weather events — precisely the satellites that provided the data our meteorologists used to generate advances warnings for the extreme tornadoes and recent Hurricane Irene. For every $1 saved by delaying replacement satellites, society will face an estimated $3 to $5 in higher costs in the form of damages, injuries, deaths, and efforts to obtain data using other approaches — this is a false savings solely due to anti-climate ideology. And because of inaction on climate policy, uncontrolled climate changes are already beginning to impose serious costs on our economies: reductions in crop yields, extra impacts from extreme storm events, drought costs, and more.

Things have gotten so bad that the highly respected scientific journal Nature called these actions “fundamentally anti-science” and an example of “willful ignorance,” and said:

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that the US Congress has entered the intellectual wilderness, a sad state of affairs in a country that has led the world in many scientific arenas for so long.”

The problem is, in part, that acting to reduce the risks of human-caused climate change could lead to policies that are inconvenient for powerful vested economic interests. We thus see a very well-endowed carbon-fuel industry willing to spend vast sums of money to confuse the public, support politicians and organizations whose influence they can buy, malign scientists who speak out, and create alternative “science” that is rejected over and over by independent review and analysis. Rather than have an honest, albeit difficult policy debate about what should be done about climate change, they postpone that debate by trying to discredit the science.

There are some modest signs of a return to rationality and scientific integrity. In recent days, one candidate for President, John Huntsman of Utah, has spoken out on the need for integrity of science. He told ABC’s “This Week”:

“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

He went on to call on the Republican Party to stop being antithetical to science: “I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.” Ironically, this shouldn’t be news: Huntsman’s comments are only newsworthy in the context of the extreme anti-science positions taken by his colleagues.

It is time to reassert scientific integrity, logic, reason, and the scientific method in public policy. The public may have disagreements about matters of policy, but our elected representatives must not misuse, hide, or misrepresent science in service of political wars and ideological positions.

Dr. Peter Gleick

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.