May 25, 2013

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EPA’s attempt to regulate rainwater dries up

January 15, 2013 By Carol Greenberg

The EPA must’ve realized they’ve already regulated everything conceivable under the agency’s jurisdiction, because now they’re really grasping at straws in a bizarre attempt to regulate rainfall. Yes, you read that right. More information comes from Steve Doucy of Fox News for backgroud:

Luckily for the taxpayers a federal judge struck down the proposed regulation, recognizing it as a bridge too far on the absurdity scale.

A federal judge struck down an EPA attempt to regulate stormwater runoff as a breach of authority:

U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Alexandria ruled late Thursday that the EPA exceeded its authority by attempting to regulate stormwater runoff into a Fairfax County creek as a pollutant. O’Grady sided with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which challenged EPA’s stormwater restrictions.

Stating the obvious: water that falls from the sky isn’t a pollutant so bureaucrats can’t regulate it:

‘Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it,’ O’Grady said.

The ruling will save Virginia taxpayers millions of dollars, up to $300 million says Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  EPA bureaucrats took fire from both sides of the aisle this time as Cuccinelli was joined in the fight by the Democratic-controlled Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Cuccinelli argued the EPA’s proposed regulation was “illegal” but the EPA’s stated it plans were ”in harmony with the broader purposes” of the Clean Water Act, including “reducing the water quality impacts of stormwater.”

While the EPA wasn’t able to get away with this one, the fact they even tried goes to show that despite the loss of red- tape enthusiast Lisa Jackson the EPA isn’t going to stop burdening us all anytime soon.

 

Crossposted at Unified Patriots and Grumpy Opinions

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Filed Under environmentalism, EPA Tagged With environmental regulation, EPA, Fairfax County VA, Lisa Jackson, regulation of rainwater, U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady, VA Atty Gen Ken Cuccinelli

Obama neglects crucial issues on his Bus Tour, Maumee Ohio edition

July 5, 2012 By Carol Greenberg

It just happens that Obama made a campaign stop about 3 miles from my house today. Unfortunately I am having new linoleum put down and I missed it by THAT MUCH. Darn. But what is more important than what he said, is what he didn’t say. He didn’t say anything about energy and he didn’t say anything about how Ohio has turned her economy around under the leadership of Gov. John Kasich. He also didn’t say anything about our problems with China.

Remember this vid from EPA administrator Al “crucify ‘em” Almendariz comparing its tactics to Roman crucifixions?:

Bet you guys thought since he resigned we had seen the last of him, right? But as with all the Obama cockroaches they scurry away in the light but come back to haunt us in another way. From the ultra-radical environmental group Sierra Club comes this presser that “Crucify ‘em Al” will be  joining the staff of the Sierra Club effective in mid-July as Senior Campaign Representative for the organization’s Beyond Coal campaign.

New York Mayor Bloomberg donated $50M of his own money a year ago to this” Beyond Coal” campaign and in the words of our “Occupier of the Oval Office” let me be perfectly clear: this campaign’s goal is with the assistance of the job-killing EPA and all their new regs, to eradicate coal in toto: to put out of business all existing coal plants, and to prevent future coal plants from being built.

And in case you think I am exaggerating, for those of you who missed it, below is a video from Sen. James Inhofe of EPA Administrator Carl Spalding admitting on camera Obama-EPA regs will be “painful”:

Yes, he said:

“if you want to build a coal plant, you’ve got a big problem.”

As a resident of Ohio this state receives about 80% of her electricity from coal. From America’s Power comes this chart which shows that in Ohio, those making less than $10,000 a year after taxes spend a whopping 82% of their income on energy:

Pretty stunning. But did Obama address this issue during his rally when thousands are out of work in this major coal-producing state? No. Instead he and his EPA officials seem to take sadistic pleasure by creating more onerous and expensive regulations.

Obama complained a lot about his opponent’s “negative campaign ads” and how expensive they were. But he never mentioned how now Governor John Kasich and his common sense policies have grown this state’s $.89 (yes, you read that right) slush fund into a whopping $482 million slush fund and balanced Ohio’s budget. Below is a short vid on how it was done:

Obama also resurrected his talk about getting tough on China from the last campaign. More election year rhetoric. In 2007, Obama made the same promise but four years in office tells a different story. You know when Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown says Obama has failed to confront China, you have a problem. From the RNC a short vid on Obama’s failed  policies with China:

This was clearly a campaign stump which again contained nothing new about fixing our economy, getting people back to work and using the energy resources we have within Ohio, and the rest of this country, to make us energy independent.

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Filed Under Obama Ohio bus tour, war on coal Tagged With Al Almanderiz, America's Power, Beyond Coal, China, EPA, Gov. John Kasich, Lisa Jackson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Obama, Ohio, Sierra Club

Arch Coal lays off 750 in Appalachia

June 26, 2012 By Carol Greenberg

Stop CoalImage at the right is from the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” website.

As Obama and the EPA continue its “war on coal” we are beginning to see the devastating results.

I won’t do a repeat of Obama’s vow in 2008 to bankrupt the coal industry, I’m sure everyone knows his words by rote. Arch Coal, one of the world leaders in coal production announced last week the layoff of about 750 workers, 600 in Kentucky and the rest in Virginia and West Virginia. Arch will also close 3 plants: 2 in Kentucky and one in West Virginia.

“Current market pressures and a challenging regulatory environment have pushed coal consumption in the United States to a 20-year low,” Arch President and CEO John W. Eaves said in a news release announcing the layoffs.

This bad news comes on the heels of the defeat in the Senate of Sen. Inhofe’s SJ Res 37 which would overturn EPA’s new job killing UMACT rule. The vote was to be a simple up or down majority vote, which fell 4 short for passage. For those interested the 5 Republicans who voted “nay” were Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, Kelly Ayotte and Lamar Alexander. Even though Sen. Sherrod Brown comes from a major coal-producing state, my state, Ohio, he also voted “nay” even when he claimed a month ago he was clueless about this resolution.

Wyoming is the No. 1 coal producer in the country followed by No. 2 West Virginia and Kentucky at the No. 3 spot. Electricity coming from coal will fall below 40%, the lowest since the government began keeping records in 1949. The jobless rate in one county in Kentucky, Knott, is at a whopping 12.5%.

New job and coal-killing regulations invoked by the Obama administration over the last couple of years, and one last March, are responsible for this coal turmoil. However, the environmental libs are never outdone and one had this to say:

Robert Ukeiley, an environmental lawyer in Berea, Ky., said it’s ridiculous to blame environmental regulations for the coal industry’s struggles. He said those rules are “completely reasonable,” have been decades in the making and are a “moral no-brainer.”

Mayor Mike Bloomberg, not to be content with banning 16 oz. slurpies, gave a  donation to the Sierra Club of $50 million a year ago for their Beyond Coal campaign which has the envirowackos jumping up and down with glee every time a coal plant closure is announced. Bloomberg even went as far as to send a letter to EPA Chair Lisa Jackson with about 90 other mayors signing on, stating their support for the EPA’s MATS Act, or Mercury and Air Toxic Standards claiming of course we are all going to die from coal dust. Notice where some of the mayors are from: Memphis, Columbus, Austin, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, South Dakota and several from Florida, one of note is the mayor of Pembroke Pines which is in Broward County, Mayor Frank Ortis. Well Mr. Ortis, I am not sure you have checked lately but there is not one coal power plant in the southern third of Florida, which includes your county, so I’m not sure why you have your knickers in a knot especially since a study has shown that all this EPA red tape and the unemployment it causes is literally making us sick, not the other way around.

This is just the beginning folks, as more coal companies announce closures of existing plants and cancelling of future plants unemployment in the coal sector will continue to rise: and the devastating economic consequences will ensue.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

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Filed Under war on coal Tagged With Arch Coal, Beyond Coal, coal, EPA, Lisa Jackson, MATS, Mike Bloomberg, Obama, Sen Inhofe, Sierra Club, SJ Res 37, UMACT, unemployment, war on coal

EPA’s “New Source Performance Standards” are out and it isn’t pretty

April 17, 2012 By Carol Greenberg

As Obama’s “War on Coal” continues to escalate we now have the new regulations from EPA we knew were coming last month when EPA Chair Lisa Jackson announced her “carbon pollution standard” for coal-fired plants.

Jackson and her band of bureaucrats have been up to their old tricks lately, primarily focusing their energy on the systematic destruction of the coal industry and the jobs, affordable power, and economic revenue it provides. Here’s the latest:

First, Daniel Simmons of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) exposes the utter lack of any logic in the EPA’s latest cap-and-tax greenhouse gas regulations that essentially outlaw building coal-fired power plants. Warning: 257 pages of bureaucratic double-speak:

If greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide “endanger public health and welfare” shouldn’t the EPA do something about it? Should the agency work to actually reduce the danger? Isn’t that the point of regulation—to reduce some of the alleged harm?

But the EPA isn’t reducing any danger here because according to the agency [page 49], “This proposed rule also will not have a direct impact on U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases under expected economic conditions.”

If global warming is a problem that the EPA needs to address, then why are they working on imposing rules that the agency admits “will not have [a] direct impact of U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases?” It’s tough to see how EPA regulation makes logical sense. Does the EPA not really care about global warming or are they working to end America’s use of coal? Does the EPA only want to increase the price of energy by making it harder to build low-cost electricity generation?

Then, former U.S. Chamber official Reed Rubinstein argues that the Obama administration’s chief first-term priority has been systematically destroying the coal industry:

Nevertheless, from its first day the Administration has waged a war of attrition in Congress, the courts and the federal regulatory arena against coal. The legislative assault collapsed when Congress rejected cap and trade, and the courts have not been kind to the Administration…

But in the regulatory sphere, where bureaucrats reign at the expense of public transparency and judicial or congressional review, the EPA has run unleashed and unchecked. Since 2008, the Administration has proposed or issued thousands of pages of regulations to burden coal-generated electric power.

Finally, the icing on the cake is a report from the New York Times which details how the EPA is fining businesses for failing to use a type of biofuel that is not commercially available:

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

Yes folks, you really can’t make this stuff up.

biofuels

Photo courtesy of New York Times.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots.

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Filed Under war on coal Tagged With biofuels, coal, Dan Simmons, EPA, global warming, IER, Institute for Energy Research, Lisa Jackson, Obama, Reed Rubinstein

Obama escalates his War on Coal with new EPA regs

March 27, 2012 By Carol Greenberg

One of the few promises Obama has kept: he would bankrupt the coal industry. Remember his words below:

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them…”

Back in December he and the EPA announced the mega-nuke bomb that would bankrupt the coal industry and the Institute for Energy Research had this to say:

“The utility MACT will increase the cost of electricity for American families, and in some places where coal-fired generation is the prevailing source of power, the prices will necessarily skyrocket just like President Obama promised. It will result in the loss of jobs, both in places where power plants will close and among small businesses that employ more than 60 percent of our workforce.

But Obama must believe coal plants are like cockroaches & can survive a nuclear blast, because it wasn’t enough to simply *bomb the industry,* today he and EPA’s Lisa Jackson announced they intend to bury the industry:

EPA Proposes First Carbon Pollution Standard for Future Power Plants/Achievable standard is in line with investments already being made and will inform the building of new plants moving forward.

So what does this “government double-speak mean”? Funny how bureaucrats can make something so malignant sound so benign.

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

The CEO of the National Mining Association, Hal Quinn had this to say:

EPA’s proposal for controlling greenhouse gas emissions from about half the nation’s electric power supply is a poorly disguised cap-and-tax scheme that represents energy and economic policy at its worst. Higher utility bills and fewer jobs are the only certain outcomes from this reckless attempt to override Congress’s repeated refusal to enact punitive caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

“Requiring coal-based power plants to meet an emissions standard based on natural gas technology is a policy overtly calculated to destroy a significant portion of America’s electricity supply. This is a movie we have seen before, and the script remains unchanged. Volatile natural gas prices will, once again, expose millions of households to higher utility bills, threaten hundreds of thousands of workers with unemployment and weaken both the competitiveness of basic industries and the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid.

“This proposal is the latest convoy in EPA’s regulatory train wreck that is rolling across America, crushing jobs and arresting our economic recovery at every stop. It is not an “all of the above” energy strategy; it does not create jobs; and it does not make it easier for Americans to pay their mortgages. Instead, the proposed New Source Performance Standards would deliberately push America to abandon coal, its most abundant and reliable energy source in favor of costlier fuels—even though Congress has repeatedly rejected this policy.

“NMA urges Congress to assert its authority over an agency that disregards the public need for affordable electricity and ignores the overwhelming costs of its regulations.”

So let’s take a look at where your electricity comes from. I’m going to pull out a few states from this interactive map from America’s Power and show you the states that rely heavily on coal:

  • Ohio: 82%
  • Indiana: 90%
  • Kentucky: 93%
  • Wyoming: 89%
  • West Virginia: 97%
  • Utah: 81%
  • Missouri: 81%
  • New Mexico: 71%
  • North Dakota: 82%

Let’s hope these states know what to do come November 6.

But all is not lost. EPA Chair Lisa Jackson has provided for a 60 day public comment period.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

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Filed Under war on coal Tagged With coal, EPA, Lisa Jackson, Obama