EPA Asserts Itself on Mountaintop Removal Mining
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.
EPA is finally flexing its muscle on mountaintop removal mining, taking on the Corps of Engineers and stepping in for states that have been reluctant to attack the practice.
Mountaintop removal mining involves blasting the tops off of mountains, typically in Appalachia, to get at coal. The ecological problems are less about removal of the mountaintops than about the filling of valley streams with the excess spoils. The practice has been going on for more than 20 years with very little regulatory oversight and in apparent disregard of the Clean Water Act.
In 2002, the Bush administration gave the valley fills associated with mountaintop removal mining a semblance of legality by revising the regulations governing the issuance of permits for filling waters of the U.S. under section 404 of the Act to allow filling with overburden from mining operations. Even with that change, large-scale valley fills would seem to violate the Clean Water Act’s prohibition on the issuance of federal permits that would lead to a violation of state water quality standards, and the Guidelines for section 404 permits developed by the Corps and EPA, which require that impacts …
On Wednesday, April 1, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Entergy vs. EPA, holding that it was permissible for EPA to use cost-benefit analysis as its method of regulatory analysis in devising a regulation on power plant water intake structures. Member Scholar Amy Sinden blogged on the decision that day, here. Member Scholar Thomas McGarity adds a thought:
One of the most significant problems with cost-benefit analysis is its tendency to "dwarf soft variables." These "soft variables" are things that have value to all of us but are not typically traded in markets and are therefore difficult to quantify in any rigorous way. A good example of a soft variable is the value of the aquatic organisms that are not directly consumed by humans but will, along with those that are consumed by humans, be destroyed under the technology that EPA approved under the cost-benefit …
The Bush Administration earned its reputation for being contemptuous of science. From suppressing an EPA global warming report so as not to put the federal government’s imprimatur on the scientific consensus that climate change was real and human-caused, to simply refusing to open an email containing formal scientific findings inconvenient to its policy objectives, the Bush crowd took manipulation of science to previously unknown extremes. But as CPR President Rena Steinzor points out, the Bush Administration didn’t invent the practice. Science and scientists have been under political pressure from a variety of sources and in a variety of ways for quite some time now.
That’s why the departure of the Bush political appointees who did the most egregious manipulating does not alone solve all the problems. In a letter sent today to John Holdren, the President’s top science advisor, Center for Progressive Reform …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Victor Flatt, looks at the offsets for carbon emissions that would be permitted under the measure.
The Waxman-Markey draft bill treads some familiar ground with respect to the use of offsets to meet greenhouse gas reduction requirements, but also introduces some new innovations. In departing from other drafts and bills, the offsets provision may be most controversial in its limited examination of the environmental effects of offsets, and its use of …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Nina Mendelson, looks at what the bill would do to reassert the right of citizens to bring suit – either against polluters or against recalcitrant regulators – to enforce the law’s provisions.
By setting solid targets for reducing global warming in a cap-and-trade system and including a host of other helpful provisions, the Waxman-Markey bill is a terrific first contribution to this Congress’s debate on climate change. A less obvious but …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a "discussion draft" of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Alice Kaswan, examines the bill’s implications for environmental justice issues.
Climate change legislation is obviously essential to protecting the planet from catastrophic global warming. But that’s not all it can do. The fundamental changes in our energy infrastructure that lie ahead provide the opportunity to achieve unfinished business. Climate legislation could not only allow us to achieve greater energy security, as the bill’s name suggests, it could also …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. Their detailed responses are posted individually on CPRBblog, but here are some highlights:
Citizen Suits. Member Scholar Nina Mendelson applauds the bill’s provisions on citizen enforcement suits. She writes, “Environmental statutes traditionally provide for citizen enforcement suits as a critical supplement to governmental enforcement, especially in a world of limited budgets…. Supreme Court decisions have, however, created uncertainty regarding when and which citizens can bring such suits to protect the environment, particularly in …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Kirsten Engel, looks at how the bill’s cap-and-trade provisions would affect existing state and regional efforts – the “preemption” issue.
Perhaps one of the most-watched issues regarding federal climate legislation is how a cap-and-trade program established by such legislation would mesh with the existing and soon-to-be established state and regional greenhouse gas emission cap-and-trade programs. Currently, the United States has one regional cap-and-trade program up and running – the Regional Greenhouse Gas …
On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. This entry, by Alice Kaswan, examines several issues in the bill, including the issue of co-pollutants (non-greenhouse gas, but nevertheless polluting, emissions), the need for state-federal partnership on transportation and land-use issues related to climate change, and the bill’s provision removing greenhouse gas emissions from EPA’s jurisdiction under the Clean Air Act but apparently allowing states to impose their own clean air requirements in some areas.
Representatives Waxman and Markey’s “discussion …
CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus, joined by Member Scholars Rob Glicksman (also a CPR Board Member), Alex Camacho, and Dan Rohlf, along with myself, today sent the Secretaries of the Departments of Commerce and Interior a letter urging them to utilize the time-limited authority that Congress gave them to withdraw one of the more controversial midnight regulations issued by the Bush Administration. Those regulations undercut one of the Endangered Species Act’s (ESA) most important protections—a requirement that federal agencies consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and/or the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to be sure that actions they plan to take (for example, funding a new highway) are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of threatened and endangered species.
The Bush consultation regulations represent the worst kind of midnight rulemaking—they are poorly considered, unjustified by any evidence, and were patently …
