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N.C. State Rep. Harrison: Let the EPA Do Its Job
What should the role of the states be in protecting human health and the environment?
Last Friday, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment held a hearing to untangle that complex question. North Carolina Rep. Pricey Harrison testified to the committee on behalf of her state’s need for better environmental protection and regulatory enforcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
N.C. rulemaking before S781. Photo from ncpolicywatch.org
“The question is not whether states or the federal government have a role in environmental protection,” she told subcommittee members, “but whether each is playing its appropriate role under current law.”
Harrison highlighted the growing concerns of North Carolinians’ surrounding coal ash pollution from disposal ponds owned by Duke Energy as an example of how states are failing to protect citizens. The state began requiring more extensive groundwater monitoring a few years ago. But even now, with known instances of groundwater standards violations, no action has been taken by the state to get Duke Energy to clean up this pollution.
Another emerging issue is the reckless push to bring fracking in the state. Senate Bill 76 would allow fracking in the state in two years, no matter the status of the state’s regulatory development, resources or staffing.
N.C. rulemaking after S781. Photo from ncpolicywatch.org
Then there is S781, the “Regulatory Reform Act,” which was passed by the state General Assembly in 2011. The law severely limits what rules state agencies can create and prohibits any rule to be stronger than federal standards. Federal rules, however, are designed to be baseline standards, not the maximum protection.
“While federal attempts to establish minimum safety standards and ensure effective enforcement by state agencies can be inconvenient for specific industries at times,” said Rep. Harrison, “members of Congress would serve their constituents best by allowing agencies like the EPA to do their job and providing them the resources they need to do it effectively.”
In a tense moment of questioning that one would expect in a courtroom more than an amicable committee hearing, West Virginia Congressman David McKinley grilled Harrison on the specifics of H.R. 2273, legislation he introduced to leave the regulation of coal ash up to the states. The bill has been touted as setting up a state-run program for the the disposal of coal ash (called coal combustion residuals, or CCR), but according to a Congressional Research Services report:
Certain key directives specific to program implementation are either missing from or ambiguously defined… As a result, it cannot be determined whether CCR permit program implementation would create minimum federal standards…
At the hearing, Rep. McKinley continually referred to obsolete reports that the EPA published in 1993 and 2000 that say coal ash is not a hazardous waste. He conveniently sidesteps the fact that the science has changed and that the EPA’s newest findings on coal ash published in their 2010 proposed rule show that coal ash is indeed hazardous when disposed. On top of that, the rule does not treat coal ash as a hazardous waste when properly recycled.
McKinley also repeatedly claimed that the EPA would have authority over states under his plan — the Congressional Research Services report found otherwise:
Regardless of whether a state chose to adopt a CCR permit program, EPA would have no authority to compel states to adopt and implement the program according to provisions in the proposed amendments to RCRA.
While some states may be models of how to manage and run environmental programs, federal statutes are designed to make sure citizens of all 50 states have a baseline of protection. Cutting EPA’s role in this, as McKinley’s ill-conceived bill would, is a radical departure from more than 40 years of the structuring of fundamental laws like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. From the CRS report:
By creating such a program entirely within the proposed statute, Congress would create a permit program unique among environmental laws.
North Carolina is not the only state where agencies have fallen far short of providing essential environmental protections. Kentucky, for example, has been the site of egregious violations of the Clean Water Act. Appalachian Voices’ Programs Director Matt Wasson wrote on Grist in summer 2011:
In some cases, state regulators allowed the companies to go for as long as three years without filing required quarterly water-monitoring reports. In other instances, the companies repeatedly filed the same highly detailed data, without even changing the dates. So complete was the lack of state oversight it’s impossible to say whether the mines were violating their water pollution permits or not.
The failures of states like North Carolina and Kentucky to implement strong protections for their environmental safety have not gone unnoticed by the public. Last week more than 1000 people marched on the state capitol for the annual I Love Mountains Day rally in Frankfort, Ky. They demanded a move away from destructive coal industry practices and toward safer and cleaner energy via “New Power” — new energy, economic and political power.
Just recently, sixth grader Anna Behnke found high levels of arsenic near her home on Mountain Island Lake, a drinking water source for hundreds of thousands in the Charlotte, N.C. metro area. The contamination — which exceeds EPA drinking water standards twenty-fold — comes from the coal ash seepage of Duke Energy’s Riverbend power plant, which the utility announced it will decommission in April without a plan to deal with the coal ash ponds on site.
With states continuing to seemingly ignore the importance of protecting the health of its environment and its citizens these days, “New Power” may be just what we need to put environmental authority back in the hands of an actual authority — the science.
Protecting the Central and Southern Appalachian Mountain Region
2013-02-20 10:20:27
Source: http://appvoices.org/2013/02/20/n-c-state-rep-harrison-let-the-epa-do-its-job/
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