Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Adam Freedman ·
Jan 16, 2011 at 7:07pm
We knew this was coming, right? With the green agenda dead in Congress, we knew the unaccountable EPA would push its regulatory powers to achieve that which the voters don’t want. Late last week, the EPA vetoed a coal mining project in West Virginia (known as the Spruce mine), despite the fact that the project was previously approved by the Feds back in 2007. There goes 250 jobs, and $250 million in investments. According to environmentalists, we should expect the agency to routinely reject projects involving "mountaintop removal" technology.
A regulatory "taking?" I'll defer to Professor Epstein, but this decision will hardly help the Obama administration in coal country.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Dick Armey was on Laura Ingraham's show the other day. He said that, as a Congressman, he had far more ability to protect the freedom of citizens in his Constitutional role of regulatory oversight than be any amount of legislation he could pass.
Let's hope Boehner and his leadership were listening.
Oct '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
To be honest, this comment goes two ways... Some of my ancestors worked in the coal mines in Penn. State, back in the day of company towns, if you are familiar with that history. Not opposed to responsible mining in any way..Or hold any grudges....However the regulatory bodies of today are far out of hand.
Ask yourself this.. what do you expect from rule makers that have never a job where they got their hands dirty or simply produced anything...
May '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
How do companies respond to regulatory uncertainty? Threats of action against the coal industry alone will be damaging for years to come.
It's not enough to block one harmful regulation at a time. Republicans must attempt to reduce threats of regulatory interference, too. The only way to do that is to starve the regulatory agencies until they can be eliminated entirely in 2012.
The EPA is begging for a sledgehammer.
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Nothing like a fickle and capricious regulatory environment to stimulate job growth.
They could not do more to harm the economy if they tried.
Jun '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
The EPA... pffft. Right now, even left-psycho Portland, Oregon, where I live, is fighting the EPA. They insist that Portland build a $100 million water purifying system to protect the water supply from the pathogen Cryptosporidium. Portland has never found this pathogen in their tests ever but are still being pushed to spend the money. Trust me, if Portland is fighting the EPA, there is a BIG problem with that agency.
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Betcha they're glad they voted for that Manchin fella, eh?
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Aaron Miller: How do companies respond to regulatory uncertainty? Threats of action against the coal industry alone will be damaging for years to come.
It's not enough to block one harmful regulation at a time. Republicans must attempt to reduce threats of regulatory interference, too. The only way to do that is to starve the regulatory agencies until they can be eliminated entirely in 2012.
The EPA is begging for a sledgehammer. · Jan 16 at 8:02pm
Great point! President Reagan made an example out of the air traffic controllers strike. I should hope that the new congress can make a shining example out of the EPA. That business of threats runs both ways.
Jun '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Dave Carter
Aaron Miller: How do companies respond to regulatory uncertainty? Threats of action against the coal industry alone will be damaging for years to come.
It's not enough to block one harmful regulation at a time. Republicans must attempt to reduce threats of regulatory interference, too. The only way to do that is to starve the regulatory agencies until they can be eliminated entirely in 2012.
The EPA is begging for a sledgehammer. · Jan 16 at 8:02pm
Great point! President Reagan made an example out of the air traffic controllers strike. I should hope that the new congress can make a shining example out of the EPA. That business of threats runs both ways. · Jan 16 at 9:14pm
I feel an uncomfortable tightening of the purse strings coming to an EPA near you.
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Never let a crisis go to waste. The crisis was the Cuyahoga River, in flames on everybody's television. The result was the EPA, established under Nixon.
I'm not a fan of mountaintop mining, nor of strip mining. That said, I work on mining projects. It's simple; somebody has to and I work hard to get the best I can out of every project. We have some old mine sites in this country that are a serious mess and need some attention; I hope to land a job helping to fix some of those, at some point. In the mean time, I honestly believe that our modern mines are pretty darned good and I take some pride in the results from well-planned recclamation efforts, once the mines become uneconomic.
There are a huge number of jobs at stake, here, way beyond the 250 at that specific mine. However, there is also another huge issue. Off the top of my head, I think we're looking at something like 44% of our electricity comes from coal and we have more than a century of reserves.
Continued
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
Adding in hydroelectric, nuclear, and natural gas gets you up to something like 98%. Most of the remainder is from infrequently used, oil-fired, "peaking units", only brought on line occasionally. A fraction of 1% is all of the rest, where a substantial proportion of our subsidy dollars are directed.
There is no math that takes us on a path around accessing and utilizing our coal resources, for decades. The only environmentally responsible path lies in improving our ability to access the resource, cleaning up the mess afterward, and improving the efficiency of converting it to energy.
The EPA knows this and they do not care, as a whole (individuals do care). I have heard, many times, that the solution is to alter the lifestyles of the citizens. In those words, or words to that effect.
I choose to be a conservationist. I am stingy with fuel and electricity. I save everything. I recycle or reuse everything. My beer fridge is solar powered. I drive my fiancee nuts by insisting that shopping lists be written compactly, so that I can use a sheet 3 or 4 times.
My liefstyle, as a citizen, is what they want to alter. And yours.
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
I'm with you CJ. I'm a Mining Engineer by education, and modern mine planning and oversight is pretty much nothing at all like what it was even 40 years ago.
Strip mining, when done properly will leave a landscape behind that is pretty much identical to what it was before the mine came though, just at a lower elevation (original elevation, minus the coal seam removed, plus breakage swell).
One point of contention though. At current generation levels, there's enough coal in just the state of Wyoming to run all the power plants in the US for multiple centuries.
Then add in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virgina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and on and on, and you have a millennium worth of coal power in the ground, counting only know and recoverable reserves.
Hell, we could stop importing oil altogether if they'd let us mine the coal and liquefy it. At some point, it will become economically advantageous to do so, but the technology is useless if you can't mine coal to feed it.
This is a concerted effort by the Federal Gov and the Regulatory Apparatus to make as many resources as possible entirely off limits through the use of land exclusions.
Ever notice how new national parks and historic lands seem to crop up over the top of every big mineral or energy find in the US?
Funny that. It's almost as if they're trying to tie up all our native resources in an effort to force our energy and mineral purchases off shore.
Edited on Jan 17, 2011 at 6:35pmDec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
I understand and agree with your point; I was working off the top of my head and knew that we had more than a century of coal available from existing finds, so I chose decades, to be conservative.
And yes, we are systematically wallling off our resources. There is another, new, and vast land grab underway, now.
Environmentalist biologists are combing areas where we have known or suspected resources and absolutely flooding the US Fish and Wildlife Service with requests for listings of species as Threatened, or Endangered. Kids are being hired and paid and sent with marching orders to canvass areas at a rate that everybody knows the USFWS cannot deal with.
This is a very high stakes game and the environmentalists are covering the board with pawns; pesky positions. The point is to prevent anybody in the future from applying to access these resources, do the required studies, and coming up with a FONSI: a Finding Of No Significant Impact. That way, until they can get the government to lock up the rest of the land, they'll push anybody that does want to access the resources into full blown Environmental Impact Statements, absent the FONSI.
Dec '10
Re: Regulatory State Watch: The EPA vs. Jobs
What really boggles my mind is the fact that a lot of these nutballs live in places like LA or Vegas, where humans simply could not exist were it not for the ability to generate electricity and conduct potable water into the area.
If they win the war against industry, electricity, and resource exploitation, their homes will cease to be livable.
The entire modern environmentalist movement is essentially a suicide pact, writ large.
I, however, do not wish to sign on.
Edited on Jan 18, 2011 at 10:58pm