In The News

Madame Chairman, I am disturbed that we are having this hearing today. Just two months ago, we had a hearing on this. And shortly before that, Administrator Johnson told Members of the Committee that EPA would conduct a thorough process to make a decision in an expeditious and timely manner. EPA has met this commitment so far and there is no indication that it will not continue to do so.

In making a decision of this magnitude, it would be improper for EPA not to involve the public and formally solicit notice and comment. It has done so. EPA intended to close the public comment period on June 15th. It did so.

EPA has received more than 60,000 comments. While some of these are what I call “postcard comments” that provide us no information of any value other than knowing how effective special interests are in their fundraising efforts, many are very technical and very substantive. EPA needs to read them, assess them, and compare them. It needs to: investigate the issues raised by California thoroughly; analyze each and every document California relies upon; review supporting comments that may add new information California did not include; examine each argument raised in opposition to granting the waiver; determine the most relevant arguments and points that need to be taken into account in making the final decision; determine the ramifications of its decision; and then… and only then… EPA needs to make a decision.

Republican senator challenges Clinton's opposition to Yucca

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Las Vegas Review-Journal
July 26, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Clinton's commitment to fight Yucca Mountain was challenged Wednesday by a Republican senator who said the Democratic presidential candidate was a no-show for two nuclear waste hearings her committee had last year.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., sought to poke a hole in Clinton's promise that she would "not go forward" with the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository if she is elected.

When Clinton had a chance to take part in Environment and Public Works hearings on the repository, "she was missing in action," said Inhofe, a Yucca backer and the committee's chairman at the time.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...

Republican senator challenges Clinton's opposition to Yucca

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Las Vegas Review-Journal

July 26, 2007

Link to Article:

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Clinton's commitment to fight Yucca Mountain was challenged Wednesday by a Republican senator who said the Democratic presidential candidate was a no-show for two nuclear waste hearings her committee had last year.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., sought to poke a hole in Clinton's promise that she would "not go forward" with the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository if she is elected.

When Clinton had a chance to take part in Environment and Public Works hearings on the repository, "she was missing in action," said Inhofe, a Yucca backer and the committee's chairman at the time.

Clinton's campaign issued a rebuttal in which it said her absences were because of "important Senate business on behalf of her constituents, and issues of national importance."

Hilarie Grey, a spokeswoman, insisted that Clinton being elsewhere was not a sign that she is inattentive on the issue. Clinton has advertised herself to Nevada voters as perhaps the strongest Yucca critic among the candidates.

"Senator Clinton's record shows she is a consistent and vocal opponent of making Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste repository," Grey said.

The dustup shows how the candidates continue to view Yucca Mountain as a cutting issue in Nevada, perhaps more so now that the state is hosting early presidential caucuses in January, said Eric Herzik, professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Inhofe's charge "may cause Clinton some embarrassment but it is not going to hurt her in the polls," Herzik said.

The episode comes in the wake of Clinton's remarks on Friday calling for new Senate hearings to focus on Yucca Mountain health and safety, and for the Energy Department to shelve its repository licensing preparations.

In a teleconference with Nevada reporters, Clinton, a frontrunner in state polls, repeated her promise that she "will not go forward" with the Yucca project if she is elected president in November 2008.

Inhofe questioned Clinton's call for Senate action. He said she did not attend a committee hearing on Yucca Mountain on March 1, 2006, and a subcommittee hearing on nuclear waste on Sept. 14.

In a statement, Inhofe said he took exception to a Clinton comment to reporters that the Republicans when they ran Congress were "not willing to ask the hard questions" about the repository.

"When Senator Clinton had the opportunity to ask 'hard questions' of administration officials about Yucca Mountain, she was missing in action," Inhofe said.

"In fact, Senator Clinton failed to ask any questions because she was absent from the last two EPW hearings on Yucca Mountain," he said.

One of the hearings was by a subcommittee that Clinton did not belong to. But committee members are allowed to attend all meetings, said Marc Morano, a Republican committee aide.

"She could still attend," Morano said. "Either she did not consider it important enough or she was too busy to attend."

Clinton's campaign responded with information on the senator's whereabouts on the days of the hearings.

On March 1, she attended an overlapping hearing on the Ryan White CARE Act, an aid bill for HIV/AIDS patients.

On Sept. 14, Clinton chaired a meeting of the Democratic Steering Committee that involved international women's rights. She then attended a Senate Armed Services Committee closed meeting on military commissions to handle the treatment of enemy combatants.

The environment committee's new chairman, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has agreed to Clinton's request to have a Yucca hearing after the Senate's August recess, according to an aide who was cited Tuesday by Energy and Environment Daily, an electronic newsletter.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., came to Clinton's defense, saying the New York senator's opposition to the repository "has been pretty consistent through the years and she has made very public statements against putting nuclear waste in Nevada."

"More than that I would not expect from anyone, and it is certainly more than Senator Inhofe has ever done for Nevada," said Berkley, who has not declared a preference among Democrats running for president.

But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said Clinton was being "disingenuous" by criticizing Republicans on the Yucca issue when opposition to the repository has been bipartisan, at least in Nevada.

Democrats now run Congress, and if Clinton wanted to kill Yucca Mountain, "she could do it now. She could start that movement now if she were serious about it."

"I am eagerly awaiting the new Democratic Congress to not fund Yucca Mountain and to kill the project," Porter said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said through a spokesman that Inhofe's charge "is yet another desperate move by people looking to turn Nevada into a nuclear dumping ground."

Like Berkley, Reid has not yet backed a presidential candidate.

# # #

Today we are going to take a hard look at EPA’s environmental justice program and its application. EPA’s attempts to interpret the broad and largely undefined concept of environmental justice have been challenging. A series of highly criticized internal guidance documents have created confusion on the practice of executing the duties of President Clinton’s executive order 12898. Today, environmental justice means many things to many people, creating a complicated and inconsistent understanding of its purpose and application. It is not a formal rule, but often it is treated like one. As a matter of law, I am concerned that we may be giving a non-binding, legally unenforceable executive order more official standing than is legally permissible.

EPA does not currently provide an official definition or specific guidance regarding the full effects to consider in environmental justice complaints. The community impact analysis, which takes into account the socio-economic and public heath effects of a targeted population, is complicated and often lacks the required data needed to calculate the net benefits industrial development can have in the community. We must make sure that environmental justice programs don’t discourage Brownfields redevelopment efforts and other programs that would bring jobs to low income areas.

If Senate Democrats have their way, Congress may soon be returning to the days when politics trumped science in deciding which contaminants warranted a federal drinking water standard. Legislation introduced by Senate Democrats earlier this year to regulate percholrate – that may soon be considered by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee – seeks to do an end-run around a carefully crafted process established by Congress. The American Water Works Association recently explained the importance of the 1996 vote, noting previous practice by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was to “regulate contaminants purely for the sake of regulating.”

FACT: Congress, in amending the Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) in 1996, unanimously voted to establish a process by which EPA would determine which contaminants warranted a federal drinking water standard. Current law states that to regulate an unregulated contaminant like perchlorate, EPA must find that:

If Senate Democrats have their way, Congress may soon be returning to the days when politics trumped science in deciding which contaminants warranted a federal drinking water standard. Legislation introduced by Senate Democrats earlier this year to regulate percholrate – that may soon be considered by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee – seeks to do an end-run around a carefully crafted process established by Congress. The American Water Works Association recently explained the importance of the 1996 vote, noting previous practice by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was to “regulate contaminants purely for the sake of regulating.”

FACT: Congress, in amending the Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) in 1996, unanimously voted to establish a process by which EPA would determine which contaminants warranted a federal drinking water standard. Current law states that to regulate an unregulated contaminant like perchlorate, EPA must find that:

*The contaminant may have an adverse effect on the health of persons;

*The contaminant is known to occur or there is a substantial likelihood that the contaminant will occur in public water systems with a frequency and at levels of public health concern, and

*In the sole judgment of the Administrator, regulation of such contaminant presents a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.

Further, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), in a very conservative assessment, recommended a safe level that is based upon a precursor to the adverse health effect which may occur at 24.5 ppb drinking water equivalent. The NAS chose this level to protect even the most sensitive members of our population from any possible effect of perchlorate. EPA has gathered data from 3,858 drinking water systems between 2001 and 2003. Only 2 percent of the more than 34,000 samples analyzed were above the 4 ppb reporting threshold. The average concentration was 9.8 ppb, well below NAS’s health effects level of 24.5ppb.

EPA must now determine the relative source contribution (RSC) of perchlorate from other sources to determine if a drinking water standard will present “a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction.”

EPA sought public input in a May 1, 2007 Federal Register notice, “Regulatory Determinations Regarding Contaminants on the Second Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List – Preliminary Determinations (72 FR 24016 (May 1, 2007)” on whether the regulation of perchlorate provides an opportunity to address a public health risk and how to best calculate the RSC. The Agency received comments from those who thought it had sufficient data to make a determination and those who did not; it also received comments from those who thought that data pointed to the need for a federal drinking water standard and from others who thought it did not.

The Agency must consider all of these viewpoints and the data it receives to determine if regulating perchlorate through the SDWA will protect the public health.

Dismissing this process, Democratic legislation seeks to bypass this analysis and demand the EPA promulgate a drinking water standard for perchlorate without all the data being assessed and all of the comments reviewed. Many of us may question whatever final decision EPA makes but the Agency should be given the opportunity to meet its statutory obligations, assess the science and propose a resolution to this issue. The proposed legislation prejudges the outcome of EPA’s deliberations and bypasses the carefully crafted bi-partisan process that Congress put together in 1996 to ensure an open and fair system for determining where local governments will spend their limited resources.

The 1996 Amendments passed the Senate by a 98-0 vote. Is Congress really ready to throw that system away and go back to a politically charged system that that isn’t based on science?

###

WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, today blasted Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for accusing the Senate Republicans this week of failing to ask the ‘hard questions’ about Yucca Mountain. Clinton failed to attend the last two EPW hearings on the issue. Senator Clinton was quoted asserting that the EPA (Environment Protection Agency) and DOE (Department of Energy) have been unaccountable to Congress because they have “not had to answer questions up until now because the Republican Congress has not been willing to ask the hard questions,” according to a July 22, 2007 article by the Associated Press.

“When Senator Clinton had the opportunity to ask ‘hard questions’ of Administration officials about Yucca Mountain, she was missing in action. In fact, Senator Clinton failed to ask ANY questions because she was absent from the last two EPW hearings on Yucca Mountain,” Senator Inhofe said.

The United States Senate has passed two similar resolutions establishing a standard for passing global warming legislation. In 1997, the Byrd-Hagel Sense of the Senate, which passed 95 – 0, resolved that the U.S. should not be a signatory to any international agreement that would result in serious harm to the U.S. economy or did not mandate reductions from the developing world. Similarly, the Bingaman Sense of the Senate, passed in 2005, resolved that the U.S. should address global warming as long as it will not significantly harm the United States economy and encourages comparable action by other nations that are major trading partners and key contributors to global emissions.

FACT: Not a single bill before Congress meets these criteria – not one. They range from costly to ruinous. But they all fail to meet the requirements of Byrd-Hagel or Bingaman.

The United States Senate has passed two similar resolutions establishing a standard for passing global warming legislation. In 1997, the Byrd-Hagel Sense of the Senate, which passed 95 – 0, resolved that the U.S. should not be a signatory to any international agreement that would result in serious harm to the U.S. economy or did not mandate reductions from the developing world. Similarly, the Bingaman Sense of the Senate, passed in 2005, resolved that the U.S. should address global warming as long as it will not significantly harm the United States economy and encourages comparable action by other nations that are major trading partners and key contributors to global emissions.

FACT: Not a single bill before Congress meets these criteria – not one. They range from costly to ruinous. But they all fail to meet the requirements of Byrd-Hagel or Bingaman.

For instance, according to an MIT study, the Sanders-Boxer bill would cost energy sector consumers an amount equal to $4,500 per American family of four. The same study found the Lieberman-McCain bill would cost consumers $3,500 per family of four. And a new EPA analysis shows the Lieberman – McCain bill would cost up to half a trillion dollars by 2030 and $1.3 trillion by 2050 – and that was based on assumptions designed to low-ball the number, begging the question of how high the real figure would be.

Further, none of the proposed bills does anything to encourage reductions from the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide – China. That’s right, China just surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter. In fact, like all these bills, it would worsen the problem. Even the Bingaman bill would export hundreds of thousands of jobs – mostly to China. But the U.S. emissions as a measure of productivity are far lower than China’s, or Europe’s, for that matter. So every job sent there will increase emissions, not lower them. China has made it abundantly clear that it will be decades before it signs onto mandatory limits because it wants to grow – and unilateral global warming bills will help them do so at our expense.

The fact that not one proposal before the Senate meets this standard indicates that it is highly unlikely the Senate will pass carbon cap-and-trade legislation anytime in the near future.

###

Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman. It is refreshing that we are beginning the process of examining substantive issues that need to be examined before any individual piece of legislation can be seriously considered. It is my hope that this approach will be adopted at the full Committee as well so that all the Members of the Committee can begin examining the nuts and bolts of how various approaches would operate. We need to begin looking at the economics – both at what works and what doesn’t work.

It seems clear to me, though, that the carbon cap-and-trade approach itself is what doesn’t work. The Kyoto Protocol is an international beacon warning our nation of what not to do. The failure of the United Nations’ grand experiment is not a lesson in how better to tinker with its structure so that the next time it might possibly, hopefully work. No, the lesson is more fundamental. It is the lesson of a failed approach. Let me be clear: carbon cap-and-trade systems will never work.

This body has now passed two resolutions on climate change that are similar. The Byrd-Hagel Sense of the Senate, which passed 95 – 0, resolved that the U.S. should not be a signatory to any international agreement that would result in serious harm to the U.S. economy or did not mandate reductions from the developing world. Similarly, the Bingaman Sense of the Senate resolved that the U.S. should address global warming as long as it will not significantly harm the United States economy and encourages comparable action by other nations that are major trading partners and key contributors to global emissions.

Not a single bill before Congress meets these criteria – not one. They range from costly to ruinous. But they all fail to meet the requirements of Byrd-Hagel or Bingaman.

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Opening Statement: Hearing on “Examining the Case for the California Waiver”

Thursday July 26, 2007

In Case You Missed It...Republican senator challenges Clinton's opposition to Yucca (Las Vegas Review-Journal By Steve Tetreault, July 26, 2007)

Thursday July 26, 2007

In Case You Missed It...Republican senator challenges Clinton's opposition to Yucca (Las Vegas Review-Journal By Steve Tetreault, July 26, 2007)

Thursday July 26, 2007

INHOFE OPENING STATEMENT: “Oversight of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Programs"

Wednesday July 25, 2007

EPW FACT OF THE DAY: POLITICS TRUMPS SCIENCE IN DEMOCRATS’ PERCHLORATE BILL

Wednesday July 25, 2007

POLITICS TRUMPS SCIENCE IN DEMOCRATS’ PERCHLORATE BILL

Wednesday July 25, 2007

Senator Clinton Fails To Ask ‘Hard Questions’ About Yucca Mountain

Tuesday July 24, 2007

EPW FACT OF THE DAY: PROPOSED CLIMATE BILLS FAIL TO MEET SENATE TEST

Tuesday July 24, 2007

PROPOSED CLIMATE BILLS FAIL TO MEET SENATE TEST

Tuesday July 24, 2007

Opening Statement: Hearing on"Economic and International Issues in Global Warming Policy"

Tuesday July 24, 2007

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