In The News
Inhofe: Infrastructure Is the Economic Foundation of Our Communities and Country
Cities Speak
Wednesday May 18, 2016
Sen. Jim Inhofe
The theme for Infrastructure Week 2016 is “Infrastructure Matters,” and as chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, this is a motto I have worked to consistently uphold in the committee’s legislative priorities. Last year, the president signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, a law which addresses our nation’s aging transportation infrastructure. This year, my committee continues our commitment to addressing the infrastructure needs of the nation with the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2016 (S. 2848).
WRDA, like the FAST Act, upholds Congress’s constitutional responsibility to maintain our critical infrastructure and advance commerce. WRDA 2016 set up our economy for success by prioritizing projects that deepen ports to increase our global competitive advantage, providing protection from disastrous flood waters, and helping to restore our nation’s critical ecosystems. Just as critical, S. 2848 also addresses our aging drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
The federal interest in addressing drinking water and wastewater infrastructure is to support both public health and our economy. Appropriately, the ratepayers, like you and me, are predominately covering the cost to maintain the infrastructure for drinking water and sewer services. However, ratepayers are now footing the bill for unfunded federal mandates that force local communities to change their priorities. Unfortunately, in the water and sewer sector, this forces basic repair and replacement to the bottom of the list. When we force communities to chase mandates that may have very small incremental health or environmental benefits, we risk losing basic public health protections.
We also risk losing the economic foundation of our communities and our country.
The federal programs in WRDA 2016 encourage both local and private investment while also allowing states and local governments to partner with the federal government when necessary to help disadvantaged or high-risk communities address their water resource needs.
A cost-effective way to provide federal assistance to communities with clean water and drinking water needs is by continuing to support the state revolving funds (SRF) that provide federally backed low-cost loans for infrastructure improvements. Because these are loans that leverage additional investment, the clean water fund results in a 256 percent return on the federal investment and the newer drinking water fund results in a 176 percent return on investment.
To support even more investment in infrastructure, Congress attached the Water Infrastructure Financing and Innovation Act (WIFIA) to the WRDA 2014 bill to address high-cost projects. This year, the EPA is finally requesting funding to start the WIFIA program. The Office of Management and Budget predicts that the $15 million the EPA is proposing will secure up to $980 million in loans – a more than 60 to 1 ratio. WRDA 2016 provides $70 million in fully-offset, direct spending to capitalize WIFIA to help communities all over the country with low-cost loans. This funding will support as much $4.2 billion in secured loans.
WIFIA is designed to supplement, not displace, the SRFs. We need both programs, and funding for WIFIA cannot come at the expense of the SRFs. I strongly oppose the collective $217 million cut to the SRFs in the President’s FY 2017 budget request.
S. 2848 also addresses the urgent need to increase support for communities who simply can’t afford the investments that the EPA wants them to make and who don’t have the ability to pay back SRF or WIFIA loans. The WRDA bill addresses this issue by establishing a new grant program in the Safe Drinking Water Act to help small and disadvantaged communities meet the requirements of the Act, with a priority for underserved communities that lack basic drinking water or wastewater services.
I work hard to champion infrastructure in Congress because I believe that investment in infrastructure supports economic growth and gives America a competitive edge in the global marketplace. According to the Water Environment Federation and the Water Reuse Association, every one million dollars of SRF spending will result in $2.95 million in economic growth and generate $930,000 in new federal tax revenues, proving once again that America’s infrastructure is a sound federal investment.
Infrastructure matters – and it is for that reason I look forward to working with my colleagues to move this bill forward as soon as possible.
Tulsa World Editorial: Inhofe takes care of local infrastructure issues in water bill
Tulsa World Editorial Board
Saturday May 7, 2016
Sen. Jim Inhofe, always a champion of infrastructure, has moved along a measure that would improve both the Tulsa County levee system and the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System.
The Water Resources Development Act was passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on a bipartisan 19-1 vote. Inhofe is the committee’s chairman.
The measure would authorize the Corps of Engineers to develop a plan for modifying the Tulsa and West Tulsa Levee System to address deficiencies.
Tulsa County voters approved $5 million in the recent Vision extension for levee District 12, and further federal funding would enhance that work. More than 10,000 people and some $2 billion of infrastructure, including two refineries, are protected by the levees.
The measure also would allow the corps to establish partnerships with local entities to ensure safe, functional operation of projects along the McClellan-Kerr inland waterway. It would allow the corps to accept and use funds, materials and services donated by non-federal interests to help address the backlog of maintenance of waterway projects.
Of equal importance, the act would make sure that the plans to deepen the waterway to support increased commerce will not be deauthorized while awaiting funding from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund.
The channel begins at the Port of Catoosa and has long been an economic engine for this part of the state. Keeping the waterway open and safe is vital to the Oklahoma economy. Deepening the channel and eventually repairing the locks and dams along the way will assure that value into the future and encourage even more businesses to make the Port of Catoosa home.
Thank you, Sen. Inhofe, for looking after the infrastructure needs of the nation, and this part of the nation in particular. Your work will help assure Oklahoma’s future prosperity.
EPA is pushing back against GOP calls to halt all work on its power plant greenhouse gas rule in light of the Supreme Court stay, arguing that the court's order is “ambiguous” on the issue of whether all of the rule's deadlines must be delayed if the rule survives legal challenge and that the issue will not be settled until that occurs.
“The ultimate effect of the stay on [Clean Power Plan (CPP)] deadlines will be determined when the stay is lifted,” acting EPA air chief Janet McCabe says in an April 18 letter to Senate environment committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) that was obtained by InsideEPA/climate April 29.
The letter is a response to Inhofe's March 10 letter arguing that the high court's stay order includes “inherent” requirements to postpone, or toll, all of the deadlines in the rule to account for the litigation.
As evidence, Inhofe had argued that a stay application from electric co-ops asked the high court to “extend all compliance dates by the number of days between publication of the Rule and a final decision in this consolidated appeal.”
But McCabe in her recent letter -- which echoes her earlier comments that it is “premature” to speculate whether the rule's deadlines would be delayed -- says that “different applicants requested different relief.”
“The government interpreted the stay applicants' opening briefs as requesting that all CPP deadlines be tolled, and it opposed the stay in part on the grounds that such relief would be extraordinary and unprecedented,” she writes. “In their reply brief, however, the States clarified that they were only seeking a stay that would relieve States of the obligation to comply with CPP deadlines during the litigation and that the stay would not necessarily provide for day-to-day tolling of the deadlines.”
She adds that the high court's Feb. 9 orders “did not discuss the parties' differing views of whether and how the stay would affect the CPP's compliance deadlines, and they did not expressly resolve the issue.”
The Department of Justice, on EPA's behalf, said in a Feb. 4 brief to the high court that stay applicants “appear to seek much more than interim relief that would 'temporarily divest [the Rule] of enforceability' while review is ongoing. . . . Rather, they explicitly or implicitly ask this Court to toll all of the relevant deadlines set forth in the Rule, even those that would come due many years after the resolution of their challenge, for the period between the Rule’s publication and the final disposition of their lawsuits.”
But a coalition of states opposing the rule, led by West Virginia, said in a Feb. 5 reply brief that “contrary to EPA’s assertion . . . the States’ requested relief is a straightforward [Administrative Procedure Act] stay, which 'halt[s] or postpone[s] [the Power Plan, [including] by temporarily divesting [the Power Plan] of enforceability.'”
The states added: “In the unlikely event the Plan survives judicial review, . . . tolling would be appropriate as a matter of basic fairness. But the exact shape of such an equitable disposition need not be decided today.”
The states cited a 1999 U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision in Michigan v. EPA that accepted post-decision briefing on a similar issue for an air regulation and then tolled the deadline for states to submit compliance plans after the stayed rule was upheld.
Deadline Advocacy
The deadline issue has been the subject of advocacy from both supporters and opponents of the rule, also known as the existing source performance standards (ESPS).
For example, a recent report from the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University largely agrees with EPA's view, arguing the D.C. Circuit likely would settle the issue if the rule is upheld.
Further, the IPI report says that the D.C. Circuit in that scenario should avoid delaying the rule's compliance deadlines because greater deployment of renewable power over the coming years could ease compliance.
“It is likely that compliance with the Clean Power Plan will be achievable on a shorter timeframe than originally envisioned,” the report says, arguing that recently extended tax credits for wind and solar power will deploy much more zero-emission resources than EPA projected when it finalized the rule in August 2015.
IPI's report serves as a rebuttal to a March 2 white paper from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that sought to build a legal case for why the high court stay requires a delay for all ESPS state plan submission and compliance deadlines.
Similarly, an April 8 post from the law firm Jones Day charges that EPA is “creating a confusing situation for those charged with implementing the Clean Power Plan.” It argues the agency must confirm that the stay means “compliance deadlines must therefore be postponed” to offer clarity to industry and states.
Associated Rules
In her recent letter, McCabe also confirms that the agency will continue work on associated rules -- including an early action incentive program and model trading rules -- because some states have “asked us to move forward with our outreach and to continue providing support and developing tools” to aid implementation.
“We will move forward developing these actions in a way that is consistent with the stay while providing states the tools they have asked for to help address carbon pollution from power plants,” she writes.
McCabe adds that EPA “has in the past moved forward with preparing for the potential implementation of a rule while it has been stayed, in anticipation of the possibility that the stay could be lifted. Such actions are unaffected by a stay.” To support the point, she cites a 2009 Supreme Court ruling in Nken v. Holder, which concerned how to consider a stay request of a deportation order.
EPA's position is further confirmed by its April 26 move to send a proposed update to its Clean Energy Incentive Program to the White House for inter-agency review. -- Lee Logan (llogan@iwpnews.com)
http://insideepaclimate.com/daily-news/epa-says-high-court-ambiguous-possible-delay-esps-deadlines
Sen. Jim Inhofe
Throughout President Obama’s time in office, he and his cabinet officials have made claims that climate change is the greatest threat we face.
Last year, Vox pressed the president on the matter, asking if he truly believes it is a greater threat than even terrorism. He responded by saying “absolutely,” and his press secretary Josh Earnest reaffirmed a day later saying unapologetically, “the threat of climate change is greater than the threat of terrorism.”
Just a few days after the administration’s remarks, the Islamic State beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in the Middle East and posted it on the Internet for all to see. While the president is busy pushing climate change as the most important issue among international elites, the Islamic State is working to recruit its newest members using such tactics as this.
Whether in San Bernardino, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Mali, Philippines, Australia, or across the globe, deadly and violent attacks by radical extremists are happening on a regular and increasing basis.
To suggest that rising temperature is the cause for these efforts is not only disingenuous, but also dangerous.
The objective of these acts of terror is to destroy Western way of life, extinguish religious minority groups, drive out vulnerable and poor populations, and suppress women and children’s freedom and participation in society. To suggest that rising temperature is the cause for these efforts is not only disingenuous, but also dangerous.
On April 13, I held a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to highlight the consequences of the Obama administration’s rhetoric that elevates the theory of man-driven climate change above the current threats our society is facing.
Retired Major Gen. Bob Scales provided an expert perspective on the tendency for liberals to compare climate change and war, saying that: “The administration’s passion to connect climate change and war is an example of faulty theories that rely on relevance of politically correct imaginings rather than established historical precedent or a learned understanding of war.”
Gen. Scales went on to testify that the greater threat is the Obama administration’s syphoning off of defense dollars in order to pay for his climate change initiatives. The $120 billion spent by the Obama administration on climate change in the past seven years would have better served our national defense.
Instead the administration has put into motion $1 trillion in defense budget cuts while also using precious defense funds for wasteful green energy initiatives to include building biofuel refineries for the private sector—a job more suited for the Department of Energy.
Gen. Scales highlighted that as a result of this misprioritization of taxpayer dollars, our “soldiers and sailors today are bombarded by a series of global threats and diminishing resources. The additional distraction of focusing on climate change in the midst of all this is simply counterproductive.”
Today, the international community gathers once again in the name of climate change, this time in New York City to sign the Paris agreement. We will undoubtedly hear speech after speech about how today’s actions are necessary in order to save our children’s children from an imperiled future.
The U.N. is great at hyping up the legitimacy of photo-op diplomacy. But these actions are a distraction from the fact that climate change policies come at a high economic cost while having no actual impact on the climate change.
These actions are a distraction from the fact that climate change policies come at a high economic cost while having no actual impact on the climate change.
For the United States, the high profile distraction being led by Secretary of State John Kerry is meant to settle the concern among some international circles that President Obama will not be able to follow through on his emission reduction promises.
But these concerns are well founded, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s truly historic stay against his Clean Power Plan, which makes delivery of his 26 to 28 percent emission reduction promise wholly unrealistic.
It’s a shame the president and the U.N. will spend the day celebrating an agreement that has no legal weight and will ultimately fail just like the Kyoto Protocol.
Their time and our resources would have been better spent unifying the international community around a need to protect and defend our citizens from the real threat at the door step—radical Islamic extremism.
Inhofe: Earth Day marks the composting of the global climate deal
New York Post
Thursday April 21, 2016
Sen. Jim Inhofe
Climate diplomats have paraded December’s Paris Agreement as historic. But as representatives gather in New York Friday to sign the deal, they should already know: The deal is nothing but a stack of empty promises.
In order for the agreement to take legal effect, 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions have to sign it. As the Obama administration has promised, the United States will inevitably sign the agreement on Friday despite the reality that my country will fall well short of President Obama’s promise.
The United States’ contribution to this climate agreement hinges entirely on President Obama’s commitments. Congress has passed no new laws to enable the president to meet his promises, and the so-called Clean Power Plan — the capstone regulations for cutting emissions 26-28 percent by 2025 — has been dealt a major blow.
On Feb. 9, the US Supreme Court issued an unprecedented stay of the Clean Power Plan, halting the implementation of its rules until the suit is settled. The Court signaled what Congress, states and legal experts have been warning: President Obama’s climate regulations may ultimately get struck down.
But let’s not kid ourselves: Even before the Supreme Court’s decision, the president’s pledge to reduce emissions didn’t add up.
Should the Clean Power Plan be implemented in the United States, we’ll fail to deliver on 45 percent of promised reductions. Without the Clean Power Plan, the United States will fail to meet 60 percent of the president’s goal.
Despite my many requests as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee asking the Obama administration to explain how it will close this gap, the president refuses to account for the administration’s faulty math.
Naturally, the Supreme Court’s decision quickly sent ripples of worry abroad. Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, told The New York Times that “this could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.”
The Times reported similar sentiments from Zou Ji, the deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, who said bluntly, “Look, [if] the United States doesn’t keep its word, why make so many demands on us?”
India and China, two of the world’s largest polluters, aren’t the only countries second-guessing the agreement. Leading up to Paris, and well in advance of the Supreme Court stay, Poland had its doubts.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szyd?o worried that the UN’s commitments would undermine Poland’s economy and cause widespread job loss. Poland reluctantly agreed to the terms anyway, but it would be unsurprising if the Supreme Court decision gave Poland — and likeminded countries — the perfect excuse to rethink it.
The Supreme Court isn’t the only branch of the US government to have voiced concerns with President Obama’s climate agenda. In November, the Senate passed two bipartisan resolutions disapproving of the Clean Power Plan — a clear signal to the international community that without Senate ratification, the Paris Agreement isn’t legally binding in America.
The House of Representatives voted to block the president’s climate rules as well.
President Obama isn’t even attending the signing ceremony in New York, nor is his architect of the agreement, Todd Stern, which speaks volumes to the value this administration has placed in their commitment.
If foreign leaders need further evidence that the Paris Agreement will resoundingly fail to meet expectations, I point them in the direction of history; after all, past is prologue. Of the 36 countries legally bound to greenhouse gas-reduction from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, nearly half failed to comply and some countries even increased their emissions.
The Paris Agreement faces insurmountable problems ahead, with the most obvious being that the United States can’t follow through on President Obama’s commitment and may even withdraw its support with a new president come January.
The message could not be clearer to the international community: the Paris Agreement is not only misguided. It was also a waste of everyone’s time.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is the chairman of the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Christian Post:Christians and Climate Change: Don't Shut Down the Debate
Tuesday April 12, 2016
Christian Post Editorial Board
Civil debates over climate change can lead to greater understanding and will strengthen our policy prescriptions. Therefore, we the editors of The Christian Post pledge to continue offering our news site as a forum where all sides in this debate can advocate for their position.
We recognize that Christians take various positions on these issues.
Some Christians want carbon controls because of their admirable care for the world's poor, arguing that a rise in sea level and angry storms will wreak havoc among the most vulnerable.
Other Christians believe caring for the poor is directly tied to allowing the use of fossil fuels to raise the standard of living above the poverty level.
Next week on Earth Day, there be will pressure on world leaders to sign The Paris Agreement on Climate Change, buttressed by arguments that the "science is settled" and the "debate is over." These arguments will be contributing to a closed-mindedness that blinds people to the broader implications of climate change policy proposals.
Even more troubling is the growing movement among some progressives over the last two years to use government force to silence critics. What started as a seemingly off-the-wall comment from a Rochester Institute of Technology professor in 2014 has "progressed" into a full-fledged project at the Justice Dept. to explore whether racketeering laws used to catch mobsters can be applied to those who question the conclusions of climate control advocates. And last week, a group of 17 attorneys general, from 15 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, joined that effort.
The science is not settled. When the computer simulations offered by climate scientists have continually failed to accurately predict climate change, clearly there is more work to do.
On the other side, it would be wrong-headed to assume that the carbon once stored underground being released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels will have no effect.
To know the answer, we need more and better science. To argue that there is such a thing as settled science is to violate a basic premise of the scientific method — knowledge is gained through testing and retesting of alternating hypotheses.
Christians on all sides should agree that criminalizing debate is never moral. We should have more debate, not less, before determining a U.S. policy.
The intellectual prejudice and dogmatism of the "science is settled" crowd are already evident in their failure to engage the actual arguments of their ideological opponents.
Example 1: They fail to recognize there are more than two positions. Besides the arguments that fossil fuels do/do not cause climate change, their are other positions, such as 1) fossil fuels do cause climate change, but the effect is small; 2) fossil fuels do cause climate change but the effects are both positive and negative; or 3) fossil fuels do cause climate change, and the effects are large and negative, but the proposed solutions won't work.
Example 2: They fail to recognize their critic's concerns about poverty. Increasing the costs of energy will hurt the poor, the critics say. This is a valid concern that should be addressed, not dismissed with accusations of "science denial."
Tomorrow, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., will hold a hearing laying out the high economic price of energy controls for U.S. families, especially the poor. Based on past experience, we expect critics to ridicule these arguments. Christians should take the initiative in resisting such shaming tactics.
The debate should continue. Christians on all sides should wholeheartedly defend the right of every American to ask questions about U.S. policy, and of every scientist to conduct research and publish results free of political pressure.
The politics of shame, and the rejection of First Amendment speech, are direct threats to American society, to the Christians who thrive in it and to genuine scientific research, which always must be free to go wherever the evidence leads. Protecting these rights is undeniably the moral high ground.
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17)
All sides of this debate should try to persuade others in open, civil dialogue. Let's continue to sharpen one another in Christian love.
Editorial Board
Many Republican voters complain that politicians never get things done. So it’s worth highlighting a bipartisan deal in the Senate that would benefit the city of Flint and water systems nationwide—if obstructionists would get out of the way.
Last month Democrats refused to let the Senate energy bill move forward unless it included money to help Flint deal with its lead-contaminated water. Michigan SenatorsDebbie Stabenow and Gary Peters demanded a $600 million emergency appropriation—a blank check—to pay for infrastructure improvements and public health measures.
Republicans balked, noting that Flint still lacked a plan to fix its corroded pipes. Like many older cities, Flint doesn’t know where all of its lead service lines are located. Water systems in the other 49 states also need to remedy contamination and upgrade their systems.
Though the Environmental Protection Agency shares blame for the Flint debacle, Democrats attacked Republicans as heartless. Harry Reid declared that “one-hundred thousand people in Flint, Michigan, have been poisoned, and Republicans do nothing.” Republicans often play into Democrats’ trap, but not this time.
Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe deserves credit for negotiating a deal with Ms. Stabenow that allays GOP objections while achieving Democratic objectives. The agreement appropriates $70 million in loan subsidies for water projects nationwide including flood control, water reclamation and wastewater improvements.
Congress created the loan program in 2014 to help cash-strapped municipalities pay for critical repairs, and the $70 million credit subsidy would leverage between $700 million and $4.2 billion in financing. The EPA could only administer the loans to creditworthy projects with dedicated resources for repayment.
An additional $100 million in loans and grants would be available to states where the President has declared a public health emergency. To tap the funds, a state would have to submit a report to the EPA describing how the money would be used.
Here’s the best part: The cost would be offset by rescinding $250 million in subsidies for new Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loans that have in the past gone to Ford, Tesla and (the now bankrupt) Fisker Automotive. This is a worthy trade. In 2011 Senate Democrats rejected an effort by House Republicans to apply ATVM loan subsidies to Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief.
But no good deal goes unpunished. Utah’s Mike Lee— Ted Cruz’s surrogate in the Senate—has put a hold on the bill because he says “relief and repair efforts are already in the works.” That may be true, but Congress is going to spend some money on Flint, and this is a chance to neutralize a political vulnerability while reducing corporate welfare.
Mr. Lee’s protests have also emboldened ransom-seeking by Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, who last week placed a hold on the bill to force Republicans to drop an amendment that increases federal-state revenue sharing for offshore oil drilling. Mr. Nelson fears more revenues would encourage states to expand drilling offshore. Well, yes.
Republicans and Democrats have a chance to show voters that they can address a genuine problem without adding to the deficit. It would be a pity to let this compromise go to waste.
Seaports Magazine: Surface Transportation Enables Economic Prosperity
Thursday March 10, 2016
Sen. Jim Inhofe
Editorial Board
Congress has finally come up with a sensible way to help Flint, Michigan, clean up its drinking water -- and its plan could also benefit any American city that needs to get the lead out of its water supply.
Flint’s problem is a special emergency, but lead pipes are a persistent concern for many other cities. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have an exact count, but between 6 million and 11 million American homes still draw their water through lead pipes, some dating back to the 19th century.
Flint made its problem worse by running corrosive water from the Flint River through the system for 17 months. But even when water supplies are properly treated, the lead in such pipes can leach out. And when children drink that water, it can cause convulsions, brain damage and even death. So it’s important that lead service lines eventually be torn out and replaced everywhere.
The plan from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works -- which needs approval from the full Senate -- would do two things. First, it would offer $100 million in loans for any water utility in a state of emergency (a category that includes only Flint). This loan would be administered by the state of Michigan, and could be used by Flint to help pay for replacing the lead pipes that run to people’s homes from water mains under the streets.
The city may well have preferred a simple grant, given the poor condition of its finances. But if Flint were unable to repay, the state would be on the hook for the loan, so the corroded pipes could be replaced no matter what.
The second part of the Senate deal would apply to cities beyond Flint. It would put $70 million in seed money into an existing program that lets water utilities borrow from the U.S. Treasury at low interest rates for up to 35 years. (Congress created this program under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act in 2014, but has yet to significantly fund it.)
The WIFIA program can lend as much as $60 for every dollar it has in capital, so that the $70 million allocation could provide for $4.2 billion in loans -- enough to provide long-term financing for lead-pipe replacement in many places.
Other cities have found the work is affordable if they can pay for it gradually. Lansing, Michigan, for one -- a city in economic straits similar to Flint’s -- has been able to replace more than 13,000 of its 14,000 lead pipes since 2005, at a cost of about $3,000 per house. Madison, Wisconsin, has likewise replaced virtually all of its 8,000 lead pipes, financing the effort partly from ratepayers and partly with revenue from telecom companies that pay to put antennas on water towers.
If the Senate deal passes and so many cities take part as to exhaust the initial funds, Congress could increase the amount available. The financial cost of acting shouldn’t stand in the way of making sure all U.S. drinking water is lead-free.
Henry I. Miller
The Environmental Protection Agency has been in the news a lot lately–and as usual, the news isn’t good. EPA continues to be a paragon of zealotry, politicization and operational incompetence.
Last August, its experts and contractors unleashed three million gallons of contaminated mine wastewater into Colorado’s Animas River, polluting waterways in three states and likely costing taxpayers $28 billion in remediation costs. Investigators determined that EPA not only knew the risks beforehand and kept them to itself, but failed to notify state authorities until 24 hours after the disaster.
Another outrage was EPA’s collusion with environmental activists to benefit green energy subsidy-seekers, as regulators formulated and promoted their Power Plan. And just two months ago, the Government Accountability Office denounced the agency for illegally engaging in “covert propaganda” and “grassroots lobbying” in order to promote its Waters of the United States regulation, now stayed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Perhaps worst of all, in January EPA officials acknowledged knowing a full year ago that Flint, Michigan’s municipal water system had a problem with lead contamination. Still, they publicly maintained that the city’s water was safe, and when the facts finally emerged, they sought to deflect blame onto Republican Governor Rick Snyder. It was weeks before the culpable Regional Director was fired.
There is ample evidence that the EPA is consistently neither competent nor trustworthy. This month the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a case–American Farm Bureau Federation v. EPA–that, if not reviewed (and reversed), will entrust to EPA the power to control every land use decision in the nation.
The history is that in October, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an unprecedented Obama Administration transfer of power to EPA from the states of the Chesapeake Bay watershed–Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia–as well as the District of Columbia. A refusal to review that decision would constitute one of the Supreme Court’s most important–and misguided–environmental decisions in years.
Just months after taking office in 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order instructing the EPA to “make full use of its powers” under the Clean Water Act to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality. The regulators were to construct “watershed-based frameworks that assign pollution reduction responsibilities to pollution sources …” in a manner that “can be replicated throughout the nation.” In other words, EPA was to develop a template for exercising federal control over all sources of water pollution nationwide—a sort of national blueprint, applicable over time to every U.S. “watershed.”
Definitions are critical. The U.S. Geological Survey says that a watershed “consists of surface water–lakes, streams, reservoirs, and wetlands–and all the underlying ground water”; and EPA in turn defines wetlands broadly as “areas where the frequent and prolonged presence of water at or near the soil surface drives the natural system.”
That potentially gives EPA control over virtually every square inch of land in the country.
The Clean Water Act (CWA) addresses agriculture, forests, and runoff from streets and lawns differently than factories, sewage facilities, and power plants. For these “non-point sources” EPA sets water-quality goals for federal waterways like the Chesapeake Bay, but each state is permitted to determine how to achieve the goals. “It is the policy of Congress,” the Act says, “to recognize, preserve and protect the primary responsibilities and rights of States to prevent, reduce and eliminate pollution, to plan the development and use … of land and water resources …”
But EPA used Mr. Obama’s executive order to reinterpret a key provision of the CWA, the so-called Total Daily Maximum Load (TDML) provision. TMDL is a means of expressing standards for sediment and nutrients in national waters. For the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the agency tortured the meaning of “total.” It divided the 64,000 square miles of the watershed into more than a thousand separate sub-areas and categories. To each area and different use of land — agriculture, timber, and the like — EPA assigned separate limits for sediment, phosphorus, and nitrogen in runoff. It then gave itself ultimate authority over every detail of how each small subset would reach its target, no matter how distant it was from flowing waters.
In this context, the “rights of States” were transformed into an obligation to carry out EPA’s detailed orders, or face crippling penalties. EPA is now poised to tell farmers to stop farming and builders not to build – in effect, to become a national zoning board.
Over the past fifteen years, in SWANCC v. US Army Corps of Engineers (2001), Rapanos v. US (2006), and Georgia-Pacific West v. NEDC (2013), the Supreme Court has rejected all attempts by EPA and others to weaken the Clean Water Act’s deference to states. If it declines to hear American Farm Bureau Federation v. EPA, the Court will effectively reverse those decisions. It will upend Congress’ balancing of federal and state regulatory responsibilities and the Clean Water Act’s protections for citizens and their property against federal abuse and incompetence.
A Supreme Court decision handed down only yesterday offers some cause for optimism. The court temporarily blocked another sweeping proposed EPA rule, which would regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants. It was challenged by 29 states, which called the rule a “power grab” under which “the federal environmental regulator seeks to reorganize the energy grids in nearly every state in the nation.”
Failure to hear and reverse AFBF will legitimate EPA’s Clean Water Act power grab, not just for the Chesapeake watershed but, in time, for virtually the entire country.
