Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/27/2015
States would still be required to submit action plans to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emissions standards for existing coal fired power plants even if lawmakers blocked the EPA from using Fiscal Year 2016 funds to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told lawmakers this week during a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Ranking Member Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) asked McCarthy what would happen if such a rider were included in the spending bill for EPA for next year. McCarthy explained, “If that rider should be proposed and succeed, the states would still be required to submit those plans. EPA would be precluded from providing resources and helping them the way that this proposal is looking to do because we are in partnership with the states in this effort and we have been in partnership with them before, during and after that close of this comment period.”
Included in the EPA’s FY16 budget request is $25 million to help states develop action plans for compliance with the EPA’s proposed regulation, dubbed the “Clean Power Plan.” The proposed rule is due to be finalized this summer and will require states to develop action plans to meet EPA set carbon emission reduction goals. These action plans will have to be submitted in 2016, according to the proposed rule. “We have asked in this budget proposal for $25 million to support that activity to states, which is hopefully going to send a signal that if we want to get this done we need to work together,” McCarthy told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce also this week. “We also need to support the efforts of the states in moving this forward. States are pretty familiar with this type of a planning process and I’m just hoping that Congress will support that extra $25 million.”
Lawmakers Question EPA Legal Support Request
The EPA’s plan to increase staffing in legal support, while cutting back in other areas, was also challenged at this week’s Interior spending panel hearing, with some lawmakers saying they did not support paying for the EPA to defend actions they do not agree with, such as the Clean Power Plan, which is currently the basis for several pending legal challenges. “I don’t want to fund more lawyers to defend what I believe is overreach and improper action,” Rep. Evan Jenkins, (R-W.V.) said during the hearing. Other lawmakers suggested that the increase in legal support could indicate that EPA’s confidence in the legal standing of the proposed rules was wavering. “Considering that your budget request includes millions of additional dollars for lawyers to defend and litigate these rules, I think it’s fair to assume from that you’re also concerned about their legality,” Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said during the hearing.
The additional legal support is not to handle litigation, McCarthy said, but to help process a large volume of permit requests and the eventual submission of state action plans for the Clean Power Plan. “Part of the legal staff issues is to make sure that there is no bottleneck in our ability to provide good advice and to look at all of the rules as well as the permits across the agency that are not moving as quickly as we can because we don’t have the resources assigned,” she said. “We are looking at beefing that up so permits can go more quickly, approvals of these plans can happen more quickly.”
