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In another triumph for government transparency, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson signed the final MACT Rule last Friday, but she’s been keeping it secret until a formal announcement planned for today. MACT stands for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. It covers emission rules for various industries, controlling the technologies the EPA finds achievable in the same sense that a choke chain controls a dog. The new MACT rules are going to come down hard on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, despite serious questions raised by critics about the EPA’s methodology for calculating costs and benefits from the rule. Many of the...

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil highly-anticipated regulations on Wednesday aimed at curbing mercury and other toxic air pollutants from power plants. The agency said Tuesday that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will make a “significant Clean Air Act announcement” Wednesday at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. A source closely following the issue confirmed to The Hill that the agency will unveil the final mercury and air toxics standards. Jackson will be joined at the event Wednesday afternoon by public health experts and industry representatives, EPA said. But the agency did not name the officials. The long-delayed...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

I was listening to Neil Boortz last night and he was talking about this new Carbon EPA stuff. He said that the EPA was hiring, get this, 230,000 new employees whose sole responsibility was to process this new paper work. He said that it was going to cost (I think) 1.4 million jobs right out of the box and companies will have to fold, and that some powerplants that we desparate need will be shut down, electricity is going to go through the roof. C02, a natural occuring Gas, is now pollution. He did say that Hermain Cain said the...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Monday asked President Barack Obama to use his executive authority to prevent or delay implementation of stricter pollution standards, saying they will have an "immediate and devastating" effect on the state. The standards have stirred up Texas' largest energy companies, which say they don't have adequate time to meet the deadlines without shutting down plants and jeopardizing the reliability of Texas' electric grid. Implementation of the rules starts Jan. 1. In the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Perry said the implementation of the Cross State Air Pollution Rules will have...

The president has found a way to add jobs, after all — 230,000 of ‘em, all within the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the number of new bureaucrats the federal government will need to hire to implement new proposed greenhouse gas regulations, according to a report by The Daily Caller: The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion...

The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules. The EPA aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act, even though the law doesn’t give the EPA explicit power to do so. The agency’s authority to move forward is being challenged in court by petitioners who argue that...

If you came up with a bumper sticker that pulls together the platform of this year’s crop of Republican presidential candidates, it would have to be: Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP. It’s not just the 21st century they want to turn the clock back on — health-care reform, global warming and the financial regulations passed in the wake of the recent financial crises and accounting scandals. These folks are actually talking about repealing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970s. SNIP They reject as thoroughly discredited all of Keynesian economics,...

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has exercised its authority under the Clean Air Act to temporarily waive certain federal clean gasoline requirements for parts of Pennsylvania. The waiver was granted by EPA in coordination with the Department of Energy (DOE), at the request of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson determined that...

Barbara Boxer: I hope greens sue President Obama By: Darren Goode September 7, 2011 09:01 AM EDT Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said she hopes green groups sue President Barack Obama over his decision to punt a regulation curbing smog-creating emissions until at least 2013. Boxer — whose relatively mild reaction to Obama’s surprise announcement Friday was in contrast to heated rebukes by environmental groups — said she will stand by those groups in any litigation to force the administration to issue a final ozone rule that goes beyond what was enacted by President George W. Bush....

The unique way Texas regulates air pollution from refineries, chemical plants and other major industries is no more — for now. The EPA said Tuesday all 136 industrial plants with state-issued permits that do not meet federal Clean Air Act requirements have agreed to apply for new ones. The announcement comes one year after the federal agency rejected Texas' use of so-called flexible permits. But the dispute is not over, because state officials and at least 10 industry groups are challenging the EPA's actions in federal court. Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials have said the EPA was threatening...

EPA: ‘Nothing to fear’ on climate regs By Andrew Restuccia - 04/26/11 10:43 AM ET Environmental Protection Administrator Lisa Jackson said Tuesday that the public has no reason to fear the agency’s pending climate regulations. “I believe there is nothing to fear from common-sense use of the Clean Air Act to begin to put this country in the direction of moving towards addressing our greenhouse gas emissions,” Jackson said during remarks at an energy conference in Washington. The EPA has begun phasing in greenhouse gas standards for new and modified power plants and refineries. The regulations have come under attack...

Federal officials threatened Monday to block road money and seize control of Utah's air quality management plan because of an exemption for excessive pollution from oil refineries and other sources. Utah officials have about 18 months to change the rule to ensure polluters are cited for a violation first, instead of the state having to investigate a breakdown and then issue a violation, said Monica Morales, the head of the air quality planning unit for the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 8 office in Denver. The current rule "is not in compliance with the Clean Air Act," Morales said.

Jobs: The EPA admits to Congress that it does not take into account the impact of its regulations on employment, the economy or international competitiveness. Neither, apparently, does the White House. This stunning revelation was made by EPA Administrator Mathy Stanislaus in response to a question by Colorado GOP Rep. Cory Gardner. It came during Stanislaus' testimony before the House Environment and Energy Committee on Thursday and exposes the Obama administration's public posture on jobs and the environment as a fraud. Gardner was asking about an EPA regulation that would govern industries that recycle coal and ash and other fossil...

Jim Inhofe to Democrats: 'Get a life'By DARREN GOODE | 4/5/11 3:08 PM EDT Sen. Jim Inhofe has a simple message to House Democratic critics of the Republican plan to derail EPA climate change regulations: “Get a life.” The Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member wasn’t amused by the series of snarky Democratic amendments to rename the GOP legislation preventing EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) offered a series of amendments to the House measure — which Inhofe is pushing in the Senate — to change the title of the...

Two Central Valley biomass plants have agreed to pay more than $830,000 in fines for violating the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday. “Today’s enforcement actions are a victory for human health,” Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest, said in a statement. The plants in Chowchilla and El Nido, both owned by Global Ampersand, LLC, of Boston, were fined $343,000 and $492,000, respectively. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment. David Kim, assistant regional counsel for the EPA, said that the fines showed that even the renewable energy industry could run...

Environment: Ignoring both Congress and the voters, the Environmental Protection Agency starts the new year governing by decree with job-killing regulations. Take a deep breath, but if you exhale you're a polluter. Cap-and-trade is dead, long live cap-and-trade in the form of regulations promulgated in the coming year by what George Orwell might call the Ministry of Environment. It claims that the Clean Air Act and a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 let the EPA regulate carbon dioxide as a planet-warming pollutant. We recently commented on the EPA's recent commandeering of the permitting process from Texas, with which it is...

Regulation: The federal agency declares Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and seizes control of the permitting process. Jobs, states' rights and the 2012 presidential election are all involved. While most of America was unwrapping their Christmas presents, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was staring at a lump of coal the Environmental Protection Agency put in his state's stocking. Actually, it wasn't a lump of coal — that causes global warming. And Santa won't be coming down any Texas chimney unless he checks with the EPA first. Two days before Christmas, EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, in a...

After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight. On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president's agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to...

This week marks the beginning of the end of the long national nightmare known as the 111th Congress.  Republicans were given a second chance—by default—through a national effort to stop the destructive Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda. House Republicans are poised to begin making the same kind of business-as-usual mistakes that relegated the party to minority status in 2006.  The most glaring example is the looming threat of having Rep. Fred Upton (RINO-Mich.) become chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, despite his liberal voting record, simply because he’s next in line.  If there is one thing voters made absolutely clear...