At the end of April, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson accepted Al Armendariz’ resignation after he made this statement:
The controversy erupted last week when a video surfaced showing Armendariz saying in 2010 that his methods for dealing with non-compliant oil and gas companies were “like when the Romans conquered the villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into little villages in Turkish towns and they’d find the first five guys they saw and crucify them.”
The EPA apparently isn’t satisfied with intimidating oil and gas companies. Now they’re attempting to kill the iron mining industry:
“In the middle of the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression, the EPA’s sheer and utter disregard for our industry, its workers, and their families shows how out of touch with reality Washington bureaucrats really are. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has already demonstrated effective regulation of our environmental laws, and these regulators know what is best for our state. Under the Obama Administration, the EPA has Minnesota jobs in its crosshairs. We are witnessing this kind of administrative overreach at a time when we’re supposed to be encouraging growth, not stifling it. I am very concerned about the impact this new overreach will have on Minnesota’s Iron Range, and I will be contacting the EPA in response to its decision.”
The MPCA hasn’t gone soft on companies lately. That’s why the EPA’s recent regulations are likely based on political agendas, not scientific reality.
The EPA’s anti-mining agenda required that they ignore the MPCA’s regulations:
While the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency approved a so-called regional haze emissions plan for the six operating taconite plants in April, the EPA now is saying that plan didn’t go far enough. The state plan generally said the taconite plants were already doing all they could to reduce haze pollution and didn’t need to apply “best available retrofit technology.”
Federal regulators disagreed, saying trial runs at the Minntac plant in Mountain Iron showed good results at lowering emissions using best available retrofit technology, or BART.
“Thus, because the Michigan and Minnesota (proposals) failed to adequately establish BART limits for its subject taconite ore processing facilities, we are required to promulgate a” federal implementation plan, the EPA said in the document.
This administration’s EPA is the biggest job-killer other than the ACA. Their hostility towards industry is extensively documented.
The EPA’s regulations on the coal industry will effectively kill the building of new coal-fired power plants:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new rule to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants, which would effectively ban new coal power plants, as its emissions standards are too low to be met by conventional coal-fired facilities.
This stands in stark contrast with the President’s supposed “all of the above energy approach” and sends a strong signal that coal is not part of the President’s energy vision for America. In combination with other EPA regulations that contribute to the premature shutdown of existing coal plants, the EPA’s actions represent one of the greatest threats to the electric sector and America’s energy supply.
The new rule requires power plants to meet an output-based standard of 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced. Other than natural gas-fired power plants built in recent years, most power plants, and especially coal-fired ones, would fail to meet that standard.
Simply put, Minnesota’s senators should join Chip Cravaack in this fight against a renegade federal agency bent on destroying jobs. If Sen. Klobuchar doesn’t join with Chip Cravaack in this fight, we’ll know that she’s in the pocket of the environmentalists. We’ll know that she isn’t working for better paying jobs on the Iron Range.
What’s disgusting is that President Obama wants the EPA to destroy jobs. That’s what he essentially said in this video:
That’s who Chip is fighting against. That’s what’s at stake. The air and water have never been cleaner than they are now. That doesn’t mean there aren’t projects that deserve immediate attention. It just means that the EPA shouldn’t pick fights based on their political ideology. They shouldn’t pick fights with the hard-working men of the Iron Range.
Tags: President Obama, Lisa Jackson, Al Armendariz, EPA, Crucify, MPCA, Iron Range, Power Plants, War on Coal, Democrats, Chip Cravaack, Jobs, Unions, MNGOP, Election 2012