CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a 19-state coalition asking the Biden administration to reject a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule that will target power plants without meaningful benefits to the public.
In a comment letter filed April 11, the coalition said the Biden administration’s proposal would exchange the standard provided by a Trump-era rule for re-imposing costs and an atmosphere of uncertainty that resulted from EPA’s previous findings. It says the rule would thereby increase the cost of electricity at a time when inflation is already taking money from people’s pockets.
“The Biden administration’s overreach is hitting West Virginians in their wallets at a time when money is already tight for many,” Morrisey said in a press release. “This rule is the latest example of regulatory overreach that is becoming the norm with the current administration.
Morrisey
"West Virginia was part of the coalition that challenged the EPA’s efforts the last time EPA tried this, and West Virginia is proud to be leading the opposition here against this renewed effort.”
In the letter, the coalition reminds EPA of what the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 when it rebuked EPA in a landmark case, Michigan v. EPA: in the Clean Air Act, Congress treated “power plants differently from other sources.”
Morrisey says that before the EPA can apply certain, more restrictive aspects of the Act to regulate those plants, it must take the extra step of finding that the stricter regulation is both appropriate and necessary despite the many other regulatory programs that are already in place under the Act.
The letter argues EPA has not done that and nevertheless is pressing on to the detriment of the plants that will be subject to this unnecessary regulation.
The coalition says, if implemented, the proposed EPA rule would impose a burden on many of the regulated plants that they shouldn’t have to bear. They may then pass the financial costs of this burden to ratepayers in the form of higher power bills or shut down altogether.
Morrisey signed the letter with attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
