EPA’s Regulatory Burden

Last week I received a message from someone knowledgeable about both the EPA and the Hill. It speaks for itself:

Shimkus is holding a hearing now on the coal ash rule, which is live on the committee web site.  The assistant administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response or someone from EPA just said that EPA always weighed costs and benefits before implementing a regulation and would never implement a regulation when the costs outweighed the benefits.  Whitfield asked him what proposed regulations had been killed when they found that the costs did outweigh the benefits.  The EPA guy said that he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head so would have to get back to him.  Whitfield asked him to provide one example, so that they could see the difference between a regulation that met the cost-benefit test and one that didn’t.  Don’t hold your breath.

EPA is one of the leading agencies burdening us with more and more regulation every year. For instance, at the moment it has these in the pipeline:

• Rulemaking to address greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles
• Clean air visibility, mercury, and ozone implementation rules
• Review of National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide
• Rulemakings regarding lead-based paint• National drinking water regulations covering groundwater and surface water
• National emission standards for hazardous air pollutants from plywood and composite wood products, certain reciprocating internal combustion engines, and auto paints
• Renewable fuels standard program
• Standards for cooling water intake structures
• Combined rulemaking for industrial, commercial, and institutional boilers and process heaters
• Standards for management of electric power producer coal-combustion wastes
• Control of emissions from nonroad spark ignition engines, new locomotives, and new marine diesel engines

That’s one of the astonishing facts contained in my CEI colleague Wayne Crews’ annual review of the regulatory state, Ten Thousand Commandments, which is released today. I have a more general review of what it contains over National Review Online.