Factories, hospitals, universities, power plants and even churches are in the cross hairs of hyperaggressive regulators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
Seven proposed rules pending before the agency are poised to inflict more than $125 billion in costs on the U.S. economy annually, according to EPA’s own estimates.
These are not upfront costs, nor are they industry estimates, but rather numbers generated by EPA employees. And they do not include the billions more EPA’s upcoming anti-global-warming regulations will inflict on the economy if carried out as currently proposed.
Most of the pending regulations are derived from powers granted to the EPA by the Clean Air Act of 1990. For example, the most costly of the seven rules, the $90 billion new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone, are authorized by sections 108 and 109 of the CAA.
Ozone standards were set by EPA officials in 2008 when President George W. Bush was in the White House, but those levels are not good enough for the agency under President Obama.
Led by Administrator Lisa Jackson, EPA regulators want to force as many coal-fired power plants out of service as quickly as possible. These coal-fired plants generate nearly half of the electricity used every day in this country to power everything from laptops to lights.
Another CAA regulation, the area source rule, would regulate mercury emissions from boilers that provide heat and power for thousands of buildings across the country, including churches, hospitals and even farms.
According to the Small Business Administration, these rules would “impose significant new regulatory costs” on businesses, institutions and municipalities across the country.
The EPA claims all of these rules will provide a net benefit to society. But the Obama EPA’s regulatory benefit numbers should not be trusted. In 1999 under President Clinton, EPA conducted a CAA study that estimated economic benefits at $110 billion.
But when the Obama EPA conducted a similar study just 10 years later, the agency’s experts pegged CAA economic benefits at $2 trillion. In other words, the Obama EPA wants you to believe the CAA improved its economic impact by 1,000 percent in just over a decade.
Sound too good to be true? It is. Buried in the 2009 report, the study admits that “there is no way to validate” the air quality forecasts used to construct the study’s non-CAA baseline. Without a realistic nonregulation scenario, all of the EPA’s claimed health benefits from CAA regulations are, at best, bureaucratic guesses.
But while the future health benefits from EPA’s regulatory onslaught are highly suspect, the costs for businesses of complying with these rules today are very real.
“I would have a real tough time operating because I’d have to put up $50,000 for a new machine,” Dale Kaplan, owner of Kaplan’s Careful Cleaners in Camp Hill, Pa., said of possible EPA regulations on perchloroethylene, or perc, a common chemical used by dry cleaners.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection already regulates perc, but the Obama EPA is considering adopting stricter guidelines.
“While these costs are significant, they are small compared to the potential costs from the EPA’s impending global warming regulations,” said Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute.
The CAA requires the EPA to issue permits for any source that emits more than 250 tons of a designated pollutant. That level works great for substances like mercury or sulfur dioxide, but carbon dioxide is a harmless naturally occurring gas.
Millions of entities including small businesses, hospitals and churches would have to apply for CAA permits, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, alongside power plants and factories.
The permitting costs alone would run $76 billion every year, according to the EPA.
“The agency has long been a hyperactive regulator, but the rate at which it is now imposing ever-costlier rules has accelerated dramatically,” Diane Katz, regulatory policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Examiner.
“Congress must act to curb the agency’s unwarranted power grab if it hopes to see any meaningful economic recovery,” she said.
Conn Carroll is a senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
