Bluegrass Beacon: EPA represents a ‘real and present danger’ to Kentucky

Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, 11 a.m. – Calling the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new clean-air regulations “illegal” and a “real and present danger,” the attorneys general of Kentucky and West Virginia have locked arms with several of their counterparts in other states in the form of a lawsuit to stop Washington’s assault on coal.

The possibility of what remains of Kentucky’s coal industry and economy fizzling out like wind turbines on calm and hazy summer days is too much for the politically liberal Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway to ignore – even during a heated U.S. Senate campaign.

Conway called new proposed EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act “overreaching” and the equivalent of regulatory double jeopardy, noting that the Supreme Court has made it clear that “once something is regulated under one provision of the Clean Air Act, it can’t be regulated under another.”

He said the EPA claims “that a drafting error some years ago may give them the authority to do it. Well, that’s not going to fly with my office.”

Finally, someone in Frankfort is doing something beyond talking about how important coal is to our state and how the EPA is overstepping its bounds with no semblance of accountability and with little respect for the will of Congress.

While Congress may be politically unpopular, the idea of empowering the people’s representatives to protect them from the groping of an overly zealous federal government found tremendous favor among America’s founders.

Kentucky Coal Association president Bill Bissett said the current regulatory proposal “reflects a stunning absence of respect for constitutional principles of separation of powers and for the will of the American people.”

Bissett told the EPA at a recent hearing in Washington (why won’t the EPA fanatics come to Kentucky?) that Congress’ rejection in 2009 of proposed “cap-and-trade” legislation should have put an end to the agency’s nonsensical plans to make greenhouse gas emissions regulations even more burdensome than the Clean Air Act already does. He charges the agency with making an attempted “end run” around Congress.

“This proposal is clearly an attempt to force a square regulatory peg into a round statutory hole, and it has little chance of surviving judicial review,” Bissett said.

But could it survive the meddling of President Barack Obama’s White House?

Radical environmental ideologues and the attorneys general who represent them in 11 states are trying to get the lawsuit dismissed.

Such disagreement between states is precisely why we have a constitution that endorses “cooperative federalism,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey noted.

“The Clean Air Act was designed to put forth the principles of cooperative federalism – the federal government has its role; the state has its role and you want to make sure there aren’t duplicative regulations in place,” Morrisey said at a joint news conference with Conway.

Morrisey said the group has filed papers to expedite hearing of the lawsuit.

“Our people in our states cannot afford to wait two, three years to have this issue resolved,” he said. “There is a real and present danger associated with these regulations now. Quite frankly, there’s a chilling effect to states, to coal operators, the power plants, to coal miners.”

It’s good to see our political leaders catching on to what we’ve often urged in this column: use the principles of federalism to protect Kentuckians, especially those in our coal industry – which has lost nearly half of its mining workforce since Conway’s fellow Democrat became a resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The fact is that the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth amendments empower states and their citizens to make decisions not specifically granted to the federal government.

This lawsuit should remind Washington that the power to regulate Kentucky’s coal industry has not been granted to the pen and phone of Obama’s White House.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.

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