After years of dodging the region most impacted by its regulatory red tape, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday will head to the heart of American coal country for the agency’s only scheduled hearing on its rollback of the coal-crushing Clean Power Plan.
EPA officials over the next two days will hear from more than 300 speakers at marathon public forums in Charleston, West Virginia. The sessions are scheduled to conclude Wednesday afternoon but could stretch to Thursday depending on turnout, agency officials said.
The events — which come as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt slowly unwinds the CPP, an Obama-era program explicitly designed to target coal by instituting harsh limits on carbon emissions from power plants — will mark a turnaround for the agency.
When crafting the rule during former President Obama’s second term, the EPA held public hearings in cities such as Denver, Washington, and Atlanta, rejecting overtures to travel to Kentucky, West Virginia, or other areas that would bear the brunt of the impact from a massive crackdown on coal production.
The closest the Obama EPA came to coal country was a forum in Pittsburgh.
“I invited then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to come to West Virginia and hear for herself from West Virginians devastated by the Obama administration’s anti-coal agenda. She never showed up,” said Rep. Evan Jenkins, West Virginia Republican, who’s expected to speak at Tuesday’s hearing. “After eight years of being ignored by Washington bureaucrats, West Virginians will have the chance to make their voices heard.”
While this week will mark the only public hearings on the CPP repeal plan, it’s still expected to take as long as another year before the Trump administration can fully kill the regulation. The CPP, which would have slashed the amount of electricity generated by coal by about 25 percent and would have raised energy prices for consumers, federal data showed, was perhaps the most high-profile and controversial of any Obama-era environmental moves.
It formed the backbone of Mr. Obama’s pledge under the Paris climate accord to cut U.S. emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025, and it also spawned a narrative — used by President Trump throughout his campaign — that the Obama administration had declared a “war on coal.” While utilities prepared for the rule by shutting down coal plants across the country, the CPP was stayed by the Supreme Court and has never gone into full effect.
The Charleston events surely will give coal miners, manufacturers, and other CPP opponents their day to speak, but environmentalists also are expected to show up in force.
Bill Price, head of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice and Beyond Coal campaigns in West Virginia, said the organization is planning its own “hearing for health and communities” in Charleston, hoping to draw CPP opponents who may not get the chance to speak at the EPA event.
Sierra Club officials, along with environmentalists from a host of other groups and public officials from states such as New York that have long supported the CPP, will also speak.
Mr. Price said his group is pushing for additional hearings across the country.
“They’re ignoring front-line communities across this country which are impacted by coal pollution, which the CPP plans to remedy,” he said Monday.
An EPA spokesperson said the agency “will do our best to respond to requests for additional meetings.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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