Energy

West Virginia Petitions Trump’s EPA To Help Steelworkers And Coal Miners

REUTERS/Leah Millis

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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West Virginia asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday to overturn the Obama administration’s application of a Clean Air Act provision against the steel industry.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wants the EPA to exempt steel mills from New Source Review (NSR) regulations that make routine maintenance on blast furnaces a more expensive and cumbersome process.

The Obama administration’s “inconsistent, ‘case-by-case’ application of the routine maintenance and repair exemption from New Source Review hurts every industry and has led to unlawful and overreaching litigation against the steel industry,” reads West Virginia’s petition to EPA.

Morrisey is pitching the rulemaking as a way to help protect jobs in the coal and steel industry. President Donald Trump made campaign promises to revitalize coal and steel country and recently slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Trump also wants to ease federal permitting times for infrastructure and power plants, which can take years to complete. EPA issued a guidance on March 13 to make it easier to build new power plants or upgrade older ones.

Environmentalists opposed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s NSR guidance.

“The new Pruitt approach appears to be little more than an attempt to give coal utilities a sense of empowerment to ignore the critical public health protections of the Clean Air Act, New Source Review program,” Shannon Fisk, managing attorney with Earthjustice, said in a statement.

Easing the regulatory burden for steel mills would also help coal country, Morrisey argued. West Virginia coal mines supply metallurgical coal to facilities in the east and midwest. As more coal power plants close, steel could become a more important market for coal miners.

Morrisey wants “routine maintenance, repair, and replacement” for blast furnaces, which regularly requires new lining to be installed. The new lining doesn’t change the original design or emissions output of the blast furnace, which is what NSR is meant to regulate.

However, new furnace lining constituted a modification of an existing source of emissions, requiring permitting, the Obama administration claimed. The Obama administration’s ad-hoc approach to regulating steel mills hurt the industry, Morrisey said.

Morrisey also wants a rule in place to keep environmental groups from using citizen suits against steel mills, and to prevent a future administration from re-instating the Obama-era approach to blast furnaces.

“Federal regulations must be clear, concise and take into account economic impact,” Morrisey said in a statement.

“Economic success cannot thrive with the inconsistent, case-by-case application of rules, and in this case, West Virginia needs legal certainty to protect coal jobs and the livelihoods of those who depend upon coal’s success,” said Morrisey, who’s also running for Senate.

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