Maloy: New EPA Rules Bad for U.S.

By Tom Maloy

So you just paid your bills for the month and you have a few bucks left over. Congratulations! What’s that you say? That electric bill was a real killer, what with the heat wave and all. 

Yeah, well it’s going to get a lot worse—not the heat, but the electric bill. That is if the Environmental Protection Agency has its way. 

You see, when the liberals lost the debate about cap and trade, they didn’t give up. They just did an end-run, so now instead of mandating higher energy costs through a constitutional legislative method, they will do it with questionable EPA regulations called “Utility MACT Standards." 

MACT is government “new speak” for Maximum Achievable Control Technology. Note the word, Control, which should be interpreted as government wresting more control from you, destroying your liberty and extorting more money from citizens in order to fund insidious socialistic schemes. 

Oh, but I digress. Cap and trade would have placed restrictions on all businesses, forcing them to purchase carbon credits equal to the amount of carbon compounds that they emitted into the atmosphere. And cap and trade is dead. 

The industry that would have been hit the hardest would have been electric power providers because 50 percent of all electrical power generated in the U.S. comes from fossil fuels (oil and coal). 

That percentage is much higher in the Southeast, so cap and trade would have hurt those of us in Cobb County much more than in someplace in California.

Thank the Good Lord some of our legislators could see that such regulations would destroy jobs and increase the cost of electricity precipitously.

Estimates placed the increase to the average homeowner at $800 to $3,400 or more per year. By the grace of God, we dodged that bullet and cap and trade was killed. Gone, but certainly not forgotten. 

Liberal ideas are like lice: tough to get rid of. 

Enter MACT. It’s not a law, but a set of standards limiting emissions from power generating facilities that will be enforced by the EPA. Currently, only 1 percent of the electric power industry can meet the standards. 

The cost to retrofit non-complying facilities could go as high as $380 billion by 2015, and that cost will be passed along to you, the electricity consumer.

Consumer utility costs could increase by 24 percent. Your $250 electric bill will rise to $310 if the EPA’s plan isn’t stopped.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many older power-generating facilities will have to be closed and electricity will be in short supply.

Businesses will have to offset their additional cost of production by laying off people. Some businesses will just go out of business. Unemployment will increase dramatically, and our entire economy will suffer. 

These new EPA regulations that are on the table now have so alarmed Congress that groups from both sides of the aisle have sent letters to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson requesting that implementation be delayed. 

One such letter came from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member James M. Inhofe (R-OK). Yet another letter has been signed by 27 Georgia House Democrats, including David Scott (District 13), Sanford Bishop (District 2) and John Barrow (District 12).   

The Georgia Tea Party is working with 24 other groups to get an indefinite postponement of the new standards and has signed a letter to Jackson as well. 

The diversity of the signatories to the letter illustrates how widespread the damage will be from these regulations. The Georgia and Alabama AFL-CIO, the IBEW and United Mine Workers have signed along side the Business Council of Alabama, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, the Georgia Association of Manufacturers and many others. 

It’s simply a matter of survival: theirs, ours and yours. Call your congressperson and tell him or her to delay indefinitely any further discussion of Utility MACT standards.  

Tom Maloy, a retired businessman and 30-year Powder Springs resident, is a board member of the Georgia Tea Party. Contact him at tom@thegeorgiateaparty.org.