By Phil Riske | Managing editor/Rose Law Group Reporter
STATE CAPITOL – The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ears should have been burning during a legislative hearing Wednesday, where Arizona officials decried the Clean Air Act and other environmental regulations as ignoring their economic impact on the state.
“The EPA has been on a terror,” said Henry Darwin, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ)
He said his agency is strained by trying to comply with EPA regulations — 143 new ones in the past year — and said economic impact studies should be done before approval of new regulations.
Darwin said federal regional haze regulations are not economically feasible.
Glen Hamer, director of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, cited the potential economic dangers and water supply threats of new regional haze requirements for the Navajo Generating Plant, which supplies 40 percent of Arizona’s power and 90 percent of the power needed for the Central Arizona Project.
Hamer said “environmental groups work their magic” against proposed job-generating projects such as the Resolution Copper mine at Superior.
“A strong economy is the best indicator of a clean environment,” Hamer said.
Congressman Trent Franks, who sat in on the hearing of the House Commerce Committee, called the EPA the “Employment Prevention Agency.”
Pinal County has consistently been placed on non-attainment status by the EPA for violations of dust particulate standards, a topic addressed by Bas Aja, executive vice president of the Arizona Cattle Feeders’ Association. He said the EPA fails to consider sources of dust, basing its standards only on the size of particulates.
“There’s a difference [if it] comes from the hoof of a cow or back of a truck,” Aja said.
Hamer said the EPA fails to understand desert conditions.
ADEQ’s Darwin said there used to be a good working relationship between states and the EPA, but that’s eroded. “They have not honored that partnership.”
“The EPA is pandering to the left wing of the left wing,” said Committee Chairman
Tom Forese (R-Gilbert). “It’s detached from reality.”
