KILL THE EPA

We must rein in this rogue agency before it destroys our economy, two recent decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia make clear.

The Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its statutory authority when it issued rules that would shut down many coal-fired electric utilities and industrial plants, the appeals court ruled Tuesday (8/21).

The EPA’s rules are "without basis in the Clean Air Act or its implementing regulations," the court said.  "Absent a claim of constitutional authority (and there is none here), executive agencies may exercise only the authority conferred by statute, and agencies may not transgress statutory limits on that authority."

Bizarrely however, on August 17 the same appeals court threw out a suit brought chiefly by automakers against a new EPA rule which permits a mixture of up to 15 percent ethanol in gasoline.  That much ethanol will cause serious damage to the engines of older cars, the automakers say.

The automakers know a lot more about engines than judges.  The court’s decision proved that.

The ethanol rule makes it clear the EPA is abusing its authority to advance a political agenda, not to protect the environment.  More energy is used to produce ethanol than it generates when it is burned. It takes 4.2 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn, so ethanol production is a threat to water supplies. In addition to ruining engines, ethanol lowers gas mileage and puts more of the most toxic pollutants into the air. 

Corn prices reached a record high this week, thanks to the diversion of 40 percent of our corn crop to ethanol production, and this summer’s drought.

New EPA regulations on coal will raise the cost of generating electricity by $16 billion to $21 billion a year, and may "compromise" the reliability of the electric power grid, according to a Government Accountability Office report this month. 

The EPA has blocked Shell Oil from drilling for oil off the coast of Alaska.  Gasoline prices set a record high this week, despite the moribund economy, in large part because new EPA rules have forced oil refineries which supplied about half the gasoline to the East Coast to close. 

The EPA’s policy toward oil companies "is kind of like how the Romans used to conquer villages in the Mediterranean – they’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere and they’d find the first five guys they saw, they’d crucify ‘em, and that little town was really easy to manage for the next few years," said Alfredo Armendariz, the EPA regional administrator for Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Mr. Armendariz resigned in April after his remark was reported.  But for oil company executives, it epitomizes the EPA’s attitude toward them, and the stormtrooper tactics it employs.

An Idaho couple experienced those tactics firsthand.  The EPA forbade the Sacketts from building a vacation home on their property, and then tried to prevent the couple from challenging the ruling in court.  The EPA has no authority to do this, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in March.

The EPA has been conducting surveillance flights by drones over farms looking for violations of the Clean Water Act.  Congress never gave the EPA authority to do that, Nebraska’s congressional delegation complained in June.

The EPA wages war on fossil fuels ostensibly to restrict carbon emissions. But these are the lowest in 20 years, the Energy Information Administration reported this month.  The chief reason for this is hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the new technology which has increased so enormously supplies of natural gas that the U.S. could become energy independent in a few years.  Burning natural gas produces 30 percent less carbon dioxide than oil; 45 percent less than coal.

The EPA’s plans, on specious scientific grounds, to restrict fracking indicate CO2 isn’t the real reason for its war on fossil fuels.  President Barack Obama has "invested" vast sums of taxpayer money in "renewable" energy firms, most of which, by remarkable coincidence, are owned by major contributors to his campaign.

Despite massive subsidies, these firms have produced little energy and created few jobs.  Nearly all are in financial trouble.  Mr. Obama is counting on the EPA to so hamper production of fossil fuels that solar, wind, ethanol etc. will seem less uneconomic. 

The EPA is grossly politicized.  It does more harm than good.  It should be abolished.  Environmental protection should be left mostly to the states.  What limited authority remains at the federal level should be transferred to the Department of the Interior, where rulemakers can more easily be supervised by elected officials.

President Romney should kill the EPA.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.