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ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS, THE ECONOMY, 

AND JOBS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 15, 2011 

Serial No. 112–6 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Chairman 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Chairman Emeritus 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE MYRICK, North Carolina 

Vice Chair 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

BRIAN BILBRAY, California 

CHARLIE BASS, New Hampshire 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 

BOB LATTA, Ohio 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

DAVID MCKINLEY, West Virginia 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

MIKE POMPEO, Kansas 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

Ranking Member 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

JANE HARMAN, California 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

DAVID MCCARTHY, Chief Counsel 

JERRY COURI, Professional Staff 

PETER KIELTY, Senior Legislative Clerk 

JACQUELINE COHEN, Minority Counsel 

ALISON CASSADY, Minority Professional Staff 

(II)

(III) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

Chair 

TIMOTHY F. MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

Vice Chair 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOE PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

CHARLIE BASS, New Hampshire 

BOB LATTA, Ohio 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

Ranking Member 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., NEW JERSEY

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

(V) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. John Shimkus, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 1 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 3 

Hon. Gene Green, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 4 

Hon. Joe Barton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 6 

Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 6 

Hon. Cory Gardner, a Representative in Congress from the State of Colorado, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 7 

Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Washington, prepared statement ................................................................... 8 

Hon. Henry A. Waxman, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, opening statement ............................................................................. 9 

WITNESSES

Randall Lutter, visiting scholar, Resources for the Future .................................. 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 13 

Answers to submitted questions 1 ...................................................................

Karen Harned, executive director, National Federation of Independent Business Legal Center ................................................................................................. 28 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 191 

Christopher DeMuth, D.C. Searle senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute ........................................................................................................................ 37

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 39 

Rena Steinzor, president, Center for Progressive Regulation, University of 

Maryland School of Law ...................................................................................... 51 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 53 

Answers to submitted questions 2 ...................................................................

Leonard F. Hopkins, fuel procurement and reliance manager, Southern Illinois Power Cooperative ....................................................................................... 91 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94 

Joseph Baird, partner, Baird Hanson LLP ............................................................ 142 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 144 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 195 

Marcia Y. Kinter, vice president, Government and Business Information, 

Specialty Graphic Imaging Association .............................................................. 155 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 157 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 201 

Wendy Neu, executive vice president, Hugo Neu Corporation ............................ 162 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 164 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 204 

Vince Ryan, county attorney, Harris County, Texas ............................................ 170 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 173 

1 Mr. Lutter did not respond to submitted questions for the record. 2 Ms. Steinzor did not respond to submitted questions for the record. 

(1) 

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS, THE 

ECONOMY, AND JOBS 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:04 p.m., in room 

2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Shimkus 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Shimkus, Murphy, Whitfield, 

Pitts, Bono Mack, Bass, Latta, McMorris Rodgers, Harper, Cassidy, 

Gardner, Barton, Upton, Green, Butterfield, Barrow, Pallone, 

Capps, and Waxman (ex officio). 

Staff present: David McCarthy, Counsel; Jerry Couri, Senior Environment Policy Advisor; Peter Kielty, Senior Legislative Clerk; 

Chris Sarley, Senior LA; Alex Yergin, Legislative Clerk; Elizabeth 

Lowell, Legislative Clerk; Jacqueline Cohen, Minority Counsel; Alison Cassady, Minority Professional Staff Member; Caitlin 

Haberman, Minority Policy Analyst; and Abigail Pinkele, Legislative Director, Rep. Green. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHIMKUS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 

Mr. SHIMKUS. We will call the subcommittee to order. Again, first 

of all, apologies for being a few minutes late. We just finished a 

vote in the full committee, so people will be meandering up here. 

Also, we are supposed to have a recorded vote around 1:15 to 1:30, 

so our intent is to start getting the testimony, opening statements 

out of the way, and then hopefully we can move expeditiously. 

And I will begin. I would like to welcome everyone to the first 

hearing of the Environment and the Economy Subcommittee for 

the 112th Congress. I am honored to serve as the chairman of the 

subcommittee and excited about the opportunity to work with 

members from both sides of the aisle. I particularly want to welcome and congratulate Mr. Green on being named ranking member. We have already spoken numerous times. We are friends from 

many years, more than we would like to mention, and I have enjoyed working with him in the past and look forward to doing so 

in our future capacities on this subcommittee. 

From taking a shower in the morning to turning off the lights 

before bed, our daily lives are constantly touched by environmental 

regulations under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. That might 

be obvious from its name, but what might not be so clear is the 

2 

important nexus with the ‘‘economy’’ portion of the title. Due to environmental regulations, families have to pay higher rates to turn 

on those lights or water, and there is also the great impact that 

these higher costs have a consequence. 

We heard from Timberland last week of forcing jobs overseas 

when overbearing regulations stifle the marketplace. It is a necessary and healthy exercise to review regulations to make sure congressional intent is being followed and the best interests of our nations are protected. We cannot just look at regulations in individual 

silos. 

People don’t have the luxury of being able to comply with regulations in the abstract or singularly. Rather, they must face all regulations together at the same time. That is why I think we need to 

weigh the benefits compared to the collective burdens placed on 

businesses trying to navigate through a struggling economy to keep 

jobs here at home. 

More to the point, while one regulation alone may not close a 

business, the cumulative effect could be devastating, resulting in 

death by 1,000 cuts. Since 2009, when President Obama took office, 

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized 928 rules 

and proposed 703 others. As we overload the nation with these proposed and finalized regulations, we need to ensure that in an effort 

to do a good thing, our government is not creating unintended consequences. 

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the problem is not 

simply the EPA is issuing a lot of regulations, rather it is that it 

has significantly increased the number of major rules. That is to 

say rules costing the regulating community more than $100 million. These regulations typically ensnare multiple industry sectors 

and have economy-wide costs usually measuring in billions or even 

trillions of dollars, making their economic impact so widespread 

that multiple sectors of the economy must face substantial compliance costs. 

This is not sustainable for our economy. Regulating existing businesses into the ground on the hope that better ones will come later 

is irresponsible. Policies like those have starved free enterprise, 

bankrupting many larger States. We must protect jobs that exist 

now while working to open the doors for new opportunity to do 

business in the United States. 

It is also no secret that our federal budget problem is also infringing on the ability of private persons to access capital to expand 

their businesses. For this reason, our regulations should attack the 

worst problems first, doing so in a way that avoids broad brushstrokes that insist on expensive but nonproductive requirements 

that take resources away from businesses that would otherwise be 

growing our economy. There is a finite pot of resources that the 

Federal, State, local and private interests can bring to bear on any 

particular problem. Once those resources are committed to a problem, they are gone, leaving that much less to attack the remaining 

problems we face. 

Let me be clear. We are not seeking to strip basic public health 

and safety protections. Public health should be protected in a way 

that encourages all public welfare. A climate that welcomes development and encourages reinvestment creates a kind of wealth and 

3 

fairness that needs to be encouraged. As chairman of this subcommittee, I work to make certain any environmental policies deride from this subcommittee will promote the public welfare as a 

whole while sustaining and creating new jobs and growth in our 

economy by letting valid, objective and repeatable science drive the 

debate. 

This is a critical aspect EPA has strayed from in recent years, 

and Congress must work with the Administration to refocus this 

attention. Today’s hearing, Environmental Regulations: The Economy and Jobs, is a fitting start to this mission and will provide the 

subcommittee a solid foundation to build. 

Our first panel will give us a broad view of the economics regulations and processes issued by EPA to understand where they are 

causing exasperate economic problems, or in other cases, where 

gaps might exist. Witnesses on the second panel will give us a direct perspective on EPA regulations that are affecting small businesses and possible consequences moving forward. 

I particularly would like to welcome Leonard Hopkins from the 

Southern Illinois Power Cooperative for being here today. Through 

the co-op, Mr. Hopkins helps supply power with reasonable utility 

rates to constituents in my district. Unfortunately a proposed coal 

combustion residue regulation may put their ability to serve over 

250,000 customers in rural Illinois in jeopardy. 

It is unrealized stresses like these that make it essential we understand the full spectrum of effects regulations may have. All of 

our witnesses here today are valuable to our understanding, and I 

would like to thank them all for taking the time to be here. Their 

testimony and participation with questions will help us better understand the jobs and economic growth and the relationship to our 

regulatory framework. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shimkus follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHIMKUS

The subcommittee will now come to order. I’d like to welcome everyone to the first 

hearing of the Environment and the Economy Subcommittee for the 112th Congress. 

I’m honored to serve as the Chairman of this subcommittee and excited about the 

opportunity to work with members from both sides of the aisle. I particularly want 

to welcome and congratulate Mr. Green on being named our Ranking Member. I 

have enjoyed working with him in the past and certainly look forward to doing so 

in our capacities on this subcommittee. 

From taking a shower in the morning to turning off the lights before bed, our 

daily lives are constantly touched by environmental regulations under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee. That might be obvious from its name, but what might 

not be so clear is the important nexus with ‘‘economy’’ portion in the title. Due to 

environmental regulations families have to pay higher rates to turn on those lights 

or water. And, there is also the grave impact that these higher costs have the consequence, as we heard from Timberland last week, of forcing jobs overseas when 

overbearing regulations stifle the marketplace. 

It is a necessary and healthy exercise to review regulations to make sure congressional intent is being followed and the best interests of our nation are protected. 

We cannot just look at regulations in individual silos. People don’t have the luxury 

of being able to comply with regulations in the abstract or singularly. Rather, they 

must face all regulations together at the same time. This is why I think we need 

to, weigh the benefits compared to the collective burdens placed on businesses trying to navigate through a struggling economy to keep jobs here at home. 

More to the point, while one regulation alone may not close a business, the cumulative effect could be devastating—resulting in death by one-thousand cuts. Since 

2009 when President Obama took office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

(EPA) has finalized 928 rules and proposed 703 others. As we overload the Nation 

4 

with these proposed and finalized regulations, we need to ensure that in an effort 

to do a good thing our government is not creating unintended consequences. 

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ‘‘the problem is not simply that EPA 

is issuing a lot of regulations. Rather, it is that it has significantly increased the 

number of major rules, that is to say rules costing the regulated community more 

than $100 million. These regulations typically ensnare multiple industry sectors and 

have economy-wide costs usually measuring in billions or even trillions of dollars’’— 

making their ‘‘economic impact so widespread that multiple sectors of the economy 

must face substantial compliance costs.’’ 

This is not sustainable for our economy. Regulating existing businesses into the 

ground on the hope that better ones will come later is irresponsible. Policies like 

these have starved free enterprise, bankrupting many large states. We must protect 

jobs that exist now while working to open the doors for new opportunity to do business in the United States. 

It is also no secret that our federal budget problem is also infringing on the ability 

of private persons to access capital to expand their businesses. For this reason, our 

regulations should attack the worst problems first doing so in a way that avoids 

broad brush strokes that insist on expensive, but non-protective requirements that 

take resources away from businesses that would otherwise be growing our economy. 

There is a finite pot of resources that federal, state, local, and private interests can 

bring to bear on any particular problem. Once those resources are committed to a 

problem, they are gone, leaving that much less to attack the remaining problems 

we face. 

Let me be clear, we are not seeking to strip basic public health and safety protections. Public health should be protected in a way that encourages all public welfare. 

A climate that welcomes development and encourages reinvestment creates the kind 

of wealth and fairness that needs to be encouraged. 

As Chairman of this subcommittee, I will work to make certain any environmental policies derived from this subcommittee will promote the public welfare as 

a whole while sustaining and creating new jobs and growth in our economy by letting valid, objective, and repeatable science drive the debate. This is a critical aspect 

EPA has strayed from in recent years and Congress must work with the Administration to refocus this attention. 

Today’s hearing, ‘‘Environmental Regulations, the Economy, and Jobs’’ is a fitting 

start to this mission and will provide the subcommittee a solid foundation to build 

from. 

Our first panel will give us a broad view on the economics of regulations and processes issued by the EPA to understand where they are causing exasperated economic problems or in other cases where gaps might exist. Witnesses on the second 

panel will give us a direct perspective on EPA regulations that are affecting small 

businesses and possible consequences moving forward. 

I particularly would like to welcome Leonard Hopkins from the Southern Illinois 

Power Cooperative for being here today. Through the Co-op Mr. Hopkins helps supply power with reasonable utility rates to constituents in my district. Unfortunately 

the proposed coal combustion residue regulation may put their ability to serve over 

250,000 customers in rural Illinois in jeopardy. It’s unrealized threats like these 

that make it essential we understand the full spectrum of effects regulations may 

have. 

All our witnesses here today our valuable to our understanding and I’d like to 

thank all of them for taking the time to be here. Their testimony and participation 

with questions will help us better understand jobs and economic growth and their 

relationship to our regulatory framework. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And with that, I will stop, and I will yield time to 

the ranking member Mr. Green from Texas. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GENE GREEN, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TEXAS 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

calling the hearing today because we all share an interest in ensuring appropriate balance between the cost and benefits in environmental regulation. I would also like to thank all our witnesses, not 

only on the first panel, but also for the second for taking their time 

to be here today. 

5 

I also want to thank Chairman Shimkus for favorably responding 

to the request, mine along with Ranking Member Waxman’s written request that two additional minority witnesses on the second 

panel, our county attorney for Harris County, Houston, Texas, 

Vince Ryan, and Wendy Neu of the Hugo Neu Corporation. 

The addition of these witnesses to today’s panels will present a 

balance discussion. I hope that for future hearings this committee 

will continue to strive for fair and balanced panels to allow a real 

examination of the important issues. 

I would also like to take a moment to describe some of the benefits and potential benefits of environmental regulation that I hear 

when I meet with companies in green industries, like Hugo Neu 

Corporation, which is leading the way on recycling electronic waste. 

My staff and I have worked with many stakeholders in recycling 

companies such as the one owned by Wendy Neu as we introduced 

legislation year and have been developing revised legislation for 

electronic waste. It is my hope that we can have a hearing on the 

legislation when we introduce and hear from some of the green 

businesses that will welcome the new economic benefit of the new 

e-waste regulations. 

I also hear about the benefits of environmental regulations from 

my constituents who know all too well that environmental regulation can have significant economic benefits in the form of avoided 

cost. For years, I have been working with local officials in Harris 

County, Texas to address a significant threat from a Superfund site 

near our district, the San Jacinto Waste Pits. 

In the 1960s, a paper mill in our district dumped dioxin containing waste into a waste pit on a sand bar in the San Jacinto 

River. Unfortunately, the Resource Conservation Recovery Act did 

not yet pass, and regulations for disposal of the dioxin waste from 

paper mills were not yet developed. If these regulations had been 

in place, the waste would not have been dumped where they were, 

and the Superfund site would not have to be created. Now that the 

San Jacinto River has reclaimed that sandbar, the contamination 

is widespread and cleanup will be very costly. 

Harris County officials and EPA have been working hard to ensure that taxpayers don’t bear the cost of that cleanup, and they 

are continuing to fight. Proper waste regulations could have avoided these cleanup costs and these litigation costs and could have 

protected the people of our district. 

With that, I would like to thank the witnesses again for appearing today, and particularly thank Wendy Neu and Vince Ryan who 

are appearing on very short notice. Mr. Ryan is our Harris County 

attorney, and his office has worked diligently on the San Jacinto 

Waste Pits for several years. And I know the Houston area and our 

district particularly appreciate it. 

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to working with you, and I appreciate the first hearing. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Green. Now I would like to recognize Chairman Emeritus Barton for 2 minutes. 

Mr. BARTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit the full 

subject for the record. I want to thank our witnesses for attending 

today’s hearing. Your subcommittee, Mr. Chairman, is the third 

subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee to hold a 

6 

hearing on the promulgation of the regulations and the economic 

impact that those regulations have on our economy. We have heard 

from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Regulatory Affairs of the Obama Administration with the other two subcommittees. 

Today we are going to hear from the private sector and see how 

these regulations impact the economies in their parts of the country. Unemployment is over 9 percent, Mr. Chairman. The mantra 

on both sides of the aisle is jobs, jobs, jobs. The Obama Administration says that they want their regulations to pass some sort of a 

cost-benefit analysis. But we know, especially at the Environmental 

Protection Agency, that they tend to pay only lip service to that. 

So in today’s hearing, I am sure we are going to hear from the private sector how those regulations impact them, and we are also 

going to hear probably some good input on what kind of a cost-benefit and economic analysis should be done. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back, and I look forward to 

your chairmanship of this vital subcommittee. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barton follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOE BARTON

Thank you Mr. Chairman. Today’s hearing marks the third hearingthis committee 

has held related to this topic: the lack of economic impact considered by the Obama 

Administration and its agencies when promulgating regulations. The Oversight and 

Investigations and the Energy and Power subcommittees held hearings highlighting 

the disastrous effects to our economy and domestic job market brought on by of 

overly burdensome, redundant, and rushed regulations. The Administrators from 

the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the Environmental Protection 

Agency testified and they both assured us that their agencies and the Obama Administration do not want to suppress economic growth with unnecessary regulations. 

I hear what their saying, but I want them to make me, and theAmerican public, 

believe it by what they are doing. With unemployment at over 9 percent and American companies and jobs moving overseas at a rapid rate we must do something now 

to get our economy growing again. As members of Congress it is our responsibility 

to make sure that our small businesses and job creators are not stifled by overregulation, but are encouraged and rewarded for being conscientious corporate citizens 

that find and maintain the balance between profits and pollution control, earnings 

and environmental clean-up, revenues, and recycling. 

I have and will support legislation and regulations that protect our public’s health 

and environment, but I will not support legislation and regulations that do more 

economic harm than good at little to no benefit to the public. Over the last 2 years, 

I have sent letters to the EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services, the 

Department of the Interior, and President Obama asking the Administration and its 

agencies to review passed and proposed regulations and conduct a cost-benefit analysis on these regulations. Several of the witnesses today will emphasize the need 

for this type of analysis and explain how new regulations have negatively impacted 

their ability to help our economy recover and help the environment. I look forward 

to their testimony. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman yields back his time. Now, the 

chair recognizes the chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Upton 

from Michigan. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. UPTON. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman. I am sorry I am a 

moment late from being downstairs. This is an important hearing. 

Your testimony is crucial to helping us understand what improveVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
7 

ments are needed in the regulatory process to ensure that it allows 

for economic prosperity. 

Somehow we have lost our way. Those small businesses and 

manufacturers who should be driving our economic recovery are 

choking from burdensome red tape, weathering in an agency-wide 

regulatory epidemic that seems bent on accomplishing a singleminded purpose without regard to fixing the economy and protecting jobs. Not to mention environmental regs also substantially 

raise costs on the public sector, and these costs are not easily absorbed. 

Just this past December, EPA published guidelines for preparing 

economic analyses. This document is to govern EPA’s regulatory actions. It states ‘‘regulatory-induced employment impacts are not in 

general relevant to the benefit-cost analysis.’’ The bureaucratic insensitivity towards those folks in Michigan and across the nation 

who are struggling to make ends meet is stunning. It is guidelines 

like this that have catapulted the country into a perpetual state of 

soaring unemployment and economic uncertainty. The time has 

come to stop asking the American family, the American small business, the innovators, and the risk takers to bear any burden and 

pay any price. 

Many of our constituents who are struggling to compete in this 

tough economy say that government regs are like a piano on their 

back. Despite executive orders from a number of presidents calling 

for economic impact analyses or job impact analyses, the relief 

never seems to come. We have to focus the government on serving 

the people instead of hamstringing them. 

Mr. Chairman, these values and principles should drive the 

president in all federal agencies. No one here today is saying don’t 

regulate. We are simply saying regulate only when the good it will 

accomplish clearly outweighs the harm. Today’s hearing is a positive step forward on that journey to help the executive branch develop a conscience and an understanding about the impact on the 

economy and jobs and families for every regulation it pursues. So 

let us get going. Thank you. Yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman yields back his time. I now recognize Mr. Gardner from Colorado for 30 seconds. 

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the short time that 

I have been in this Congress, I have had an incredible number of 

people come into my office and talk about the effect that regulations have or may have on their business. Our country is still fighting its way out of a recession, and our government’s response many 

times seems to be adding more handcuffs than solutions. 

We have an obligation to our environment, to our children, and 

future generations, but it is time we do so in a common sense way 

driven by the interests of the people and not the special interests. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gardner follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CORY GARDNER

Mr. Chairman, in the short time that I have been in Congress I have already had 

an incredible number of employers come to my office to explain how the government 

is regulating them out of business. Those who are not already feeling the pinch from 

over-regulation are worried about the vast array of regulatory proposals. Our country is still fighting its way out of a recession. And our government’s response to the 

8 

situation has been to handcuff the very entities that are trying to lead us out of 

it. 

Today we are here to address environmental regulations in particular. With Colorado’s extensive energy and agriculture industries, this is an area of great concern 

to me. This Committee has a duty to examine sweeping federal rule changes that 

have the potential to cripple various sectors of our economy and negatively affect 

Colorado businesses and I am happy to see that we are taking that step today. 

EPA has consistently acted to accelerate its rulemaking processes leading to legally dubious, poorly conceived, and arbitrary regulations that are not only hurtful 

to businesses but often have little to no environmental benefit. The laws that comprise the basis for many of these new rules have not changed in years, sometimes 

decades. The words on the pages have not changed, and yet EPA is 

constantlyfinding new authority under those same laws. 

We know that EPA rarely, if ever, does a true cost benefit analysis of its actions. 

One that considers job loss and economic damage. Given that EPA has decided that 

it does not need to concern itself with such things, I am encouraged that Congress 

has decided to take up the cause and I am proud to be here today as our committee 

holds this hearing on behalf of the hard working Americans who are affected by 

these policies. I would like to thank all of the witnesses for being with us, and I 

look forward to hearing the witness’s answers to many of our questions on how the 

government’s efforts have affected private industry. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time has expired. To the chairman emeritus—we only have 30 seconds left. I will give you a 

chance to get situated, and then we will recognize Cathy McMorris 

Rodgers for 30 seconds right now. 

Ms. MCMORRIS RODGERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you 

for holding this important hearing, and I thank all the witnesses 

for taking time out of their schedules to be here. I wanted to give 

a special welcome to Joe Baird, president of the Northwest Mining 

Association for being here today. 

Despite effective safeguards, the EPA has decided that it needs 

to step in and add regulations that will all but certain drain the 

mining industry of its capital, making us more dependent upon 

other countries for important minerals. 

I mentioned on the floor last week this is not what America is 

about, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how we 

can keep the dream alive. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. McMorris Rodgers follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for holding this important hearing and 

our witnesses for taking time out of their schedules to be here today. 

I would like to give a special welcome to Joe Baird, President of the Northwest 

Mining Association, for being here today. 

Joe’s testimony will demonstrate first hand EPA’s unbridled power grab. Despite 

effective safeguards implemented by states, the EPA has decided that it needs to 

step in and add regulations that will all but certain drain this industry of its capital—forcing businesses to cut jobs, jobs that could benefit communities experiencing 

unemployment rates well above the national average—and force the only cobalt 

mine in this country to close - making us even more dependent upon other countries 

for this important mineral. 

As disturbing, Mr. Baird’s testimony describes the current statutory and regulatory framework under which mineral exploration and operation on federal lands 

must operate. Let me just read a few of the statutes and regulations: the Clean 

Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environment Policy Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resources Conservation and 

Recovery Act, the Endangered Species Act, in addition to a plethora of surface management regulations issued by BLM and USFS just for mining. 

As I mentioned on the floor last week, regulation is not what this nation is about. 

America is about entrepreneurialism, innovation, and preserving the American 

9 

Dream. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses as to how we can keep the 

dream alive. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank the gentlewoman, and now I recognize Mr. 

Waxman for 5 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Today’s 

hearing is entitled Environmental Regulations: The Economy and 

Jobs. I think this is a worthy topic for discussion if we do it right. 

Unfortunately, I am concerned that today’s hearing may simply be 

a platform for complaints about our landmark laws designed to 

protect taxpayers and the public health. 

We will hear complaints about Superfund, The Resources, Conservation and Recovery Act, The Toxic Substances Control Act. We 

will hear complaints about laws outside of this subcommittee’s jurisdiction like the Clean Air Act. The environmental laws we will 

discuss today form the cornerstone of public health protections. Before Superfund and RCRA, there was Love Canal, a New York 

neighborhood built atop of thousands of tons of toxic waste, carelessly disposed of in a ditch. 

Before The Safe Drinking Water Act, the American public had no 

assurances that the water coming from their tap was free of cancer-causing chemicals and dangerous bacteria. Today we will hear 

precious little about the benefits of protecting the public health 

from these toxic exposures. Instead the subcommittee is likely to 

focus solely on the economic costs of environmental regulations. I 

have no objection to discussing the economics of environmental regulation, but any fair and balanced discussion should include both 

sides of the equation, the economic benefits as well as the costs. 

Environmental regulations protect the economy as well as society 

from the devastating cost of pollution. In the absence of sound regulation, when polluters are allowed to pollute, the costs of that pollution don’t simply disappear. Instead, innocent parties have to 

pick up the tab. Our health care system has to bear the weight of 

asthmatic children and more adults with cancer. Businesses have 

to absorb the costs of employees who miss work due to chronic illness. 

Municipalities have to cover the costs of cleaning up toxic pollution before it reaches drinking water supplies. Environmental regulations protect the public from these impacts. They can also spur 

economic growth and job creation. Expenditures for environmental 

compliance spur investment in the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of equipment to reduce pollution. 

EPA recently estimated that The Clean Air Act’s total benefit to the economy is projected to hit $2 trillion by 2020, outweighing 

costs by 30 to 1. 

It is a tenet of our society that we hold people accountable for 

their actions and that we offer protection to those who can’t protect 

themselves. When a coal-burning power plant fails to invest in new 

pollution control equipment to reduce its toxic mercury emissions, 

it damages the way our children think and learn. That is why the 

10 

responsible party, in this case the coal plant, has an obligation to 

control its emissions. 

As I have said previously, let us put aside the false and hyperbolic claims about regulations killing jobs. No one supports unnecessary or duplicative regulations. But let us also not hesitate to 

regulate when needed to protect our economy and public health. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back the time. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And I thank the gentleman. Now I would ask 

unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee have 5 

legislative days to submit opening statements for the record. Without objection, so ordered. 

Now, I would like to welcome our first panel, and you will be recognized for 5 minutes. Your full statement will be submitted for the 

record. If you can do, you know, a brief, executive summary, and 

then we will go into questions. 

I would like to thank you for coming. I would like to first recognize Randall Lutter, Ph.D., visiting scholar from Resources for the 

Future. Sir, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENTS OF RANDALL LUTTER, VISITING SCHOLAR, RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE; KAREN HARNED, EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, NFIB LEGAL CENTER; CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH, 

D.C. SEARLE SENIOR FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE; AND RENA STEINZOR, PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR 

PROGRESSIVE REGULATION, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 

SCHOOL OF LAW 

STATEMENT OF RANDALL LUTTER 

Mr. LUTTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, honorable 

members of the committee. I am pleased to appear today to offer 

my views on Environmental Regulation: The Economy and Jobs, an 

important topic because both the environment and—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Sir, if you could just pull your mike down a little 

bit further. 

Mr. LUTTER. Are important to Americans. As an economist, I believe that careful analysis of the effects of regulations can help in 

designing regulations to offer clear net benefits to Americans and 

to avoid unnecessary burdens. Careful regulatory analysis can also 

help promote both public understanding of regulatory decisions and 

accountability for the regulators. 

I speak as an economist who has been involved in regulatory policy for more than 2 decades. I have had the privilege of serving 

Democratic and Republican presidents, including positions at the 

Federal Office of Management and Budget, the President’s Council 

of Economic Advisors, and the Food and Drug Administration. I am 

currently visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit, 

nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research on 

environmental energy, natural resource, and environmental health 

issues. I have conducted research at the American Enterprise Institute and the AEI Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. I 

have no conflicts of interest to report, and I emphasize that the 

views I present today are mine alone. RFF takes no institutional 

position on legislative, judicial, regulatory, or other public policy 

matters. 

11 

An important concern these days is employment. The commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced 

the unemployment rate declined from 9.4 to 9 percent in January. 

Nonfarm employment, now about a million over the low of a year 

ago, is 7.7 million below the highest level of the last decade, nearly 

138 million jobs. Plus nonfarm employment needs strong and sustained growth to match levels seen before the recent recession. Cyclical transit employment and unemployment are, however, a macroeconomic phenomenon best addressed through fiscal and monetary policy and sound financial regulation topics beyond my scope 

today. 

The consensus view among economists about the role of economic 

analysis and environmental regulation is that it is an exceptionally 

useful framework for consistently organizing disparate information, 

and in this way, it can greatly improve the process and the outcome of policy analysis and deliberations. This idea has become 

part of a centralized process of regulatory review outlined in Executive Order 12866, which President Clinton issued in ’93, replacing 

an earlier Executive order of comparable scope signed by President 

Reagan. 

Executive Order 12866 does not mention employment or jobs in 

its 12 principles, but it directs agencies to conduct an assessment 

including the underlying analysis of costs anticipated from the regulatory action, such as any adverse effects on the efficient functioning of the economy including productivity, employment, and 

competitiveness. 

President Obama’s January 18 Executive Order 13563 on improving regulation and regulatory review reaffirms the earlier one 

and mentions the promotion of job creation under general principles. 

I turn to how the Environmental Protection Agency has analyzed 

and considered possible effects of its regulations on employment. I 

have looked at several regulatory impact analyses of proposed 

major rules recently released by the agency and found a variety of 

practices. For two regulations, coal combustion and ozone, EPA 

provided no information and no explanation for the lack of analysis. One of these, a proposed standard for ozone, is very likely to 

have adverse effects on local labor markets because of the difficulty 

of achieving cuts in emissions of 90 percent or greater. EPA has estimated positive but statistically insignificant effects on employment for one regulation, industrial boilers, and modest negative effects for another, Portland Cement. 

Evaluating these different approaches to employment effects is 

difficult because ONB’s guidance implementing Executive Order 

12866 does so little to clarify how agencies should assess effects on 

employment. Recently, however, EPA has released a new guidance 

on this issue. 

My own recommendations, regulatory agencies first should issue 

regulations only where the benefits demonstrably justify the cost, 

and they should take full advantage of statutory authority to use 

market-based regulatory mechanisms. 

In addition, the Office of Management and Budget should issue 

an addendum to A4 about how agencies should analyze effects of 

regulations on employment, but only after soliciting and considVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
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ering public comment and genuinely independent expert advice. 

The focus of such guidelines should be on identifying what employment can be quantified reliably and what quantifications procedures are appropriate, and the guidelines should reconsider excluding from benefit-cost analysis the cost of job losses induced by regulations. 

The guidelines should also provide for distributional analyses of 

effects on those workers who are at significant incremental risk of 

job loss and who would face barriers to finding another job. 

I understand my written testimony will be part of the record, 

and I will be, of course, available for questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lutter follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Dr. Lutter. Now I would like to recognize Ms. Karen Harned, executive director, NFIB Legal Center. 

Welcome, and you have 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF KAREN HARNED 

Ms. HARNED. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Shimkus 

and Ranking Member Green. NFIB, the Nation’s largest small 

business advocacy organization, appreciates the opportunity to testify on the importance of assessing small business impact in the 

regulatory process. Overzealous regulation is a perennial cause of 

concern for small business owners and is particularly burdensome 

in times like these when the Nation’s economy remains sluggish. 

According to a recent study, regulation costs the American economy $1.75 trillion a year. More concerning, small businesses face 

an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, 36 percent 

more than the regulatory cost facing businesses with more than 

500 employees. Job growth in America remains stagnant. Although 

small businesses create two-thirds of the net new jobs in this country, the NFIB research foundation’s most recent addition of ‘‘Small 

Business Economic Trends’’ revealed in the next 3 months, 12 percent of respondents planned to increase employment, while 8 percent plan a reduction in workforce. 

Small business owners consistently cite government regulation as 

one of their primary problems in running their business. In its 

most recent addition of SBET, the NFIB research foundation found 

that 17 percent of small business owners describe government regulations and red tape to be their single most important problem. 

Only taxes and poor sales were more commonly cited. In fact, for 

the past 26 months of the survey, regulation and red tape has been 

in the top three of problems. This is not a recent trend either. 

NFIB surveys demonstrate that overzealous government regulation has ranked in the top 10 of problems facing small businesses 

since 1991. Reducing the regulatory burden will go a long way toward giving entrepreneurs the confidence they need to expand 

their workforce in a meaningful way. 

Recently, the Administration acknowledged that excessive and 

duplicative regulation has a damaging effect on the American economy. NFIB believes that it has been a long time coming for small 

business owners to hear the Administration emphasis the harmful 

effects of overregulation on small business and job creation. We 

will be watching closely to see if last month’s directive leads to real 

regulatory reform. Moreover, NFIB hopes that the president’s order 

causes agencies to more closely follow the letter and spirit of the 

Administrative Procedures Act. 

When agencies do not follow the procedures of the APA, they frequently enact one-size-fits-all rules that are not sensitive to the 

unique circumstances of small businesses. An important tool in the 

arsenal to ensure that federal regulations are developed in a way 

that considers small business impact is the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act. SBREFA requires federal 

agencies to analyze the impact of proposed of regulations on small 

firms and as a result, give small businesses a voice in the federal 

rule-making process. SBREFA, when followed correctly, can be a 

29 

valuable instrument for agencies to identify flexible and less burdensome regulatory alternatives. 

SBREFA and its associated processes, such as the Small Business Advocacy Review Panels, are important ways for agencies to 

understand how small businesses fundamentally operate, how the 

regulatory burden disproportionately impacts small business, and 

how the agency can develop simple and concise guidance materials. 

While SBREFA itself is a good first step, in order for it to provide the regulatory relief that Congress intended, the agencies 

must make good faith efforts to comply with it. By following the 

letter and spirit of SBREFA, agencies like EPA would avoid many 

of the unnecessary burdens and costs of regulations small businesses experience. 

Unfortunately for small businesses, however, through the years, 

a number of EPA regulations have failed to account for the unique 

characteristics of small business. For example, EPA’s lead-based 

paint renovation, repair, and painting rule has been problematic 

for small businesses that engage in renovation and construction 

work. The rule requires small businesses to pay for expensive certification and training for each of their employees. Certification begins at $304 for renovators and $550 for painting activities or both 

painting and renovating. Fees could cost thousands of dollars per 

firm depending on the number of employees they have. 

Although Superfund was enacted in 1980, NFIB has heard from 

members with businesses that have been named as a potentially 

responsible party in a third-party lawsuit. They have been forced 

to spend thousands of dollars and an excessive amount of time defending themselves when they did nothing wrong or illegal or do 

not have the records to prove their innocence. 

When EPA and other agencies follow the procedures for evaluating small business impact of regulations before they are promulgated. It is a win-win for the economy, the public, and small business. Thank you for holding this important hearing. I look forward 

to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Harned follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Ms. Harned. And for my colleagues, I 

am going to try to get both opening statements done prior votes. 

I think we can get both in. If I gavel you, it will be for that, for 

our ability to hear. But that is just for information for my colleagues. 

Next I would like to recognize Mr. Christopher DeMuth, D.C. 

Senior—Searle Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute. Sir, 

you have 5 minutes. There is a button there. 

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH 

Mr. DEMUTH. Thank you for having me here today, and in light 

of the time, I will give a brief opening statement. 

Environmental policy and employment policy are two central concerns. Americans like high levels of clean air and water, and they 

like high levels of unemployment. These two values sometimes 

clash, and they are clashing today. 

To the economists, taking jobs as the metric of the costs of environmental policy is a little bit crude. It is certainly important to 

the elected representative. It is what the general public cares 

about, but one could imagine a good environmental rule that had 

negative employment effects, and one could imagine and sometimes 

sees bad environmental rules that have positive employment effects. 

When we regulate, we are buying something: cleaner air and 

water. Just like everything we buy privately, it has a cost, and the 

costs can be higher prices, or they can be less good product quality, 

or they can be lower employment. The question of whether it is a 

good rule or not is a larger one than the one of employment. 

In general, environmental regulation has been a great success 

story for America. It has had very large economic benefits since our 

first modern statutes were passed in the early 1980s, but we know 

now that it has been much less cost effective than it could have 

been. We could have gotten much more environmental improvements for the money we have spent, or we could have gotten the 

same amount of environmental improvements for vastly less 

money, or a little bit of both. 

There is evidence that EPA regulations have been becoming less 

cost effective over time, following the huge improvements that were 

gained in the 1970s. There is a wide variation in the effectiveness 

of different statutes, and we could revise the statutes to get much 

more environmental gains and much fewer costs of the kind the 

committee is worried about. In my view, the reasons for the problems that the committee, your subcommittee is focusing on today 

are two. 

The first is that environmental—that regulatory costs are off 

budget. EPA’s budget is a tiny sliver of the billions of dollars of 

costs that its rules impose. But it does not have natural incentives 

to economize on those costs. They are not costs to the agency. They 

are costs to the private sector or municipalities or schools or whatever. 

The costs are relatively insensible to the public. They take the 

form of higher prices or plants that aren’t built or sometimes 

plants that are shut down, and as a result, agencies often go too 

far. The regulatory agency will get a 90 percent elimination of 

38 

some risk or pollution level. It will then want to go for another 8 

percent, and it will then want to go for 1-and-a-half percent. And 

it will keep pushing and pushing. The laws are being made by single purpose agencies operating largely without a budget constraint, 

and their incentive will be to push until the human cry becomes 

so great, such as from the Congress that they back off. 

The second is the very wide delegations that the Congress gives 

in many environmental statutes so that the really tough choices 

are made by the agencies. The specialized agency goes back over 

a century. EPA is a classic example of it. The original idea was expertise, and certainly there are many areas of pollution control that 

are highly technical and that technicians could handle better than 

generalist legislators. 

But as the controversies before this committee today illustrate, 

these are not merely technical questions. They are highly important political and economic ones, but we have gotten ourselves into 

a situation where the legislator can vote for clean air and clean 

water and leave the hard and contentious decision making to the 

agencies and then criticize after the fact. And the agencies will in 

this situation often go too far until they are criticized. 

There are two proposals, as I understand it, before the Congress 

today for general regulatory reform. They are addressed to the two 

problems I have identified. Senator Warner is working on a proposal that would put the agencies on a budget of the expenditures 

that their rules force. It is sort of a pay-go idea where to issue a 

new regulation, you would have to eliminate some old ones. That 

is addressed to the problem of unbudgeted, off-budget costs. The socalled Reins Act, introduced by Congressman Jeff Davis and now 

introduced in the Senate by Senator DeMint, is the proposal for 

Congress to take back some considerable degree of the discretion 

it has delegated to the agencies. 

My testimony says some good things and identifies some problems with both approaches. In my view, neither of them would be 

as worthwhile as the Congress’s returning to many areas of the environmental statutes where it has delegated too much and where 

much more specific standards could resolve some of the problems 

that we are facing today. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. DeMuth follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. DeMuth. Now I would like to turn 

to Ms. Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Regulations, University of Maryland School of Law. Welcome, and you 

are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF RENA STEINZOR 

Ms. STEINZOR. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on 

the mistaken belief that environmental protection kills jobs. No 

matter how many times this fatally flawed argument is repeated, 

empirical evidence supporting the claim is scant and not credible. 

Instead, the evidence shows that environmental regulations save 

lives, preserve irreplaceable natural resources, and not incidentally, create jobs. 

In fact, if we pull the camera back and look at the economy as 

a whole, the primary cause of the economic recession and its devastating effect on jobs is underregulation, not overregulation. Everything from the tarp bailouts to the underwater mortgage crisis 

can be traced back to excessive corporate corner-cutting unchecked 

by an effective regulatory system. 

Too often regulatory costs are envisioned as putting money in a 

pile and setting it on fire. Environmental protections reduce health 

care costs, keep families intact and productive, let workers stay on 

the job and preserve resources for future generations. Not incidentally, taking the remedial steps that they require, especially when 

capital investments are involved, creates jobs. Pollution control 

equipment must be designed, manufactured, and installed. People 

must be hired to construct and operate highly engineered landfills 

that can safely contain hazardous waste and treat sewage and 

drinking water. Even if we restrict the analysis of regulatory impacts to monetary investments and do not consider the ethics of 

preserving life, health, and nature, the money that is not spent 

treating cancers, asthma, or neurological disease can be used in 

other, more productive ways. 

Two relevant and closely related examples make this case. As 

Chairman Emeritus Waxman pointed out, regulations implementing the Clean Air Act saved 164,300 adult lives in 2010 and 

will save 237,000 lives by 2020. Costs of compliance in the year 

2020 will be $65 billion, but the regulatory controls, the benefits 

of those controls will be $2 trillion. 

As we have gotten better at preventing pollutants from going up 

and out of the stack, we have created other equally pressing problems because these pollutants do not vaporize but rather fall out 

of the scrubbers into fly and bottom ash. Utilities generate about 

145 million tons of coal ash annually, more than three times the 

amount of hazardous chemical waste. 

Half of this ash is dumped in so-called surface impoundments 

which is a euphemism for an unlined pit in the ground. The highly 

toxic heavy metals present in coal include arsenic, beryllium, chromium, and lead. Burning coal concentrates these contaminants to 

dangerous levels. 

In the aftermath of a spill in Kingston, Tennessee of one billion 

gallons of sludge, coal ash sludge, when an impoundment run by 

TBA burst, this spill in sheer volume exceeded the Gulf oil spill 

that transfixed us this summer. EPA began a rule making to comVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
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pel the safe disposal of coal ash. Electric utilities have made killing 

this rule a top priority. If President Obama succumbs to this pressure or Congress intervenes, regulatory benefits of $102 billion over 

the next several decades could be lost. 

If anything, our regulatory system is dangerously weak, and 

Congress should focus on reviving it rather than eroding public 

protections. The destructive convergence of funding shortfalls, political attacks, and outmoded legal authority have set the stage for 

ineffective enforcement and unsupervised industry self-regulations. 

From the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the disaster at West Virginia’s Big Branch Mine with the death toll of 29, 

the signs of regulatory dysfunction abound. 

The latest free-for-all against regulation frames a fundamental 

question for Congress. Will we do what we must to make sure that 

the environment we leave the next generation of Americans is 

clean enough for them to live their lives free of the health risks 

from environmental hazards, or will we squeeze the last penny of 

monetary profit out of the planet’s resources at the cost of leaving 

behind a scarred landscape, polluted air and water, and enough 

toxics in the food we eat to pose serious risks to our children and 

their children? 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Steinzor follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Ms. Steinzor. Now we will recess the 

hearing to go cast votes. We have three votes. My colleagues, I 

would put on the record that 15 minutes after the last vote, we will 

reconvene. I am not sure how you all figure that out, but that is 

why you have the staff to help you. But we will come back 15 minutes after the last vote. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I would like to call the hearing back. And I want 

to thank my colleagues for coming back expeditiously. That was a 

pretty quick turnaround, and now we will go into the 5-minute 

questions. Most members are still making their way back or trying 

to grab a sandwich. So I am sure that a few more will show up by 

the time, but I will recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

First I would like for Dr. Lutter—you cited a breathtaking statement by EPA in June 10. In fact, I have it right here along with 

a December statement of EPA analysis. In your statement in which 

you are quoting the EPA when it put out a proposed rule for combustion byproducts under the Resource Conservation and Recovery 

Act, the EPA said, and I quote ‘‘the regulatory impact analysis for 

this proposed rule does not include either qualitative or quantitative estimates of potential effects on economic productivity, economic growth, employment, job creation, or international competitiveness.’’ Do you believe that they—comment on this statement. 

And do you believe they should put that as part of the analysis? 

Mr. LUTTER. First of all, I think they should be commended for 

full disclosure, but more importantly, I think they should have 

done more analysis on that. And I think what is interesting is exactly with respect to the employment effects, that employment is 

clearly recognized under the executive order. 

As Chris DeMuth has pointed out, employment effects are not 

necessarily costs, but it is important, especially in this environment, for decision makers to be aware of that and also for the public to be aware of employment effects. And I think a reasonable economic analysis, especially of a regulation of that magnitude, should 

have taken into account employment effects. I am not a specialist 

in that rule, but that rule is a rule of several billion dollars. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you. Ms. Harned, in—I don’t even know— 

my first term or my second term, I worked with NFIB closely to 

get liability relief for small businesses and Superfund obligations 

as being one of the primary responsible parties, then went after the 

smaller guys who weren’t really involved other than they used municipal landfill, in this case like everyone else. But, of course, two 

industries used it with hazardous material, and then they got 

pulled in. 

It is under your belief that regulations should have an analysis 

of economic impact on jobs, wouldn’t you agree? 

Ms. HARNED. Yes, and the Superfund example, I think, is a good 

one of that and just also the key that NFIB has seen with our 

members and regulation generally which is when you talk about 

unintended consequences, typically you are talking about what 

happens with the regulation to the members I represent, the small 

business owners I represent. And I don’t think when—I would assume when Superfund was enacted, nobody thought that we were 

going to have members letting us know that they spent $43,000 to 

77 

get them out of litigation that they shouldn’t even have been in to 

begin with. 

And so doing that work on the front end can help prevent those 

unintended consequences and can help make sure that small business owners have the certainty they need going forward so that 

they can hire. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And we may follow up on a whole separate Superfund hearing because of the cost of litigation versus the cost of recovery. Some of the States do a much better job because they are 

not tied into the morass of litigation. 

Dr. DeMuth, do less expensive environment federal regulations 

necessarily mean less environmental protection? 

Mr. DEMUTH. No, it is easy to posit a case where a stricter rule 

will result in less pollution, but we have a lot of cases where EPA 

has found ways to reduce the costs of its regulation that have actually increased the effectiveness. 

One example would be the lead phase-down regulations, which, 

in addition to—which accelerated the withdrawal of lead additives 

from the gasoline supply. At the time it put those rules in place, 

it put in place a trading system so that gasoline refiners had more 

refining capacity, could substitute lead at a faster rate than those 

with lesser, and make trades among themselves. That has been a 

pretty well-studied example of how we reduced the cost of compliance and greatly accelerated the removal of lead from the gasoline 

supply by harnessing market incentives to the EPA rules. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And I think my clock got all messed up, so I don’t 

know how much time, and I want to be respectful of my colleagues. 

I just want to make sure we put in the record the guidelines for 

preparing economic analysis by the EPA December 2010, just this 

statement. I don’t want to put the whole—in 9.2.3.3 Impacts on 

Employment, I quote ‘‘regulatory-induced employment impacts are 

not in general relevant for a benefit-cost analysis. For most situation, employment impacts should not be included in the formal benefit-cost analysis.’’ And I think that is part of the reason why we 

are having this hearing because many of us will say it should. 

And then I would like to now—my time has expired. I would like 

to recognize my colleague, Mr. Green from Texas. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Lutter, you also said 

that you had worked at OMB. 

Mr. LUTTER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. It seems like I recall having dealt with over the last 

many years with agencies and their regulations, that oftentimes 

their regulations are submitted to OMB for whether it be cost-benefit analysis or comment before it actually takes effect. Is that 

true? 

Mr. LUTTER. That has been the case for many years, yes, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. OK, do you know if OMB does any cost-benefit analysis that may be separate from the individual agency? 

Mr. LUTTER. Well, historically it doesn’t. It offers comment on the 

agency’s economic analyses, their benefit-cost analyses and other 

related analyses, all required by the Executive Order. Those comments are typically taken seriously by the agency that then revises 

the economic analysis to reflect OMB comments. But there is not 

78 

a separate OMB analysis except to improve the analysis of the 

agency. 

Mr. GREEN. But there is an analysis. There is an oversight of the 

agency, whether it be EPA or Department of Labor or any other 

agency, that OMB would actually look at their economic analysis? 

Mr. LUTTER. There is oversight. The magnitude of the changes 

depends on the circumstances. 

Mr. GREEN. OK, I appreciate that. Thank you. We have heard 

from our Republican colleagues that regulations designed to protect 

the environment and public health may cost too much, and they all 

have been ignored by the other side of the equation, and costs are 

not taking action to protect the environment and public health. 

Last year, the Office of Management Budget estimated the major federal regulations over the last 10 years costs between $43 and 

$55 billion. Ms. Steinzor, does that cost tell the whole story? 

Ms. STEINZOR. No, thank you for asking that question. It doesn’t 

because it ignores the benefits of regulation, and that is a very important part of this equation. Regulation does help create jobs because the money is being channeled back into the economy. It is 

not being destroyed. So that is one of the reasons why we are emphasizing competitive energy policies that will put us ahead in 

global competition because forcing us to stop using polluting materials will be very helpful. 

Mr. GREEN. OK, I appreciate that. Mr. Lutter, do you agree that 

the balanced discussion of the cost of regulations should include a 

discussion of the benefits too? 

Mr. LUTTER. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. OK, OMB estimated that the economic benefits of 

major regulations over the last 10 years found tremendous benefits 

up to $616 billion. The benefits oftentimes outweigh to cost 3 to 1 

and sometimes as much as 12 to 1, but these hard numbers don’t 

tell, I think, the human side of the story. 

And I think Mr. DeMuth talked about the reasonableness of taking lead out of gasoline, and there was a reasonable regulation to 

be able to trade and to deal with it. I don’t think any of us would 

want to go back to what—because there are a lot of countries in 

the world who still have lead in their gasoline. But that was probably one that ultimately paid off much better. 

And frankly it sounds like from your testimony, it was more 

workable than some of the ones we may see again through lots of 

different administrations. 

Ms. Steinzor, it may be tempting for some to rely on a clinical 

cost estimate to form and justify policy. Do you think it makes 

sense to rely on analytical tools alone, or do we need to remain cognizant of the other principles of our society, like fairness and justice and equity? 

Ms. STEINZOR. Yes, sir, and I actually think that Congress did a 

terrific job on that when it wrote the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conversation and Recovery Act and the Safe Drinking 

Water Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act. All of those statutes talk about protecting human health and the environment with 

an adequate margin of safety. Those are the kind of phrases that 

you used, and I would just—until you change your instructions to 

the agencies, that is what they are going to be following. 

79 

Mr. GREEN. OK, thank you. One last question in my last 20 seconds. Typically agency rules, industries have the right to go to the 

courthouse and file, whether it be the NFIB or individual affected 

industries. Don’t you think that is also a check, and I guess let me 

ask Ms. Harned if the NFIB actually ever filed in court representing a certain part of the industry on some regulation you 

thought was maybe not proper? 

Ms. HARNED. Why, we have done that on several occasions with 

EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, and I think a couple of other agencies. All of these issues that we were raising were, checking the administration for not following Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act. The good thing is we have that as a tool. 

The bad news is in the case where we—the court agreed with us, 

the appeals court ultimately agreed with us, our members never 

saw any relief. They just told the agency, don’t do it again, basically. So the rule never got—— 

Mr. GREEN. Did the agency overrule that—did the court overrule 

the agency? 

Ms. HARNED. They did not provide—they did not tell the agency 

to go back and fix the problem. They just said don’t do it again. 

So I guess my point is they acknowledged that the agency didn’t 

follow its procedures and that that was in violation of the law, but 

they did not go back and fix the issue that we were complaining 

about fundamentally, which was a streamline process that had 

been taken away from small business owners for permitting. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Gentleman’s time has expired. I would just weigh 

in in that there are litigation costs that have to then be borne by 

the small business to even go through that process. 

Mr. BARTON. Like to yield 5 minutes to my colleague from Kentucky, Mr. Whitfield. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all 

very much for your testimony today. One of the things about this 

that bothers me the most is, and some of you touched on in your 

testimony, and that is that Congress does seem to be ceding more 

and more authority to regulatory bodies, particularly by writing 

pieces of legislation that are very vague. And it lends itself to interpretations by the way that people want to interpret it. 

An example of that, I think Mr. DeMuth pointed this out in his 

testimony, was on the Tarp legislation. We thought they were going 

to be buying toxic assets with some of these public funds. Instead, 

they were making equity investments in financial firms, and so I 

am assuming that most of you would agree with me that Congress 

may be ceding too much authority to regulatory bodies. Would you 

agree with that, Mr. Lutter? 

Mr. LUTTER. I think it is very helpful for regulatory bodies to 

have fairly precise instructions about what is congressional intent. 

It facilitates a more technical decision rather than an unfettered 

policy one, which is best left with elected representatives. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. What about your, Ms. Harned? 

Ms. HARNED. Yes, I think this is a continuing concern, and I do 

agree, the health care law is a good example of this as well that 

we are seeing right now that is impacting our members. And it is 

really the agencies that are going to—— 

80 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Might I also say that we didn’t have an opportunity to offer one amendment on the floor on that bill. Mr. 

DeMuth, do you have a—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, I agree, sir. If you look across the range of 

EPA’s organic statutes, I would say that those that have been the 

most contentious and have lead to the greatest problems have been 

those that given them very, very wide discretion. 

And the ones that have been most successful, I think the classic 

case is the automobile emissions standards. They were basically 

written on the hill, and they have been very effective. There hasn’t 

been that much litigation. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Right. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Everybody respects them. Congress spoke. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Right. 

Mr. DEMUTH. And it reflected—I mean they were controversial 

at the time. The automobile manufacturers didn’t like them, but 

Congress made a considered decision that this was something that 

was important. And I think that applying that approach much 

more broadly across RICRA, TASKA, the Superfund Program, and 

the Clean Water and Air Acts would be very beneficial. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. What about your, Ms. Steinzor? Do you agree 

with my statement? 

Ms. STEINZOR. I agree that the laws should be specific. I actually 

would observe that the environmental laws are pretty specific. I 

worked for the committee many years ago, and we rewrote Superfund. And I actually have counted the pages. It went from 50 pages 

to 400 pages. So very, very specific instructions. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Yes. Well, I think most people certainly in my 

district agree and feel very strongly that they are losing jobs because of regulations. We had a plant close last week, and they specifically—the owner of the plant said I am closing this because of 

environmental regulations, and 200 jobs were lost right there. 

Now, one of the things that I am totally puzzled about is we look 

at these formulas about benefits versus cost, benefits versus cost. 

And, Ms. Steinzor, in your testimony, you talk about the benefits, 

for example, of the Clean Air Act. By 2020, the benefits will be $2 

trillion annually. Now, Mr. DeMuth, you and Mr. Ginsberg wrote 

a law journal article one time at the University of Michigan in 

which you looked at formulas used to determine benefits, cost-benefit analysis, and you were, I believe, critical of some of these formulas being used. Would you explain briefly why? I mean it is so 

frustrating when somebody says the benefit is too—I mean you say 

that a life lost would be $84,000 or whatever. Could you just comment briefly on the formulas used to calculate these benefits? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think that the approaches to calculating benefits 

have become more specific over time and better, but that they involve enormously large room for subjective judgment. 

Professor Steinzor and also Administrative Jackson last week 

cited a figure of 650,000 lives saved per year from EPA regulations. 

I regard that as preposterous, intellectually embarrassing. They 

think it is reasonable. What they do is they take the amount of pollution in America in 1970, and they take GDP in 1970 and they 

take GDP today, and they multiple it by the pollution in 1970. 

Now, we probably would be saving that many lives, but you know 

81 

what? We wouldn’t be able to see each other if pollution had increased that much. And then they take credit for all of the difference. 

So you can see a lot of very poor procedures, and this is the administrative EPA talking before an important congressional committee. So you can see that the opportunity for exaggeration is still 

immense. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time has expired. The ranking 

member asked if we could allow Ms. Steinzor to, because some of 

her testimony was questioned, a brief response. So I am going to 

ask unanimous consent that we allow Ms. Steinzor to respond for 

a minute. Without objection. Ms. Steinzor. 

Ms. STEINZOR. Thank you. The estimates of benefits that are 

made under things like the Clean Air Act and other statutes are 

very low because we assume, for example, that if a child is brought 

to an emergency room with an asthma attack, that that attack is 

worth $363. I don’t even think they let you through the door or 

give you a plastic ID bracelet for $363. And the cost of a nonfatal 

heart attack in a person under the age of 24 is $83,000. So unless 

you actually die of your heart attack, that is all the amount of 

money we think it is worth to prevent having you exposed to air 

pollution that can make your heart disease worse or give you— 

worsen your asthma. 

So these benefits—I would disagree with Mr. DeMuth. These 

benefits are likely to be much, much higher than what EPA says 

they are. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And thank you, ma’am. Now, I would like to recognize Congressman Joe Pitts from Pittsville for 5 minutes. Pennsylvania. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeMuth, in your written testimony, you state ‘‘on the cost side, these include higher 

prices, the loss of many good things outside the realms of environmental quality and employment such as the quality and reliability 

of some products and services.’’ 

Could you please give us some examples of quality and reliability 

losses? And does this affect the ability of businesses to access capital to either comply with more burdensome requirements or to simultaneously comply and hire—expand their businesses? 

Mr. DEMUTH. The costs could certainly take the form of those 

you suggest. I had in mind more kind of direct and obvious things. 

Sometimes installing pollution control gear simply raises cost. 

Sometimes it lowers the utility of a product. The hardware that we 

use to control pollution on cars degrades the performance of the 

car. We have all gotten used to it, and pollution has gone down 

enormously. But the performance of cars in terms of miles per gallon is less than it would have been otherwise. 

A good example for people in the Washington area, especially 

those that have experienced power outages in the past couple of 

weeks, is the reliability of our power system. The Clean Air Act 

through—I mean people on the staff will—who are down in the 

weeds will understand this. The Clean Air Act discourages plant 

modernization in the electric power business because of a curious 

anomaly in the Act where if you try to—you may have a lot of good 

reasons for renovating your plant. If you renovate the plant, it will 

82 

reduce pollution and make the power supply much more reliable. 

But you will trip yourself into so much more stringent regulations. 

And so power companies tend to defer and delay, and EPA has 

been trying to fix this for 20 years. It is something that I would 

recommend to legislators to fix. It hasn’t been able to do it, and I 

think that the effect on keeping our power grid up to date through 

keeping the generating facilities up to date has been very substantial. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you. Ms. Harned, you say that small businesses spend 36 percent more per employee to comply with environmental regulations than larger businesses, while small businesses provide two-thirds of the new jobs. Does this mean that the 

Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act simply 

does not work? 

Ms. HARNED. Well, it works when it is followed again the letter 

and the spirit of it. What we have noticed is when the Act was first 

introduced, there was more of blatant noncompliance, I think, than 

you would find today 20 years later, though that still occurs. I 

think what you see though is ways to do the end run around it, 

to maybe not certify a rule that otherwise would be certified to 

have a more in-depth small business analysis. 

And our view of the world is, look, once these regs are on the 

books, they are on the books. And getting them off has proven to 

be very difficult if not impossible. Why not do your homework on 

the front end and make sure that you use the tools that are given 

to you through the law to solicit small business impact and really 

understand how a law—how a regulation is going to work before 

implementing it? I know it takes time on the front end, but it is 

much better to do it that way than have to clean up a mess later 

like you saw in Superfund and other things like that. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you. Mr. Lutter, finally, do you believe that the 

creation of new enforcement and compliance jobs related to the 

issuance of a new rule should be given substantial weight in the 

net jobs calculation? 

Mr. LUTTER. I have concerns about it, net jobs calculations, even 

though I understand its appeal to many parties. I have tried to articulate a preference for a conventional calculation of benefits being 

shown to justify cost as a basis for issuing a regulation. 

I think, having said that, there is a variety of effects on employment that are also legitimate to consider in that benefit-cost calculation. And my survey indicates that some analyses for some regs 

are not doing that. I think with respect to employment—or, I am 

sorry, enforcement jobs themselves, if there is an enforcement job 

in the regulatory agency and that function is now required to ensure compliance with the rule, then that job is a cost of the rule 

and ought be considered as such. 

Similarly, if there is an enforcement compliance officer in the 

regulated industry that now is not otherwise hired and that person’s sole function is to ensure that they are complying with red 

tape, that is also a cost. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Gentleman’s time has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Capps. 

83 

Ms. CAPPS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to turn to 

Mr. DeMuth. Thank you for the testimony, each of you. Mr. 

DeMuth, your testimony suggests that environmental regulations 

are no longer as cost effective as they once were because the marginal benefits have decreased. Essentially you are suggesting we 

have kind of already largely solved the problem of pollution. I wish 

that were true. The Centers for Disease Control has found that 

chemical exposures in this country are everywhere, and we see the 

public health impacts of those exposures. 

According to the CDC, 90 percent of people tested have BPA in 

their bodies. Nearly every person tested had toxic fire retardants 

in their blood, and autism rates are rising at an alarming pace. 

California, for example, where we have a lot of pollution, autism 

rates have grown sevenfold in recent years. 

Last year, the president’s cancer panel released a report focused 

on the link between environmental exposures and cancer. As they 

noted in 2009, one-and-a-half million Americans were diagnosed 

with cancer and 562,000 died from the disease. The panel concluded that reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act is—and 

they laid quotes around this—‘‘critically needed.’’ 

Mr. DeMuth, are these experts and scientists wrong to say that 

we need to be doing more to address environmental exposures to 

harmful chemicals? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I don’t think they are wrong, and I don’t think you 

are wrong. And I am sorry that—I think you may have misinterpreted what I said. I said that I thought that EPA regulations were 

becoming less cost effective over time. I didn’t say there was no pollution left. I didn’t say there was nothing left to do. 

To take your CDC case, one of the pollutants, toxic pollutants 

people have been most concerned about has been mercury. The 

CDC measures of mercury, for example, women 15 to 40, their conventional categories, the measured amounts have been below their 

reference rates since about 2000 and—— 

Ms. CAPPS. I don’t want to cut you off, but I want to move on 

because I have other questions. But we will agree—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. If you look at mercury regulations that EPA is 

dealing with, the amount of additional mercury being subtracted is 

extraordinarily small at high costs, and that compares—— 

Ms. CAPPS. Well, that is not the same with every kind of chemical though, but I—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. No, that is an example of what I had—— 

Ms. CAPPS. That is what you were driving at? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes. 

Ms. CAPPS. OK, but you do agree that we need to do more, we 

need to be doing more to address environmental exposures—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. Of course. 

Mrs. CAPPS [continuing]. To harmful chemicals. Do you agree 

that we should reform TSKA, for example? 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think that would be highly worthwhile. 

Ms. CAPPS. OK, so I can see that—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. We might, you know, I am not—what I would 

want to do with the Act, you know, I am not sure, and I don’t know 

what the various proposals are. 

84 

Ms. CAPPS. Let me turn then to Ms. Steinzor, and I appreciate 

very much—— 

Mr. DEMUTH. OK. 

Mrs. CAPPS [continuing]. Your answering my question. 

Mr. DEMUTH. Thank you. 

Ms. CAPPS. Ms. Steinzor, what do you think? Do you think we 

need to be doing more to address environmental exposures to 

harmful chemicals? 

Ms. STEINZOR. Yes, we need to be doing a lot more, and to use 

your example of the Toxic Substances Control Act, we have—many 

people don’t realize this, but we don’t test chemicals before they are 

put on the market in this country and—— 

Ms. CAPPS. You wait and see what happens. 

Ms. STEINZOR. We wait and see what happens, and people are 

basically human guinea pigs when that goes on. And a very big 

need to revise TSKA in that way. 

Ms. CAPPS. Well, some of my colleagues, we hear a lot from them 

about the failures of the current regulatory system. They suggest 

that the failure is a result of staffers at the agencies running amok. 

I don’t think that is the case, but instead of pointing fingers at 

staffers in agencies, there might be some other reasons. What are 

some of the examples that you would give to why we are not continuing in the path the way we should? 

Ms. STEINZOR. The agencies are drastically underfunded. EPA 

hasn’t had a raise in constant dollars in its funding since 1984, and 

you have passed a series of laws thousands of pages long since that 

time that give them all sorts of new responsibilities. And they just 

simply can’t keep up with the very important mandates that Congress has given them. 

Ms. CAPPS. I appreciate that. You know, Mr. Chairman, I wish 

we lived in a world where EPA had worked itself out of a job. 

Someday perhaps we will be able to do that, but cancer patients 

and parents of autistic children nationwide know that we are not 

there yet. Scientists nationwide know that to achieve the goal of 

getting rid of pollution, we are going to need to strengthen the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, not take away essential 

EPA tools. And with that, I will yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank the gentlelady, and I would like to yield 

to the gentleman, Congressman Bass, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BASS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I am most 

apologetic for coming in late. If there are any questions that have 

already been addressed, you just say so, and I can take a look at 

it in the record. I have two questions. Dr. Lutter, you make a good 

case in your testimony that analysis of regulatory action should indicate that the action will have clear net benefits and no, if you 

will, unnecessary, underlined, burdens. And you argue that this 

discipline will promote public understanding and accountability for 

legislators. 

Will the result of that kind of policy be fewer regulations or better regulations in your opinion, fewer new regulations? 

Mr. LUTTER. Thank you. I think it is—the result will be an improvement in regulation, which would be measured both by the 

quantity and the quality. I think of this really as analysis has two 

functions to perform. 

85 

One is it has a function to let the regulators at the regulatory 

agency and the White House know about the intended effects so 

that they know when they are regulating what are the best estimates available to them about the consequences of their regulatory 

decision, surely for public health and safety, also for cost. But especially in this constrained environment, on unemployment. I think 

that is something that is fair for them to be informed of. 

But also with respect to public accountability. I think then the 

question is is there information being given to Congress and to the 

public about what the government knows about the consequences 

of its regulatory decisions and provided that the analysis is carefully done to meet credible standards. And I think the public accountability function can be helped by more credible analysis of 

regs. 

Mr. BASS. All right, Dr. DeMuth, do you think that the Administrative Procedures Act and regulatory reviews are being used in assessing the true needs and appropriate burdens for federal regulations and making appropriate adjustments when required? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Congressman, I am afraid I don’t have a very helpful answer to that. The Administrative Procedure Act basically requires the agencies to make decisions that comport with the statutes and to follow certain procedures for notice and comment. And 

then it has a fallback saying that decisions can’t be arbitrary or capricious. I think that is basically a pretty good structure. 

There is a lot of talk in Washington these days about the quite 

surprising growth in the use of a technique called interim final 

rules. A lot of agency rules in the past year, I think because the 

agencies are swamped in part because Congress gave them a lot of 

new business to do in some big statutes last year, and they are resulting to interim final where they just announce what they are 

going to do. There is no notice and comment at all. 

That was intended as sort of an emergency procedure where here 

is our interim final, but now we are going to have a rule-making 

proceeding. But in a lot of cases, it appears that the interim final 

rules are really going to be the final final rules. So that, I think, 

suggests some problems with the APA that might be addressed. 

Mr. BASS. Do you think that there was any significant discretion 

on the part of the agencies in the amount of rule making, understanding that the Congress may have burdened them with new requirements, but could they have taken a different route that might 

have resulted in a lighter regulatory burden? 

Mr. DEMUTH. Yes, sir. That is a pervasive effect, a pervasive 

phenomenon. There are lots of statutes in the environmental area 

and many others as well that give the agencies very, very wide discretion in making hard tradeoffs between various goods and the 

single purpose agency, whether it is the EPA or the FDA or whatever, is always going to favor the goods that you all in Congress 

instructed it to promote. That is its job, but when you give it a lot 

of discretion, you can expect the agency to push and sometimes go 

too far. 

Mr. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank the gentleman. The chair now recognizes 

the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Latta, for 5 minutes. 

86 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the time and 

thanks to our panelists for being with us today. A lot of questions 

and just kind of get a little background of where I am coming from. 

I represent the largest manufacturing district in the State of Ohio, 

21⁄2 years ago was the ninth largest in Congress. And I am not 

going to tell you where we are today and what has happened. 

But, you know, no one out there in my district or across Ohio or 

across this country doesn’t want to say that we don’t want clean 

air or clean water. But, you know, if I could start with Mr. 

DeMuth, going back to page three of your testimony, which I found 

interesting. Again you are talking about your percentages that are 

out there and where things have gone. And you were talking about 

the ’70s and the ’80s. You said in both cases, the single-purpose 

agency having achieved say a 90 percent reduction in risk or pollution will then wish to tackle another 8 percent and then on. 

And so, I would just like to start with that because I have communities in my district that draw water from—we have a lot of rivers. But EPA standards are getting to such a point that the parent 

companies of these plants that are located in these communities 

are saying if your cost goes up anymore, we are going to pull you. 

And so I found your testimony interesting because that is going on 

in our area right now. 

And I just wandered if you could comment on what you have 

seen also nationally. 

Mr. DEMUTH. What did you say I could comment on? 

Mr. LATTA. If you—nationally. If you could comment on that, if 

you have seen other statistics nationally on that. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I wish I could be more helpful. I mean there are 

a lot of—there is a lot of evidence such as the kind that you cite. 

When I was working on these matters in the government, I would 

see a lot of them. I think that there are many EPA rules that are 

very sensible and well crafted, but the general tendency is to push 

much too hard. 

And it is a—one of the best things that has been written on the 

subject is by Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court when he was an 

academic. He wrote a book called ‘‘Squaring the Vicious Circle’’ and 

he pointed out that single purpose expert agencies, without a budget on compliance costs, will try to go all the way to 100 percent. 

And as the costs get higher and higher, you get more cases such 

as those in your district. And they will essentially push until they 

get somebody pushing back, which is what is happening today. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you. Pardon me. Ms. Harned, Ms. Steinzor 

said a little bit ago that regulations create jobs. Do you agree with 

that? 

Ms. HARNED. That has not been the experience of our members. 

They consistently cite regulations as one of the reasons, over the 

last 26 months, in fact, one of the top three reasons they are not 

hiring in this economy. 

Mr. LATTA. Let me ask you this. Have you heard of any of your 

other NFIB members out there have situations like this? Again 

when I am home, I go through maybe two to three to four plants 

a day, and they are either very small or very large. But I was in 

one place. It was kind of disconcerting because the gentleman said 

that, after I heard him talking about some situation here with the 

87 

EPA, I said well what was it that the EPA said when you talked 

to them? He said well, here is the problem. He said he told him 

that if he had to implement all these regulations, that they are 

going to put him out of business. And the comment back to him 

from the regulator was we don’t care. 

Ms. HARNED. Right, and I feel like that is very much the sense 

that we get from our members, from the regulators, and also the 

concern that it is—they are always—the concern that it is a gotcha 

mentality on enforcement and that you really can’t win. If they 

come in your place of business, there is so much on the books, they 

are bound to find something. And that really is not what helps public health and safety anyway. You want be having more of a partnership approach. 

This worked really well, truthfully, and the last probably 9 years 

with OSHA where they were really working with small business 

owners to help them understand their obligations. Compliance assistance was very much a focus at that agency from 2000 to 2008, 

and as a result, you saw injuries go down. I mean we have proof 

to show that you can get positive benefits for the public by having 

more of a cooperative approach with the regulators instead of a 

gotcha mentality. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you. And, Mr. Lutter, on page 7 of your testimony, I found something also interesting because I tell you with 

my district, I see it all the time. You cited a study from a Michael 

Greenstone. He is now with MIT talking about the question of comparing counties that were and were not in attainment under the 

Clean Air Act. And I know of a situation in my district where contiguous counties to a larger county were all placed on a nonattainment because of the one county being just—artificial line is how 

they drew it, and everybody fell into it, even though the other 

counties were not in the situation of being nonattainment. 

But I know that you say on page eight then, of your testimony, 

that these estimates probably overstate the national loss of activity 

due to nonattainment designations. But I can see that jobs are 

being moved because of this nonattainment. And just wondered if 

you could comment again on that. 

Mr. LUTTER. Well, this is actually a very interesting study that 

you cite precisely because it is one of the most careful, comprehensive, authoritative. Its ‘‘Journal of Political Economy’’ reviews of 

what in many ways is a cornerstone of the Clean Air Act. And 

though that has been extensively studied, one question is just, retrospectively, if you look at the nonattainment versus the attainment counties, what does it do? And the answer is you get these 

large adverse effects on employment in the nonattainment counties. 

The author, quite appropriately, says, well, there is this risk of 

a certain amount of shifting of jobs to the attainment counties, 

which could be interpreted as the result of two things. One is the 

regulations are less onerous there, and the other one, of course, is 

the air quality is better so maybe people are moving for that reason 

as well. 

What I think is interesting is the extent to which that analysis 

may speak to current dilemmas because, as I pointed out, one of 

the regulations that I looked at is also the Ozone National Ambient 

88 

Air Quality Standard, and that has been repeatedly—I know it is 

not within the jurisdiction of this committee, but it has been repeatedly revised. And it is interesting how, as an illustration, as 

Chris DeMuth pointed, it points to more and more increasingly 

stringent options being considered and adopted by the regulatory 

agency even at the detriment of cost and compliance costs. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time has expired. Chair recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Harper, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate each of 

you being here and shedding some light on this. And I can only tell 

you that I can’t find a business or an industry in my district that 

thinks that they are under-regulated. And so we have to deal with 

those issues on a regular basis, and trying to find that proper balance is something that I hope we can do in this Congress. 

And the question I would have for you, Mr. DeMuth, is are you 

concerned about proposing the use of performance standards, that 

you are actually encouraging the Federal Government to dictate 

the means of production or investment in manufacturing in this 

country? 

Mr. DEMUTH. A performance standard, in my understanding, is 

a standard that says this is the amount of pollution we are going 

to permit. And I generally think that that is superior to a technology standard that says this is the way you are going to manufacture tires or this is, you know. So in general, I think that performance standards involve less dictation to businesses about how 

they will meet pollution obligations and have more flexibility. 

There are cases where I think that the advantages of performance standards outweigh this, but in many, many more cases than 

we permit today, I would think that moving to performance standards would be a step in the right direction. 

Mr. HARPER. When you are looking at the environment standards 

or statutes that are in place, what comes to the top of your list of 

what most needs to be reformed? If you had to identify a couple 

that you think are definitely in need. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I would say in the jurisdiction of this committee, 

the RIKRA and Superfund statutes, I think that they have produced some good—RIKRA has definitely produced some good 

things. Together, I think they have been woefully inefficient. I 

think probably the worst environmental statute is outside of your 

jurisdiction, and that is the National Ambient Air Quality Standards portion of the Clean Air Act with all of the State implementation plans. 

There is an enormous amount of waste and inefficiency simply in 

the administration of this program. And if you compare it to automobile pollution standards, what Congress has done directly in the 

acid rain and ozone standards, where we had Congress itself making a decision, reflecting the consensus of our representatives as to 

what the standard was going to be and how fast we were going to 

pursue it, I think those have been much more effective. 

And if you go back to 1970, you can see why people were interested in this State implementation plan approach, but it has become a bureaucratic quagmire, and it is not doing anything good 

for the economy or the environment. It could be doing much more. 

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Mr. HARPER. And I would love to have your take on how you 

view the large federal deficits and amount of federal spending, 

what impact you are seeing that have in your view on businesses 

in this country. 

Mr. DEMUTH. I think that it is a powerful suppressant to business investment because it creates the idea that our national government itself will be at risk, that our borrowing will be downgraded. These are things that a lot of businesspeople take seriously, and it leaves them, like consumers, wondering about our future and making them much less likely to make large capital investments. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you. Yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Gentleman yields back his time. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Cassidy, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Ms. Steinzor, am I pronouncing that correctly? I 

came in late. 

Ms. STEINZOR. Yes. 

Mr. CASSIDY. You know a heck of a lot more than I do about this, 

and I am actually going to explore the theoretical, which is not 

under our jurisdiction. I am going to speak about Clean Air Act, 

but I am just interested in picking your brain because I kind of 

agree with these folks. So I learn, if you will, from you whom I may 

agree or disagree. 

Clearly the elephant in the room of our economy is whether or 

not CO2 and greenhouse gases are going to be regulated. An incredible concern in my district from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lots of 

people with good jobs and good benefits are employed in these industries. 

As I read about the cap-and-trade bill, one thing that they said 

was almost inevitable, there would be carbon leakage. People 

would just move their carbon-intensive enterprises to another country, losing the jobs, just shipping the jobs overseas but still emitting the greenhouse gas. 

Just accepting for the sake of argument that this is a concern, 

you know, and then I think I recently saw a big steel plant out of 

Spain who relocated, just shut down. When I asked why, they said 

well, heck, they just sold their credits. It was easier for them to 

move their carbon intensive or energy intensive enterprise elsewhere than to put up with the regulations. And I am thinking as 

I look at Spain’s fiscal mess, wow, maybe this contributed to the 

fiscal mess. 

So in the theoretical, where a regulation or a regulatory environment comes in and says thou shalt, and the easiest way to comply 

is to say adios and to move down to some place where they speak 

Spanish or Chinese or you name it, regulation doesn’t kill jobs in 

that regard? You follow what I am saying? I mean it just seems 

like there is this exodus of jobs related to this sort of regulation. 

So again it is not under our jurisdiction, but I figured that could 

be the basis of, if you will, a theoretical conversation. 

Ms. STEINZOR. I would point to perhaps the most devastating 

event in your State, which would be the Deepwater Horizon spill. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Now, if I may, I think you point out correctly that 

the problems there is not the absence of regulation but a dysfunctional regulatory environment. And I would also point out that onVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
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going, we have a job moratorium now because they can’t, although 

with resources, they can’t pull their regulatory environment together. So a lot of people who depend upon these jobs for their 

mortgages can’t get work. 

I am sorry. That just touches a button in me because I know so 

many families that are connected by this kind of heavy hand of 

government destroying their ability to work and support their families. I am sorry. Continue. 

Ms. STEINZOR. Well, I have a lot of compassion for those people 

too, and I would suggest to you that the entity that cost them the 

jobs was British Petroleum in cooperation with Transocean and 

Halliburton. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Now, that is to imply though that the other actors 

out there, Chevron, Exxon, Mobile, you name it, are doing the same 

sort of bad behavior as BP. There is no evidence for that. Indeed 

the National Academy of Engineers said that the problems of the 

Macando Well were identifiable and fixable and that the moratorium would not appreciably increase safety. So we have thousands 

of people out of work because one bad actor is—that is being ascribed to everybody else. 

Ms. STEINZOR. Well, I think the moratorium was lifted, but I 

think what my point was, and the oil spill commission certainly 

concluded this, that there are systemic problems throughout the 

whole industry, but if we were to just look at British Petroleum in 

isolation, it had profits of $19 and $17 billion. 

Mr. CASSIDY. I am not putting—now, believe me, we can agree. 

I knew we would have common ground. We can put BP on the 

dock, and we are going to both be in agreement. My concern isn’t 

about—— 

Ms. STEINZOR. But that is—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. Yes, BP as a bad actor, about the fact that good actors are now being penalized because the regulatory environment 

can’t—and people are losing jobs. I mean job—they got rigs moving 

to the coast of Africa with the jobs that go with it. Because the regulatory will not get off bottom center to allow good actors to again 

begin to work. 

Now, to me that just seems a total kind of tyranny of the regulator. 

Ms. STEINZOR. Well, again we have 55 inspectors in the Gulf of 

Mexico to inspect 3,500 oil rigs and production platforms. So I am 

not going to lay a bet that there won’t be another spill, but if we 

look at countries that don’t have any regulation, they do pay an incredible price. I mean there is an article in the British medical 

journal ‘‘The Lancet’’—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. I am not at all—excuse me. Just because I have 

limited time. I am not saying don’t regulate. I am just saying the 

tyranny of the regulator right now who always shifts it so that you 

can never quite get your permit. And the people who depend upon 

those jobs don’t have their jobs with the salary and the benefits. 

Ms. STEINZOR. I guess what I am trying to say is that I don’t 

think those 55 inspectors are feeling particularly tyrannical and 

that the big economic cost to Louisiana was unregulated industry 

that really was careless, negligent, was making outrageous profits 

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and squandered the economic and natural health of the whole Louisiana coast. 

Mr. CASSIDY. If I may say, I would say it was not—it was a single actor, BP. If I may finish. It was a single actor called BP, and 

again as according to the president’s own handpicked council of engineers, this was not a—the problems were fixable and definite. 

And lastly, it is not the 55 frankly. It is Brownwich and Salazar. 

So at some point, they become the translator of someone who decides to otherwise squash an industry. Thank you. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time has expired. We want to 

thank the first panel for their testimony. You may get questions in 

writing from members as a follow-up. We would ask if you do, to 

respond, and we do appreciate your testimony. Since I had to start 

this thing so quick so we could get done, the way this hearing was 

set up was to talk to the economists big picture. Second panel deals 

with case studies from individuals. So that is how this was set up, 

and we appreciate you coming. 

And now we will ask for the second panel to be seated. We would 

like to thank the second panel for joining us. Because I have time, 

I will introduce you all at one time, and then we will start from 

my right to left for the 5-minute testimonies. 

Joining us on the second panel will be Leonard F. Hopkins, fuel 

procurement and reliance manager from Southern Illinois Power 

Cooperative, serves portions of my congressional district, which I 

said in my opening statement. And we are happy to have you here. 

Mr. Joseph Baird is a partner in Baird Hanson Limited Liability 

Partnership. Ms. Marcie Kinter, vice-president, Government and 

Business Information, Specialty Graphic Imaging Association. We 

have—not in order—Wendy K. Neu, executive vice-president, Hugo 

Neu Corporation, and chairperson of We Recycle. And last but not 

least the Honorable Vince Ryan, Harris County attorney. 

Welcome, and we will start with Mr. Hopkins with your 5-minute 

testimony. Again your entire testimony will be submitted for the 

record. Executive summary within the 5 minutes as close as possible. And welcome. 

STATEMENT OF LEONARD F. HOPKINS, FUEL PROCUREMENT 

AND RELIANCE MANAGER, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS POWER COOPERATIVE; JOSEPH BAIRD, PARTNER, BAIRD HANSON LLP; 

MARCIA Y. KINTER, VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT & BUSINESS INFORMATION, SPECIALTY GRAPHIC IMAGING ASSOCIATION; WENDY NEU, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, HUGO 

NEU CORPORATION; AND VINCE RYAN, COUNTY ATTORNEY, 

HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS 

STATEMENT OF LEONARD F. HOPKINS 

Mr. HOPKINS. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name 

is Leonard Hopkins, as stated, and I serve as the fuel and compliance manager for Southern Illinois Power Cooperative. I am honored to have the privilege to appear before you today. 

Southern Illinois Power is generation and transmission cooperative serving approximately 250,000 people and businesses located 

in the southern-most counties of Illinois. We are a not-for-profit 

corporation and are owned directly by our members. SIPC operates 

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one power generation station south of Marion, Illinois which utilizes two coal-fired boilers to generate power for its members. 

When each of these boilers was built, they were equipped with 

state-of-the-art pollution control equipment that would allow them 

to burn Illinois bituminous coal and meet all environmental regulations. We continue to comply with such regulations today. 

The coal combustion residue regulation being proposed by EPA 

poses a serious threat, excuse me, to the economic survival of the 

cooperative for which I work. My comments will focus on the effects 

EPA’s decision could have on Southern Illinois Power. I believe 

these comments also reflect the sentiments of many of our nation’s 

electric cooperatives. Southern Illinois Power Cooperative has been 

utilizing its coal combustion byproducts in beneficial ways for over 

20 years. Roof shingle sand, abrasive products, mine reclamation, 

cement, and fertilizer blends are all example of ways our coal combustion residues are recycled into beneficial products for society. 

Southern Illinois Power is concerned that placing the label of 

hazardous on coal combustion residue will place the same stigma 

on all coal combustion byproducts and effectively end the possibility of recycling such materials. In the litigious society of today, 

manufacturers and end users will flee from any recycled product 

that is remotely related to hazardous waste. Such an action would 

remove these recycled products from the marketplace, and the recovery of replacement materials would require increased emissions 

of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. 

Further, small virtually unavoidable spills of ash at power plants 

could be considered illegal disposal of hazardous material and could 

cause the plant to be in a constant state of noncompliance. Shipments to hazardous waste landfills in the country could increase 

tenfold as such hazardous waste landfills might be completely filled 

in only 2 years. The barriers to compliance associated with such an 

action could conceivably drive coal-fired power generators like 

Southern Illinois Power out of business. 

Southern Illinois Power Cooperative is a small generation and 

transmission system and defined as a small business by the U.S. 

Small Business Administration. By regulation, cooperatives are not 

allowed to maintain large capital reserves. 

When the cost of running our business suddenly increases like it 

would under the subtitle C option, we must go directly to our lenders. There is no cash cushion to mitigate these increases, and the 

cost of new loans would be shared by each co-op member owner in 

the form of higher electricity rates. SIPC conservatively estimates 

the subtitle C option would cost its members a minimum of an additional $11 million per year, which is about 25 percent of our current annual fuel budget, and we serve an area of the State that has 

up to 15 percent unemployment. 

In cases where businesses like SIPC are affected, EPA is obliged 

to pursue the least costly approach in order to mitigate impacts on 

facilities that can least afford them. Moreover, Congress made clear 

in enacting the Bevel Amendment, under which this decision is 

being made, that EPA should avoid the subtitle C option if at all 

possible. 

Under the subtitle D option, EPA can promulgate federal regulations specifically designed for CCR disposal units. These regulaVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
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tions would be directly enforceable by the States and the public 

under RIKRA citizen supervision, and violators would be subject to 

significant civil penalties. Excuse me. EPA would also retain its imminent and substantial endangerment authority to take action 

against any CCR units that pose risk to human health or the environment. 

The D prime option would enable EPA to establish an environmentally protected program without crippling CCR beneficial use 

and imposing unnecessary costs on power plants, threatening jobs 

and increasing electricity costs. 

In conclusion, Southern Illinois Power agrees with many others 

who are already on record as opposing the subtitle C approach. 

This list includes a bipartisan group of 165 House members and 45 

U.S. senators in the 111th Congress, virtually all the States, other 

federal agencies, municipal and local governments, CCR marketers 

and beneficial users, unions, and many other third parties who 

have maintained that regulating CCRs under RIKRA’s hazardous 

waste program is simply regulatory overkill and would cripple the 

CCR beneficial use industry. 

We respectfully suggest there is no reason to pursue this approach when the subtitle D prime option offers the same degree of 

protection without the attendant risks and burdens of subtitle C. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to express the views of a 

small cooperative regarding a proposed regulation that will have 

lasting effects on the lives and livelihoods of our members. Thank 

you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hopkins follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Hopkins, and I recognize Mr. 

Baird for 5 minutes. Let us get your microphone set. 

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH BAIRD 

Mr. BAIRD. That will help. I am Joe Baird, a partner in Baird 

Hanson Williams, a mineral resource firm in Boise, Idaho. I am 

also president of the Northwest Mining Association. Today I am 

representing the Idaho Cobalt Project of the Formation Capital 

Corporation, U.S. 

But the problem we now seek to address is not unique to formation. It is a problem for any mining company operating or hoping 

to operate on federal lands. And by showing up here today, we 

were hoping to alert the Congress and the executive branch to a 

developing duplication of—a true duplication of environmental regulatory burdens that are already managed by longstanding programs of the BLM and the Forest Service governing exactly the 

same subject matter and covering the same technical issues as an 

EPA regulatory initiative. 

Now, just quickly on the Cobalt Project, it is a project that is at 

the end of permitting, and it is—it will consist of an underground 

mine and a floatation mill that uses simple physical separation of 

ore from country rock, eliminating the need to use aggressive 

chemicals for the milling. 

The project footprint is only about 135 acres, and it is located 

within a traditional cobalt mining district. And to the extent possible, the project will backfill workings with cemented paste 

tailings and development rock and use dry stack tailings for surface storage to eliminate the need for a tailings bond. Project will 

produce about 185 direct jobs, $8.2 million in annual payroll, $8.8 

million in taxes annually for a minimum of 10 years and will importantly be the only source of super alloy cobalt in the U.S. Super 

alloy grade cobalt is a critical component of all jet engines and 

many green applications including hybrid cars, solar cells, and 

wind turbines. 

Currently all U.S. needs are met by importation primarily from 

a single foreign company. Formation is very proud of the fact that 

the Forest Service approval of the final environment impact statement has not been challenged. We have written our verbal understandings with the Shoshone Bannock Nations, the Nez Perce Nation, the Idaho Conservation League, Boulder White Clouds Council, Earth Works, and Western Mining Action Project. We were and 

are grateful for those constructive discussions. 

Yet even with all of these favorable attributes, the project took 

7 years to permit, and that is simply too long. Today, we are not 

even going to try to deal with those permitting issues, but we are 

trying to head off something coming at us or coming at the industry as a whole. 

For decades, mines on federal lands have been subject to strict, 

site-specific reclamation financial assurance requirements of the 

Forest Service or the BLM. The Cobalt Project is on land managed 

by the Forest Service, but EPA is developing its own financial assurance requirements for all hard rock mines, including those already subject to financial assurances of the BLM and the Forest 

Service. 

143 

If EPA proceeds as they are currently planning, it would end up 

causing financial assurances to be bonded, to be cash bonded actually, beyond what the Forest Service or the BLM determines is actually needed to protect the environment. The debt capital requirement would unnecessarily force termination of many existing 

mines, jobs, public and private revenue streams, and hamper creation of new mines supplying strategic and base metals and materials necessary to sustain U.S. manufacturing jobs. 

Implicit in EPA’s position is that Forest Service BLM programs 

are managed so incompetently that as a class mines on Forest 

Service or BLM lands constitute a degree and duration of risk that 

EPA must—that causes EPA to must duplicate the long established 

Forest Service and BLM programs. 

Yet in 1999, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science as responding to Congress found that existing Forest Service BLM framework to be ‘‘generally effective in protecting 

the environment’’ and more importantly even for this purpose that 

‘‘improvements in the implementation of existing regulations prevent the greatest opportunity for improving environmental protection,’’ meaning that let us work with the existing structure as opposed to creating whole new programs out there. 

So just to wrap up, the Idaho cobalt project and many other 

mines existing in future are critical to the survival and the revival 

of the U.S. manufacturing sector, which depends on mining products as feed stock. Mining and manufacturing produce some of the 

best paid jobs and best tax revenue streams in the entire economy. 

Permitting of hard rock mines in the U.S. is already a long and 

costly process particularly when compared to our business competitors in the world. So please don’t force us to do the same thing 

twice with two different departments and end up having to pay reclamation bonds twice over. Thank you very much for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Baird follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Baird. Now I would like to recognize Ms. Kinter for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MARCIA Y. KINTER 

Ms. KINTER. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Marci 

Kinter, and I am the vice president of Government and Business 

Information for the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association, or 

SGIA. 

Thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon regarding a timely industry concern. Specifically I am here today to 

address a misguided interpretation of the byproducts exemption included in the Toxic Substance Control Act’s inventory update law. 

This proposed interpretation offered by the EPA Office of Chemical 

Safety and Pollution Prevention will impose a significant reporting 

burden on the struggling U.S. manufacturing sector, without providing additional health, safety, or environment benefit beyond 

that already provided under existing EPA and OSHA regulations. 

It is vital that you remind EPA of congressional intent to exempt 

most byproducts from the reporting requirements under the TSKA 

inventory update rule or IUR. Your interest in this matter is timely 

as the rule that I am here to discuss is currently undergoing interagency review. 

SGIA represents the interests of those facilities that produce a 

wide array of products using either the screen printing or digital 

imaging print platform. Products such as all types of signage, the 

membrane switch on your microwave oven, the defrost pattern on 

your car’s rear window to—and we are most known for our message on our T-shirts that we provide to everyone when you are 

wearing them. That is the industry sector that I represent. 

Currently there are over 25,000 screen and digital printing facilities operating in the U.S. And the screen and digital print community is comprised of small businesses. The average facility size 

ranges from 50 to 40 employees. As you know, the cost of regulatory compliance poses a significantly higher burden on the small 

business community. 

The TSKA inventory update rule requires the reporting of extensive data concerning the manufacturing, processing, and use of 

chemical substances. I am not here today to discuss the benefits or 

burdens of the entire TSKA inventory update rule. Instead, I would 

like to focus on a specific aspect, EPA’s misinterpretation of the byproduct exemption under the proposed amendments to the IUR. 

In the proposed rule, EPA’s misguided interpretation says that 

waste byproducts generated during the manufacturing of items, 

like these T-shirts, are new chemicals if the manufacturer does the 

right thing by sending these waste byproducts by recycling rather 

than disposing of them. To say we were shocked to discover that 

the proposed TSKA IUR would have an actual regulatory impact 

was surprising as we are printers and not chemical manufacturers. 

While we use chemicals, including inks and solvents, we certainly do not consider ourselves to be chemical manufacturers. At 

the end of the day, the final product that moves out the door is the 

printed product, such as this T-shirt, not a chemical product. 

Under EPA’s interpretation, sending our waste byproducts, such as 

spent solvents and inks for recycling, would be considered by EPA 

156 

to be the manufacturing of a new chemical for commercial purposes, subjecting us to registration reporting of our waste byproducts under TSKA. 

Our companies are already regulated by both OSHA for worker 

exposures as well as U.S. EPA for proper handling and disposal. 

EPA’s misguided interpretation will not only affect those facilities 

represented by SGIA. Manufacturers of all sorts will now be burdened by reporting their waste byproducts as new chemicals. 

Every manufacturing sector that has opted to send their waste 

byproducts out of recycling rather than disposal will be saddled 

with this recording keeping and recording burden. There is still 

time to take action, but we need your help. We believe that the interpretation offered by the U.S. EPA regarding the reporting of byproducts is not what Congress intended. The waste byproducts offered by the U.S. product manufacturing community are already 

regulated by U.S. EPA, and the proposal would only increase the 

regulator burden with no discernable environmental benefit. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today, 

and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have on 

this critical industry topic. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kinter follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Ms. Kinter, and before I move to Ms. 

Neu, I was asked by the ranking member, and so without objection, 

I would like to recognize him for a minute to do an introduction 

of the two Democrat-sponsored witness. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief. I mainly 

want to thank both Ms. Neu and Mr. Ryan on short notice for coming here to provide your expertise on the side of what sometimes 

is good about recycling requirements. So but again, thank you all 

on short notice. I was telling the chairman I know how much it 

costs to fly from Houston to D.C. and hopefully you got a better 

rate than I did. So on short notice but welcome. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I too want to welcome you also, and now I recognize Ms. Neu for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF WENDY NEU 

Ms. NEU. Good afternoon. My name is Wendy Neu. I am an 

owner and executive vice president of Hugo Neu Corporation. We 

are a diversified U.S.-based company that has owned and managed 

industrial and commercial business assets in excess of $500 million. As well, we have employed up to 1,100 workers at a time in 

a business that has had export sales in excess of $2 billion in a single year. 

As an executive of a mid-sized business with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in industrial and commercial business assets, it is clear to me that from my industry, regulations promulgated and enforced by the EPA have been and remain essential to 

the growth, diversification and sustainability of recycling operations, both for the company and for its employees. 

Let me provide you with an example of how strong EPA regulations would allow Hugo Neu to more successfully compete globally. 

It is a policy approach that would level the playing field for American business in a way that creates U.S. jobs. Also, it removes the 

disadvantages my business now suffers from in competing with 

companies that don’t meet environmental standards and choose to 

export toxic e-waste to developing countries. 

It ought not to go unnoticed that the GAO itself has suggested 

current regulations regarding e-waste are woefully narrow in scope. 

One of the industrial operations we own focuses on recycling of 

used and obsolete post-consumer and commercial electronic equipment, which is commonly referred to as e-waste. The name of our 

company which processes this e-waste is We Recycle. It is based in 

Mount Vernon, New York. Like communities throughout our Nation, Mount Vernon, with a population of approximately 38,000 

people is desperate for jobs with living wage. I am proud to report 

that my company does pay a living wage. 

The employees who work at our company are focused on repairing or otherwise recycling e-waste. The technology we have developed allows us to recover high value clean streams of commodities. 

These commodities are then sold to the best industrial consumers 

domestically or are exported to industrial consumers around the 

world. 

But Hugo Neu Corporation could be doing more, recycling more 

and hiring more workers if we did not have to compete against the 

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sufficient regulation by the EPA are stifling the growth of my environmentally responsible business and cutting off a potential for job 

growth. 

Jobs that could be developed at e-waste recycling businesses 

around the country such as mine are now being exported to China, 

southeast Asia, and countries in Africa, precisely because the EPA 

does not effectively limit the export of hazardous electronic waste 

by unscrupulous collectors in the United States. 

Every single country in the OECD, other than the United States, 

limits the export of e-waste to these countries. They wisely preserve jobs in their countries and limit the spread of toxic waste. If 

other industrialized countries can do it to create an advantage for 

their businesses and their workers, then it seems to me that the 

U.S. Congress ought to do no less for American workers and American business. 

I cannot overstate the reality that to cut EPA funding will hurt 

our business. It is the existence of current EPA regulatory guidance, such as that which now discourages the dumping of at least 

some e-waste in landfills that has helped our business to grow. 

EPA regulations add economic value to our investment because 

we are a recognized, environmentally responsible company adhering to high standards and known to be well managed. 

Our business customers have confidence in our ability to recycle 

e-waste responsibly. Of course, as I said earlier, much more can 

and should be done. Indeed, this point was made in a September 

17, 2008 Government Accountability Office Report which said this 

‘‘EPA could amend RIKRA regulations to cover exports of used electronics where risks exist to human health or the environment when 

reclaimed for reuse or recycling,’’ an action that, if implemented, 

could bring U.S. export controls more in line with those of other industrialized countries. 

The current limited and, in my view, inadequate approach by the 

EPA needs to be replaced with regulations that will level the playing field for responsible recyclers like my company. A failure by 

Congress to do so is a choice, from the perspective of my business, 

to favor a policy that curbs jobs growth, stifles business expansion, 

and tilts the playing field in a way that advantages low-road recyclers and costs American jobs. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Neu follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you. Now, I would like to recognize the 

Honorable Mr. Ryan from—the attorney from the county in Texas, 

and you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF VINCE RYAN 

Mr. RYAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Inspect your microphone for me. There is a button 

at the bottom of it. 

Mr. RYAN. Now it is even greener. Well, that is very appropriate, 

isn’t it? Goes from a very light green to a green green. And may 

I say again thank you very much for allowing me to appear today 

and talk about a success story working with the EPA. 

I am Vince Ryan, the Harris County attorney. Harris County, 

Texas is the third most populous county in the U.S. and home to 

the Nation’s largest petrochemical complex and the port of Houston, which is ranked first in the U.S. in foreign, water-borne tonnage. With a strong industrial base, Harris County has fared better 

than some of the region of the U.S. in these economic hard times. 

With property taxes declining, which is the basic revenue source 

for local governments in Texas. Our local government of Harris 

County also faces a significant budgetary shortfall, yet we understand that providing healthy communities in which our residents 

can work and strive towards a better quality of life with cleaner 

air and water quality remain a high priority. 

Let me add, I have been county attorney since January 1 of 2009, 

but before that, I was a Houston City council member. Before that, 

I was an assistant county attorney, actually the first assistant in 

that office. So my experience spans almost 30 years dealing with 

these issues in Harris County and for Harris County. I am here 

today in my capacity as the elected county attorney, but also representing Harris County government as spoken through the commissioner’s court, which is the governing body generally of Harris 

County government. 

And we are sincerely grateful for the work the EPA and EPA region six are doing to end the severe contamination of Galveston 

Bay, San Sell Bay, and waterways leading to both by the San 

Jacinto dioxin waste pits. And we urge the EPA, with congressional 

support, to continue using appropriate and forceful measures where 

necessary to achieve effective solutions for this site and quite 

frankly similar sites throughout not just Texas, but the United 

States. And we urge this committee and Congress to support these 

efforts. 

A little bit of history. Congressmember Green and 

congressmember Ted Poe who I have known since he was an assistant district attorney and when he was a district judge in Harris 

County. Both asked the EPA to look into this matter and take it 

under consideration. On March 19, 2008, the San Jacinto River 

waste pits Superfund site was listed on the national priorities list. 

The site with waste ponds and surface impoundments built in the 

1960s for the disposal of pulp and paper mill waste is located in 

a marsh partially submerged on the western bank of the San 

Jacinto River in Harris County, Texas immediately north of Interstate Highway 10 and a bridge over the San Jacinto River. 

171 

High dioxin concentrations have been documented at the site. 

Sediment water and fish and crab tissue samples collected in the 

surrounding areas have also been found to have highly elevated 

levels of dioxin. According to the EPA and our own verification, exposures to dioxin can cause a number of adverse health effects in 

humans, including cancer, skin disorders, severe reproductive and 

developmental problems, and damage to the immune and hormonal 

systems. 

May I add this bay area is much like the Chesapeake Bay here 

that each and every member and their staffs are familiar with. It 

is surrounded by populated areas, and the day that I first visited 

after taking office this site, Terry O’Rourke, my first assistant, who 

is sitting back of me, and I were with some other people. They were 

working people on a day off with their families fishing while the 

kids were swimming within feet of the emanating dioxins from this 

site that had been used for years as a dumping ground in public 

waters for these types of waste within minutes, I might add, even 

though there were signs saying don’t swim, signs saying don’t fish, 

people were doing it there. 

The EPA identified two responsible parties: International Paper 

Company and McGuiness Industrial Maintenance Corporation, a 

subsidiary of Waste Management. Now, this other side of the story 

we have heard quite a bit today this afternoon. These are two 

major corporate citizens with significant resources, and I am sure 

every member and staff member here, I was—quite frankly, when 

I first got involved with this specific issue, we looked at the EPA 

and saw this snakelike structure of process to get to clean up a site 

that for years had been known by the public and these two corporate responsible parties of polluting and poisoning people 

throughout that area. 

I am a native Houstonian, grew up in the area. I have been with 

people fishing all through this area. I never knew of it until in 

2009, I had taken office, and we were approached with this. 

Harris County government has also become very involved. We, of 

course, in Texas have a very divided government at the county 

level, much like the federal level with different elected employment 

officials. But first we all have come together to say we have got to 

help the EPA as they try to solve this problem as quickly as possible. 

With unique abilities, Harris County has really been active in environmental issues since about 1953 and have accelerated over the 

time. Again understanding that the industry, the petrochemical industry is a vital part of our economic centrality to really the economy of the United States and to a great extent the world based 

upon the economies that we have. 

Luckily, under even the Superfund’s law and working with the 

EPA, soon there was a critical component which required work to 

begin. This again EPA working with these corporate responsible 

parties and to be completed within a short timeframe. Here the actual agreed order of consent was signed on May 2010, and the design choice was outlined. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. You are already a minute and a half over time. So 

you can wrap it up. 

172 

Mr. RYAN. Let me just say things are moving, but they are moving more slowly than we would like. The EPA has been very aggressive on this, and we log them and urge your support on areas, 

especially where clear definition of responsibility is apparent. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ryan follows:] 

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Mr. SHIMKUS. I thank you. I now will recognize myself for 5 minutes for questions. I am going to go pretty quick because there is 

a lot I want to put on the table. So again thank you all for coming. 

And first of all, I want to put on the record we are not here debating to eliminate the EPA or stop the work when there is toxicity 

and there is damage to human health. That obviously is not the 

proposal. The whole purpose of the hearing is: can we be smart and 

make sure the rules are important enough in protecting human 

health while we are protecting jobs? And this new Congress has a 

focus on job creation. 

So with that, I don’t have a piece of Illinois bituminous coal. I 

do have one in my office. That didn’t get brought down. Mr. Hopkins, why is that important that you burn Illinois bituminous coal? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Well, I am from an area—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Quickly now. Quickly. 

Mr. HOPKINS [continuing]. That mines Illinois coal, so we serve 

our members by using their product to create electricity for them. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The coal found in Illinois is what type of coal? 

Mr. HOPKINS. It is Illinois bituminous coal. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. So a co-op is different, and really co-ops should be, 

my friends on the other side, these are agencies that you ought to 

love because you are not-for-profit. Is that correct? 

Mr. HOPKINS. That is correct. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Your board members are highly salaried. Is that 

right? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Our board members are poorly paid. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Poorly paid, volunteers. Just smally compensated. 

And the owners of the co-op are? 

Mr. HOPKINS. The owners of the cooperatives are their members 

that they serve. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. So every time we do something that may affect a 

regulatory burden, as you said in your testimony, say there is a 

new capital expansion, you cannot carry a large capital fund for future expansions. You have to go where? 

Mr. HOPKINS. We have to go out and look for a loan for the 

money, and we go to our rate payers, our member owners to pay 

that bill for that loan. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK, and I will just hold this up. The same picture. 

They have seen that at least 6 years. These are Illinois coal miners. 

Mr. HOPKINS. Illinois coal miners. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mining bituminous coal, and because of many companies didn’t do—you did it out of complying with the needs to create electricity for your members, but also protect coal miners’ jobs. 

But you did the capital expense to a scrubber, correct? 

Mr. HOPKINS. That is correct. We installed a scrubber in 1978. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And the companies that did not do scrubbers, 

guess what they did to these miners. They fired them. OK, that is 

the effect of regulations, and we want to applaud you for doing the 

right thing. Let me—I want to hold us this. You know what this 

is, Mr. Hopkins? Can you see this? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Looks like a clean slate or a blank piece of paper. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. No, actually it is—— 

Mr. HOPKINS. Wall board. I am sorry. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And what is in the middle? 

178 

Mr. HOPKINS. That would be calcium sulfate or gypsum. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And where do we get gypsum from? 

Mr. HOPKINS. You need to get it naturally from the ground, or 

you can get it from a FGD on a coal-fired power plant, which we 

produce 95 percent pure gypsum. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Would this be part of the coal ash debate? 

Mr. HOPKINS. It is. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And this is found in everybody’s home? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The particle boards for most people or the wall 

boards for most people that have been accused of being toxic came 

from where? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Most of them came from overseas. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Came from China. So in this debate, if the EPA 

is successful in regulating coal ash as a toxic, will you be able to 

sell gypsum to the person who produces the wall board? 

Mr. HOPKINS. We are concerned that the homeowner would not 

be interested in buying any product that would remotely be related 

to hazardous waste. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And so then the homebuilders would have to get 

a different product? OK, my time is brief. I want to go to Mr. 

Baird. Duplicate regulation, the administration is trying to send 

signals that they want to be smart on regulatory so they don’t duplicate. Aren’t you in a Catch-22 on duplication of regulations? 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The Forest Service and EPA? 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. How many jobs would this cobalt mine create? 

Mr. BAIRD. It will create directly 185 jobs. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. What is the employment rate of the surrounding 

area? 

Mr. BAIRD. Well, the two counties that would benefit have just 

over 12 percent for Lemhi and just over 14 percent for Shoshone. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. What would be the tax benefit to the area, just the 

local property tax? 

Mr. BAIRD. Annual? Well, it is not just the property tax, but the 

number for all taxes—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK, the income tax and the employment. 

Mr. BAIRD [continuing]. Is $8.8 million per year. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And what is cobalt used for? 

Mr. BAIRD. It is used for many high technology purposes, but the 

biggest single one is for jet engines. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Is it also used in what people would define as 

green manufacturing? 

Mr. BAIRD. It is critical to the Toyota Prius battery. It is also 

critical for wind power. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Where do we get cobalt right now? 

Mr. BAIRD. Right now, the bulk of the super alloy cobalt, because 

there are two different types, comes from one plant in Norway. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Overseas. We import the product. And I am going 

to take the prerogative of the chair just to make the point for Ms. 

Kinter because you are a printer. 

Ms. KINTER. Yes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. You use ink. 

179 

Ms. KINTER. Yes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. If you take that ink to a recycler, you fall under 

TASKA and have to file additional paperwork. Is that correct? 

Ms. KINTER. Correct, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Which is pretty burdensome for a small business. 

Ms. KINTER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK, I wish I had more time. I don’t. I will yield 

5 minutes to the ranking member from Texas. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to try to move 

quickly too. Mr. Hopkins, I have been a co-op member, and it started under FDR to bring power to very rural areas, and that is where 

so many in Texas get our power because, you know, a for-profit 

company can’t make any money out there because it is so large, but 

I appreciate it. 

It sounds like you give a great example. EPA could have regulated, and I assume, in response to what happened in Tennessee 

with the coal ash, this is EPA’s solution. But they could have gone 

under Title D instead of Title C. 

Mr. HOPKINS. That is correct, sir. The option for either is in their 

regulations. 

Mr. GREEN. Obviously you have a problem, and I would sit down 

with your members of Congress, because I know that is what I 

would do with my industry. And like I said, I believe in co-ops. 

They are really a good program. I sold the property, so I am not 

a member anymore. But it was really a good system where you 

could get it. 

Mr. Baird, again you have almost the same situation. The Forest 

Service leased you the land, and they gave you your insurance requirements, or the—and now EPA is adding to your requirements. 

Mr. BAIRD. That is essentially correct, actually by direct duplication. They are going to be causing, or at least they are looking at 

right now—this is not out yet, but they are looking at putting together hard rock mine financial assurances that will apply to all 

mines, even if you are already regulated and bonded with the Forest Service or the BLM. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, it sounds like this Congress and maybe previous Congress should have said, OK, we have all these federal 

agencies. You ought to just speak with one voice, and you ought to 

get your act together before you put it on the private sector, and 

that makes sense. That doesn’t mean we don’t need regulations because I also understand what our country, because we know rare 

earth and precious metals, we need to mine them in our own country. 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. We shouldn’t—Norway is a great place to visit, and 

I would rather import something from Norway than China, but so 

much of the other rare earth we get from China, and we need to 

develop that. So I think there is a solution to that one. 

Ms. Minter—I have to admit—I am sorry, Kinter. 

Ms. KINTER. That is OK. 

Mr. GREEN. In an earlier life, I managed a printing company. We 

printed a daily newspaper, and I agree that under OSHA because 

our problem was is that we finished cleaning our plates we would 

recycle the solvent. And it ought to be the same regulation under 

180 

EPA that you would do for OSHA. It would seem like it would because that solvent though is a hazardous chemical, and in my experience from literally the ’60s through 1990, when I left there, we 

had problems with some of the printers actually dumping it out in 

the street or in the—and there was a way that you needed to track 

it, whether it be through OSHA or through EPA. 

Ms. KINTER. Correct, and I will say, sir, that the U.S. EPA’s hazardous waste regulations do a marvelous job of requiring our companies to manifest our hazardous waste as it goes out the door. So 

the waste is definitely being tracked, but through our efforts when 

we are trying to encourage the printers to use either low-level hazardous waste or even non-hazardous products to reduce worker exposure. These are the products that are going to get caught in the 

Catch-22 and look toward duplicative reporting because these are 

the chemicals that are being sent offsite for recycling or even disposed of as liquid nonhazardous waste correctly that are now going 

to be considered new chemicals and then subject to even more reporting under—— 

Mr. GREEN. And that is where I agree with you. Once it is a byproduct of your production. 

Ms. KINTER. Correct. 

Mr. GREEN. And once you send it to an approved recycler, that 

should take care of it. 

Ms. KINTER. Correct. 

Mr. GREEN. And so I think there are things that we could probably do on at least the three cases that have come up that I think 

is reasonable, and that is why I am glad you are here, because that 

is our job is to make the Federal Government work. And granted 

it is a tough job every day, and it is 24/7, but I agree with you. 

Ms. KINTER. Thank you. 

Mr. GREEN. Let me go to Ms. Neu. You have been—as you know, 

I have been working on legislation now a number of years to set 

federal regulations for electronic waste. How is your business affected by the lack of a federal e-waste regulation? Because I assume you work in a number of other states. 

Ms. NEU. We actually work in New York and Connecticut at the 

moment but are planning to expand hopefully into the middle region of the country. The fact that much, probably close to 80 percent is what is estimated of e-waste is exported to developing countries. So in that regard, we are competing with brokers, dealers, 

who are literally just filling a container up with electronic waste, 

no processing, no segregation of materials, and shipping it overseas 

for recycling. So that is one of our challenges. 

Mr. GREEN. I only have a few seconds left. 

Ms. NEU. Sure. 

Mr. GREEN. And I think you made the case that we need some 

type of national standard instead of state-by-state—— 

Ms. NEU. Exactly. 

Mr. GREEN [continuing]. Both for industry but also to make the 

recycling efficient. 

Ms. NEU. Right. 

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Ryan, I hate to call you Mr. Ryan. We have 

known each other for so many years. Vince, one, I appreciate what 

you have done, and I was frustrated, and I think Ted Poe and I 

181 

were both frustrated originally with EPA. But now we are seeing 

some progress, and I don’t think it would have happened without 

an elected official and a local community providing a lot of the information that you were that actually helped our regional EPA office. 

So there is a reason to have EPA, and sometimes we—it actually 

will benefit because coming from a very industrial area, every industry along the channel is getting blamed for the high dioxin level 

in the water, but we couldn’t find it until we found out that, 40 or 

50 years ago, that was dumped there. 

And we ended up—and so all my other plants were really happy 

because they said we were getting a black eye because of what happened before we had an EPA, and so there is good reason to have 

reasonable environmental oversight because it can help industry at 

the same time. 

Mr. RYAN. But I would agree with you that now we have got supposed first in the Nation a community awareness program going on 

where we are educating both the industry and the public about this 

particular site, but also the greater issues involved. How many 

other of these sites are—they were known to the industry, I might 

add. It was known it was a pollution site but not to the extent that 

we discovered. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time is up. And as Ted Poe would 

say, and that is just the way it is. Well, in this case, Congressman 

Poe would want it changed. Ms. Neu, can you give the Committee 

a credible universally accepted source? You keep quoting the 80 

percent of export? And if you could—not right now, but if you 

would follow up with the committee so we can figure out—— 

Ms. NEU. Absolutely. 

Mr. SHIMKUS [continuing]. And do analysis on that. Now, I would 

like to recognize Mr. Gardner for 5 minutes from Colorado. 

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My district in Colorado 

represents an area that is energy rich, a lot of agriculture opportunities, clean energy opportunities. We have it all. We have wind 

power. We have oil and gas development. We have solar companies 

doing great things. 

It is interesting to see, over the past several years, farmers on 

the Eastern Plains who used to have people that would come by 

and collect their used oil and pay them to collect their used oil so 

that they could recycle it. And now the farmer themselves are paying to have somebody, the same person, now the farmer is paying 

to have them collect it. So they used to receive money for their 

spent oil. Now they are paying to have somebody pick up their 

spent oil, and in a lot of areas, it is because of increasing regulations. 

But as you have heard from so many people on the committee, 

regulations aren’t a bad thing if they are done right and done with 

a common sense point of view. And so hearing from many of you 

talk today, a quick question for Ms. Kinter. Your testimony, you 

talk a lot about—you talk about reporting requirements in your 

testimony, and your members are already required to file reports 

for chemicals they have onsite under the Toxic Release Inventory. 

Are they—they are not—are they opposed to the reporting requirements? 

182 

Ms. KINTER. No, they are not opposed to reporting requirements. 

What we are opposed to is the duplication of the reporting requirements because even under the TRI, they ask us to report for recycling. 

Mr. GARDNER. So, the information that concerns byproducts 

which is required to report—your members are required to report, 

is that available under other reporting requirements under federal 

law? 

Ms. KINTER. It is already currently available. 

Mr. GARDNER. And are you concerned that the proposed IUR’s 

compliance timeline—are you concerned about that as it relates to 

your members? 

Ms. KINTER. Certainly. We are looking at a timeline where the 

rule will be going final in May, and the first reporting period goes 

into effect in June of this year for actual information from last 

year. And if you have a group of manufacturers that has no idea 

that they had to even start collecting data from last year in order 

to report for this year, you can see that 30 days to put this information in place, to really start doing your inventory, and then even 

to look at reporting it over their Internet option, which is the only 

way that they are going to accept reports. EPA will only accept reports. 

Mr. GARDNER. How much time are your members spending on reporting of this kind? 

Ms. KINTER. I would have to hazard a guess that, based on all 

reporting, and I am lumping all the regulatory reporting together 

because they really don’t segregate by specific statute, you are looking at anywhere from 8 hours a week for a small business, and 

that is including OSHA, and that is TRI reporting. 

And I should emphasize it is not just the reporting, but it is the 

record keeping because a lot of these records are already kept, or— 

because they also have to do record keeping for their air, for their 

water, for their waste, for their recycling. It is all very, as we 

know, just media specific. And so it is very difficult for them to understand why now I am going to tell them that their recycling is 

no longer recycling. 

It is really a new chemical, and under that, you have to gather 

all this other information. And by the way, if it is a new chemical, 

we may have to consider do you need to develop a material safety 

data sheet to send it offsite because you are considered now a 

chemical in commerce. And this is layer upon layer of regulatory 

burden to a small business whose real goal is to produce a T-shirt 

to put out into the market at the end of the day. 

Mr. GARDNER. Ms. Neu, are you familiar with some of the e-recycling programs the various States have? 

Ms. NEU. The legislation that has been passed? 

Mr. GARDNER. Right. 

Ms. NEU. Yes, somewhat. 

Mr. GARDNER. Is there a State in your opinion that is leading the 

rest? 

Ms. NEU. I think it is hard to say at this point in time because 

the legislation is relatively new. We just passed a law in New York 

which is not being implemented until June. So we really haven’t 

seen all the results come in, but I think there is some very good 

183 

legislation out there in many States that will increase the volume 

of e-waste. 

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Gentleman yields back his time. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Butterfield. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If the chair would 

agree, I would like to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey in 

the interest of his schedule. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Without objection, I would be happy to recognize 

the former chairman of the House subcommittee, which I served so 

honorably under as ranking member. 

Mr. PALLONE. And your friend. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And my friend. 

Mr. PALLONE. Well, thank you, and I want to thank my colleague 

from North Carolina for giving me the time and remind the chairman that he and I chaired the recycling caucus. Don’t you still 

chair? 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I still do, yes. 

Mr. PALLONE. That is what I thought. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Do you? 

Mr. PALLONE. Yes, I am the Democrat. You didn’t know that? 

Mr. SHIMKUS. We love caucuses here. 

Mr. PALLONE. I am sorry. I just wanted to take an opportunity— 

first of all, I wanted to say hello to Wendy Neu, who is a long-time 

friend, and it was really great to have her here. I actually—I was 

actually in my office listening to your testimony while I was doing 

something else, so I did hear what you had to say, Wendy, even 

though I wasn’t here. And I apologize. 

But what I wanted to mention is that the purpose of this hearing 

today obviously is to, and I appreciate the chairman convening it 

because we are concentrating on the numerous benefits to the economy that stem from some of our environment regulation, and I 

think of the Superfund and the Brownfields Program. 

I often say, Mr. Chairman, that Brownfields was the only legislation in the—and I don’t say it in a bad way, but it was the only 

legislation under George Bush, the only environmental legislation 

or new authorized program that actually he was supportive of. And 

I think—I know I was the Democratic sponsor, and one of your 

predecessors was the Republican sponsors of the bill. So it was very 

bipartisan. 

And Wendy, Ms.— I am going to call her Wendy, has been involved over the years in the Brownfields Program as well as what 

you testified about today. So I just wanted to ask you, you know, 

about your company, which I am familiar with, has redeveloped 

several Brownfield sites in New Jersey as well as other States. Can 

you just tell us the impact of that on the economy, jobs, what it 

meant in terms of reuse of those properties? Because I am very 

proud of Brownfields, and I just wanted you to comment on it if 

you would. 

Ms. NEU. Yes, there have been many opportunities as a result of 

the Brownfields legislation, and because we are a company that 

generally exports commodities, we are often located in industrial 

areas and waterfront areas, which are very much Brownfield sites, 

particularly in New Jersey and New York. 

184 

So it has been very helpful to us to have these sites to be able 

to position ourselves in strategic locations, which otherwise would 

not be available land for development. So yes, that has been—but 

I also want to thank both of you for being such good friends to the 

recycling community. You have been working with us for a very 

long time, and we really appreciate that. 

Mr. PALLONE. Well, thank you. You know, it was Paul Gilmore. 

Ms. NEU. Yes. 

Mr. PALLONE. It was Paul Gilmore and I that sponsored the federal Brownfields going back to the early ’90s, I think, and President Bush had a signing ceremony in Philadelphia that he invited 

us to, and I couldn’t go. I remember specifically. I wasn’t even able 

to go. 

But if I could just mention, again it has always been very bipartisan. It has always been something that we have been able to get 

support from. I think at the time when we started the authorization, our former governor, Republican governor Christie Whitman 

was the governor and then was the EPA administrator at the time 

as well. 

And I have just found in my district, Mr. Chairman, in particular, but I know it is all over the State and the country that 

what happens is, these old industrial sites are basically redeveloped, and then they become new industries or new commercial 

properties that not only are increased ratables and tax dollars into 

the communities, but create a lot of jobs in every case. 

And a lot of what has been done has been assessment also, and 

oftentimes they attract private developers that come in and also 

help with the cleanup, so I just wanted to mention that as one of 

the things that I know that you have been involved with too. 

You were talking about the Hugo Neu site, the scrap yard, right, 

before? 

Ms. NEU. Yes, recycling facility in Jersey City, yes. 

Mr. PALLONE. The recycling facility, all right. Thank you. I yield 

back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman yields back his time. The chair now 

recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Pitts. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hopkins, in your testimony, you state that you believe your comments also reflect the 

sentiments of many electric cooperatives. If other small business 

cooperatives face similar threats to closing their doors, what would 

taking that many coal-fired generating units offline at once mean 

for the reliability of electric service throughout the Nation? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Well, certainly I am not an expert on the grid as 

a whole across the Nation, but taking that many coal-fired utilities 

off the grid could lead to shortages and certainly would lead to increased price of electricity. In particular, for those co-op coal-fired 

utilities, they would be forced to buy power off the grid at these 

higher prices. 

Mr. PITTS. Now, if you were able to stay in operation, your estimates say it would cost members an additional $11 million or 25 

percent of your annual fuel budget. With such a significant increase to your operating budget, how much of that cost would be 

passed on to the users in the form of rate increases? 

185 

Mr. HOPKINS. All of that money would be passed along to our 

rate payers and our members. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Baird, you quoted the president’s recent executive 

order in which he said he is firmly committed to eliminating excessive and unjustified burdens on small businesses and to ensure 

that regulations are designed with careful consideration of their effects. 

In your view, is the regulation that you testified about today an 

excessive and unjustified burden? 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir, but to be fair to EPA, it is a program that 

is developing. It is not an actual regulation yet, but, yes, it would 

certainly be excessive and burdensome. 

Mr. PITTS. Do you think it was designed with careful consideration as to its effects on you? 

Mr. BAIRD. I do not, sir. 

Mr. PITTS. Are you hopeful that this administration will cancel 

it? 

Mr. BAIRD. I am. I am actually very hopeful that once there is 

light placed on this and people understand this is truly just a duplication of something that is already addressed on federal lands, 

by the BLM or the Forest Service, I think we will get this taken 

care of but the earlier the better. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Hopkins, what is your opinion on that? Are you 

hopeful that—— 

Mr. HOPKINS. That doesn’t apply to our business. 

Mr. PITTS. OK. 

Mr. HOPKINS. Federal lands. 

Mr. PITTS. What about Ms. Kinter? 

Ms. KINTER. I am sorry. Could you repeat the question again? 

Mr. PITTS. Yes, are you hopeful that the administration, this administration, will cancel it? 

Ms. KINTER. Yes, very hopeful, sir. 

Mr. PITTS. OK, Ms. Kinter, you believe that this new regulatory 

burden on your small main street printing business will not increase environmental protection. Then why, in your opinion, is EPA 

persisting with it? 

Ms. KINTER. We really don’t know. That is a very good question. 

We were very surprised to learn that our recycling products that 

our members are sending out the door for legitimate recycling are 

now considered chemical feedstock for new chemicals. And so we 

are not really quite sure what their rationale is behind the adoption of this interpretation of byproduct. 

Mr. PITTS. Ms. Neu, you testified that cutting EPA funding to do 

its work will hurt our businesses and our economy more generally 

is the quote. Do you believe it is government’s job more broadly to 

create economic winners and losers? 

Ms. NEU. Well, I think by virtue of any action, we are creating 

winners and losers, and I fear that any significant cutbacks in EPA 

will result in very little or no enforcement, which is something that 

really is of great concern to us. That is what levels the playing 

field. It is not necessarily new rules, new regulations. It is sometimes just a matter of enforcing existing rules and regulations 

across the board. 

186 

Mr. PITTS. Since your business model is based upon investment, 

does out-of-control spending by the Federal Government hurt your 

access to capital? 

Ms. NEU. Well, I am not sure that I am in a position to answer 

that question, but I must say that I think that access to capital is 

a serious concern today for many businesses. And so I would have 

to agree with you on that. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman’s time has expired. The chair now 

recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Butterfield, for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank all of the witnesses for your testimony today. Mr. Chairman, 

I have been looking forward to working with you. I have joined this 

committee voluntarily because I think we need a better conversation in this country about environmental policy. As we talk about 

deficit reduction and other great issues facing our country, we cannot lose sight on this important issue. 

To protect the environment, we must have rules. There is no 

question about that. We must have not unreasonable rules, but we 

must have what I call common sense rules. History has clearly 

demonstrated that the American economy has thrived, has actually 

thrived under common sense rules that protect our environment. 

Since the establishment of the Clean Air Act in 1970, GDP has 

grown by more than 200 percent. If anything, the major economic 

stumbles have been caused by unsustainable bubbles created by 

unchecked bad players and a lack of clear and enforceable boundaries, not by common sense rules that seek to preserve our air, 

water, and quality of life. 

And so I support the president’s environmental goals, and I support the Environmental Protection Agency. And I look forward to 

a good robust debate as we continue this process. 

Let me address in the time that I have remaining very briefly 

to Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird, I am told by my staff that according to 

EPA, the hard rock mining industry has contaminated 3,400 miles 

of streams and 440,000 acres of land. Does that seem to be a true 

statement? 

Mr. BAIRD. I honestly have no idea what those numbers are 

based on. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Well, the EPA, and I am depending on this 

data, it says that 3,400 miles of streams and 440,000 acres of land 

have been contaminated. Would you agree that contamination from 

hard rock mining should be prevented, or if it—— 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD [continuing]. Occurs, it needs to be cleaned up? 

Mr. BAIRD. Yes, sir, absolutely, but most of what they are talking 

about there are historic practices that have not been used in many, 

many years. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. I am also told that the Federal Government 

has spent $2.5 billion over the last 10 years cleaning up abandoned 

hard rock mines. Would you agree or disagree? 

Mr. BAIRD. That is probably true. Again of historic operations 

using practices that are no longer used anymore and could not be 

done without permitting, without bonding, without all of the issues. 

187 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Well, $2.5 billion is a lot of money. Do you 

think it is appropriate for the taxpayers to be on the hook to clean 

up contamination caused by mining? 

Mr. BAIRD. No, sir. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. So you think it should be the responsibility of 

the effected industry to do the cleanup? 

Mr. BAIRD. Of the PRP, of the people who caused it? Yes, sir, I 

do. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. All right, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes 

the gentleman from New Hampshire, Mr. Bass, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and 

the ranking member for calling this very interesting panel, interesting in that we are not really being presented with conflicting 

stories here. There are solutions available to all three of the matters that are brought up by the three witnesses who testified as to 

problems that they have with respect to redundancy and regulation, overly burdensome regulation, and unnecessary regulation, I 

guess we would say in the case of the fly ash issue. 

And I would hope that the subcommittee could move forward 

with some sort of action with the EPA to correct all three of these 

issues, and there may be a dozen or so more that exist that we 

ought to be looking into. 

I also appreciate Mr. Ryan’s testimony about the critical nature 

that EPA—critical role, rather, that EPA has played since its inception in the early ’70s to protect human lives, the reduce the instances of environmentally caused illnesses, and to create, in many 

instances, a reasonable balance between unfettered industrial expansion and overregulation. But there are instances where it hasn’t 

worked out, and we have seen three examples of that today. 

So although I do not have any specific questions for any of you, 

I believe that the testimony is pretty clear that we don’t need to 

double regulate hard rock mining on federal lands, that fly ash 

from coal plants is an important recyclable commodity, that there 

ought to be some reasonable review of recycling of materials that 

have already been properly qualified as certified, that we need 

some sort of a debate over a federal standard for e-waste, and that 

an area where there is a heavy industrial development, that there 

needs to be very careful monitoring. 

And I guess I would suggest that this has been informative and 

interesting, but it needs to be followed up by some action on the 

part of this subcommittee to correct these problems that can be 

agreed to in a bipartisan manner, and we can get that legislation 

moving. And I want to commend the chairman again for having 

this subcommittee meeting because we should have another one 

next week or two weeks from now, bring in three more people that 

are having issues. And that is how we correct these problems before they are uncorrectable. 

So with that, I will yield back to the chair. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman yields back his time, and just in response, I think the gentleman from New Hampshire raises a great 

issue. Again the intent of today’s hearing was to address problems, 

and really if you are just having a hearing to identify good and bad 

on both sides, and then ways that you can address, in essence, duVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:56 May 12, 2011 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00193 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 112\112-6 021511\112-6 CHRIS
188 

plication or maybe things that are designed or stated as hazardous 

that aren’t hazardous and trying to get clarification. 

I would encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as 

they go throughout their districts and meet with constituencies to 

raise concerns, and we could very well continue on this as we try 

to craft legislation to address these concerns. 

I would now like to recognize—— 

Mr. GREEN. If you would just yield. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I yield. 

Mr. GREEN. And I agree. In fact, that is what we were talking 

here. Maybe our committee on these three cases, and frankly we 

do this kind of work in our offices all the time with our constituents. But I think it would be much better if it showed—sitting 

down with EPA and the various agencies, saying the Federal Government ought to speak with one voice, and don’t give us two hoops 

to jump through when you can do one, particularly when we need 

the power, we need the cobalt. And obviously we believe in freedom 

of speech, we need printed material. 

But I think that can then—I am really—the chairman and I will 

work with the members on both sides to see if we can do some 

problem solving. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And now I would like to yield to Mr. Harper from 

Mississippi for 5 minutes. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate everyone taking time to be here and shed some light on what has become a very difficult issue for us, and that is the balance of regulation and how to do this in a way that it still allows business to do 

its job. And I can’t think of an industry or business in my district 

that believes that they are under-regulated, whether that is on the 

State or federal level. 

We have a clean coal plant that is being built in east Mississippi 

in my district that will sequester the carbon and use that for tertiary recovery in wells. And so, we have some things that are going 

on that I think are very important to look at it. 

And, Mr. Hopkins, I understand that in another life you were 

perhaps an environmental regulator at the State level. Is that correct? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Yes, sir, that is correct. I was a field engineer for 

the Illinois EPA for 6 years, and I was the regional manager for 

the land division of Illinois, yes. 

Mr. HARPER. Well, with your expertise in that and what you are 

doing now in your business, what is the solution to the coal ash? 

What do you do? And you are not saying for it to be unregulated. 

What is a common sense approach that will work? 

Mr. HOPKINS. Well, sir, I think the congressman from North 

Carolina hit the nail on the head. What we need is reasonable regulations. We don’t need to go overboard and cause products like 

coal ash to become a hazardous waste when they could be recycled 

beneficially. 

Mr. HARPER. Ms. Kinter, I had a question. Why do you think 

that the EPA is reaching the conclusion that you are a chemical 

manufacturer subject to inventory update rule? How did they get 

there? 

189 

Ms. KINTER. I think when they look at the fact that we recycle 

chemicals, and then when you look at what happens with the 

chemicals similar to what we have heard with the coal ash where 

they are actually manufactured into new products, and which is 

the beneficial reuse where you want to encourage your industry to 

actually, rather than dispose of it as a hazardous waste, to look for 

ways to reuse that product. 

Then they look at it as we are gaining a commercial benefit 

somehow from that, but in all my discussions with my members 

about, well, do you gain a commercial benefit from doing this? They 

say no, we have the pleasure of paying for them to take it off our 

hands, and it is made into whatever the recycling facility does with 

it. But we don’t receive any monetary remuneration for recycling 

our chemicals. We actually pay someone else to take them offsite 

and to the recycling facility. 

Mr. HARPER. So what should happen? 

Ms. KINTER. I think what should happen basically is that they, 

U.S. EPA, withdraws its interpretation that product manufacturers 

who happen to recycle are subject to the TASKA IUR update reporting. It is as simple as that. I believe the information is captured by TRI as well as a lot of the other state reporting mechanisms. 

Mr. HARPER. You know I would be curious to know your members’ experience with involved reporting requirements like those 

under Europe’s chemical registration and management law known 

as Reach. Has the economic burden forced them to consider closing 

or relocating? And what impact has that really had? 

Ms. KINTER. That is an interesting question. I have started to 

look into that, and I can provide you more information once I have 

a fuller picture. But what we are seeing is that those chemical 

manufacturers over in Europe that are supplying what we could 

consider a specialty chemical are, in fact, having to cease production because of the costs associated with the Reach registration. It 

is a very interesting dilemma over there. 

But I would be happy to provide you with more details as they 

become clearer to me. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Ms. Kinter. Question that I have on the 

hard rock mines because we get a lot of rare materials that are 

needed for many items from that. Is there a concern or risk that 

we are not going to have access to those in the future? 

Mr. BAIRD. That is absolutely true. I forget who on the Committee brought up the rare earths is a critical matter followed only 

then by super alloy cobalt in terms of making sure that we have 

enough, and it is not in such limited supply that the price ends up 

being cost prohibitive for use in all the manufacturing products 

that we need. 

Mr. HARPER. Yield back. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The gentleman yields back his time. Before I adjourn this hearing, I was struck by an article in ‘‘The Wall Street 

Journal’’ today. I have been following this recycled cooking oil from 

places like McDonald’s that has been used. People use it and they 

drive cars with it. And they clean it up. 

Well, the story at the end of the article, here is a guy quoting 

‘‘if I go to Costco, I can buy a pallet of vegetable oil’’ note to Mr. 

190 

Sobovaro, one of Colorado greaser on the legal fight ‘‘explain to me 

why that it is considered a hazardous material if it is touches a 

chicken wing.’’ 

So, that is really the issue. Here you have a guy who is taking 

recycled oil to drive a vehicle, and it is just oil, it is just cooking 

oil. And if bought the same amount of oil at bulk, it is not a hazardous material, but if he takes it from a restaurant, and if he is 

using it from a restaurant, then it is not going into a landfill. I 

think that is part of the issue of jobs, common sense, and bringing 

back some semblance of, again, common sense, which maybe we 

will move on legislation based upon a lot of the hearing here. 

We appreciate your time and your effort, thank you for that. And 

I will say the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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