Now, industry officials who worked for this week's Environmental Protection Agency decision to revoke a Clinton administration crackdown on arsenic in drinking water are taking aim at more than two dozen pending rules regulating substances from coal mine dust and ozone to diesel particulates. The emergence of coal from the political shadows is due in part to Bush's conviction that the mineral, which is used to generate half the nation's electricity, is crucial to preventing the spread of the California energy crisis. The Clinton administration favored rigorous enforcement of clean air controls on emissions by coal-burning utilities and encouraged expansion of power plants using cleaner natural gas. But coal's new strength also rests on the enhanced influence, in the aftermath of last year's election, of a network of interests, such as electric utilities and railroads, that strongly oppose lessening the country's dependence on coal. Engelhardt himself served as an energy adviser to the Bush-Cheney transition team.
People have no idea of the environmental improvement the coal industry has made.
The purpose will be to counter the influence of environmental organizations. Separately, the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy, made up largely of trade associations, has been set up to lobby in Washington and has begun running advertisements in Capitol Hill publications. Southern Co., one of the nation's largest coal-burning power producers, opposes the Kyoto protocol, under which signatory nations, including the United States, agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. The Senate has never ratified the agreement. Until Barton's northeast Texas district was reconfigured in 1994, it contained strip mines and coal-burning power plants belonging to Texas Utilities Co., the third largest electricity producer in the United States.