Heidi Alexander: “last week during the debate on clean air, in which I opposed overturning a rule that allows dirty air from other States…”

“last week during the debate on clean air, in which I opposed overturning a rule that allows dirty air from other States to blow into Tennessee, costing us jobs, and hurting our health, I said: Why should we be picking on a good rule when the Environmental Protection Agency is a happy hunting ground of unreasonable regulations. I just wish to take a moment to talk about perhaps the foremost of those unreasonable regulations, which we call the boiler MACT rule. This is a regulation that will force thousands of industrial boilers around America to install the maximum available control technology on their boilers. This is important in order to clean the air of such pollutants as mercury. That is a good idea. What is a bad idea is EPA only gives 3 years for companies to install this technology, a time frame that is completely unrealistic. This is not like a lot of the other clean air laws and rules that have been around for years; this is an unexpected new rule on thousands of industrial boilers which are essential to our manufacturing jobs in America. First, there is not enough time to comply with the rule, and second, EPA used a flawed methodology in determining what fuels could be used. As a result, little businesses and big businesses all over America are going to be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to comply with this rule instead of spending that money on creating jobs. That is just not one Republican Senator saying this.…”