On the recordOctober 14, 2011
The supporters of this bill claim that this legislation will save jobs. Their main evidence is a report by the Electric Power Research Institute that claims that regulating coal ash as hazardous waste would lead to the loss of 300,000 jobs, but this claim is wrong. For example, the EPRI study estimates job loss by assuming that there would be 100 percent reduction in recycling and beneficial reuse. This assumption is based on no analysis whatsoever, and it's at odds with a survey done by the National Precast Concrete Association, which shows that 84 percent of their members would continue to use fly ash even if the waste were to be regulated as hazardous. In fact, EPA has formally requested that EPRI issue a statement that corrects the misstatement and misrepresentations that were made in this report and which have been repeated here today. The EPRI study is flawed, should not be relied on. We need to reject these arguments that in order to have jobs we need to allow contamination of our groundwater and allow human health to be jeopardized by coal ash impoundments. I would now like to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from the State of Maryland (Ms. Edwards).
