Tom Carper

I believe it is possible to have a clean environment and a strong economy.

As someone who has tried for years to work across the aisle to find a way to clean up our Nation's power plants, I was encouraged to see the EPA finally act to address these harmful emissions.

There is no excuse for operating coal plants that don't have pollution control equipment on them for sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury.

We do not have to choose. We can have both; we must have both.

The EPA has also found that these types of utilities are the largest source of mercury emissions in this country.

This hearing will come to order.

I was encouraged by how the EPA issued the Mercury and Air Toxics Rules.

In 1990 Congress overwhelmingly passed and President George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

Senator Lautenberg. He is a generous man, also; he wasn't just mean, our Chairman.

Senator Lautenberg. A couple of questions.

Having said that, we also know now that burning coal, if we are not careful, if we are not smart about it, we can create enormous health problems for folks who happen to be downwind from us.

We should be a little harder.

We have models in our country of communities working together to meet these challenges.

I think as Ms. Patton said in her testimony, AP, big utility in the Midwestern part of our State, that they expect they are going to be able to comply at about one-third the cost of what they originally anticipated.

Isn't the U.S. the Saudi Arabia of coal?

I don't believe Senator Alexander is going to be able to come back and ask questions of this panel.

Did Maryland experience electricity price spikes? No price spikes, either.

Did Maryland experience blackouts as a result of this law? Did you have blackouts in Maryland because of this law? No.

Hopefully, if we are vigilant, we are not going to have to close those drapes as they did over there.

I am glad you made that clarification. Thank you for saying that.

Like my colleagues here I believe and have for a long time believed that nuclear energy has to be an important component of our portfolio of sources of energy in this country done right.

I also think it is appropriate for us to support Federal investments for renewable energies.

One of the ways I like to close down a hearing like this is just to invite the witnesses sometimes to just offer a closing statement.

One of the things that we are trying to do here is to learn from the disaster.

That is good. That is encouraging. Thank you.