Lawmakers Oppose EPA’s “Midnight Rules”
Lawmakers Oppose EPA’s “Midnight Rules”
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has encouraged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to stop work on the Clean Power Plan, which will require power plants to reduce carbon emissions, the Clean Water Rule, and a registration review of the herbicide atrazine, which has been shown to be harmful to birds. In late November, Senator Johnson wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, urging the EPA to acknowledge “the substantial likelihood that the EPA’s burdensome regulations will be overturned by the incoming Administration and the 115th Congress…and cease implementation of these regulations immediately to spare farmers and small businesses the avoidable financial costs and negative consequences of these rules.” The Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Donald van der Vaart, also penned a letter to McCarthy, voicing his concern over the EPA’s “flurry of last-minute rules and regulations.”
Though McCarthy has made clear that she plans to continue the EPA’s rulemaking through then end of Obama’s term, the EPA faces pressure stop pushing its regulations during Obama’s lame duck period. President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill intend to roll back environmental regulations promulgated during the Obama administration. Republican lawmakers have opposed the Clean Power Plan and the Clean Water Rule, both of which have been blocked in court.