[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20138-20140]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              BOILER MACT

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, there is not the absence of a quorum, but 
I appreciate my colleague mentioning that. I said to him earlier today, 
maybe yesterday, Senator Franken is

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a joy to have around here. Some of us know he brings a real special 
touch for trying to infuse some civility into this place again. He came 
up a year or two ago with the idea of a secret Santa exchange. We 
actually did it this year. I was not going to mention it tonight. My 
secret Santa turned out to be the Senator from Alaska, Senator 
Murkowski, the colleague of the Presiding Officer. She gave me a most 
wonderful handmade gift that she and her staff created.
  Delaware is the only State that doesn't have a national park. What 
they did is they created, on a sheet of paper like this--only it was a 
firm sheet of paper, not a regular sheet of paper, but they literally--
this was the State of Delaware and they created a national park so we 
have a pop-up national park with a bus going around and our pictures 
riding along in the bus. I don't care what else I get for Christmas, 
that is going to be the best Christmas present for this year. I don't 
see how anybody tops that.
  But that provides not only some civility but also some levity in a 
place that could use both, so I thank the Senator for all his 
contributions, but especially that one.
  On something more serious. What I want to do is talk about the 
regulation EPA has been working on for a while. It is called the boiler 
MACT. The idea is maximum achievable technology here. If you go back in 
time, go back to about 1990--in 1970, in this country, Congress passed 
and the President signed--Richard Nixon actually signed--the Clean Air 
Act of 1970, a Republican President who had a Republican head of EPA. 
That was able to be implemented at the time we had the Cuyahoga River 
up in Cleveland, OH, that actually was on fire. There were lots of 
terrible things happening in our environment in this country.
  Better things started to happen, not just cleaner water, wastewater 
treatment, and cleaner air, but it led in 1990 to the passage of the 
Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. One of the requirements of the Clean 
Air Act Amendments of 1990 was in that legislation the Congress 
directed EPA to finalize regulations to reduce what are called air 
toxics from boilers by the year 2000. So the Clean Air Act was adopted 
in 1970. In 1990, 20 years later, the Clean Air Act Amendments were 
adopted, and in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 Congress said: 
EPA, we want you to finalize regulations to reduce air toxics from 
boilers by the year 2000, 10 years.
  The year 2000 came and went without any action. The Bush 
administration, George W. Bush administration, finalized a rule. I 
think it was in the year 2004. But they excluded many industrial 
boilers from having to comply. As it turned out, there are a lot of 
boilers in this country. I was stunned to find out there are about a 
half million boilers in this country. A lot of them are fairly small--
schools or churches or smaller buildings, hospitals. But a bunch of 
them are pretty good size.
  In any event, the Bush administration in the year 2004 came up with a 
rule, proposed a rule, but they excluded many industrial boilers from 
having to comply. In fact, the rule may not have been just proposed, it 
might actually have been finalized.
  But, as a result, the regulation was vacated in 2007, 3 years later, 
by the Circuit Court of Appeals right here in the District of Columbia. 
So, 2004, EPA finally gets around to finalizing the rule that they were 
called to do some 14 years earlier by the Congress. And 3 years later 
the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals knocks it down and vacates that 
ruling on boilers.
  It was not until June of 2010--and that is a full 10 years after the 
congressional deadline for action--it was not until 2010 that the EPA 
issued a proposal for boiler air toxic rules that addressed all the 
major emitters.
  As with most air pollution regulation these days, EPA was under court 
order to finalize the rule by a set date. The court had said to EPA: We 
want you to finalize the rule by a set date. That date was the 
beginning of this year, January of 2011.
  During the public comment period, the EPA received thousands of 
comments and new information from, among others, industry. In fact, 
they received so much in the way of comments and new information, in 
December of 2010--that was a month before the date set under the court 
order to finalize the rule--a month before that date was to occur, EPA 
asked the courts, a month before the January 2011 deadline, to extend 
the deadline for promulgating the final air toxic standards to April of 
next year, to April of 2012.
  The courts said: No, don't think so. They said: EPA, you have had 
enough time to finish. They allowed EPA only until January 21 of this 
year to go ahead and actually promulgate these regulations.
  Even though EPA didn't have a lot of time to process the comments, 
EPA was able to finalize a rule in February of this year that yielded 
the same benefits--I think this is pretty interesting--a rule that 
realized the same benefits in terms of reducing toxic emissions, 
mercury and arsenic, lead, that kind of thing--the same level of 
reductions in those emissions as in the June 2010 proposal that they 
made, but they cut in half the cost of compliance. That is pretty 
impressive, isn't it? They cut in half the cost of compliance, got the 
same amount of reductions in emissions of these air toxic substances 
for half the cost. However, EPA did not stop there. Wanting to address 
industry's concerns, the EPA opened public comment yet again to 
consider a reproposal of their regulations.
  I know some people think EPA has been guilty of a rush to judgment in 
this regard. I think if you go through the chronology objectively, this 
is not a rush to judgment. I hope, if nothing else, to convey tonight 
that the EPA has moved deliberately, some say way too slowly, in order 
to address this. There are others who think way too fast, still too 
fast.
  Anyway, last month the EPA proposed the boiler MACT regulation to try 
to address stakeholder concerns and I think they have done a workman-
like job, a good job. In this new proposal, of the 1\1/2\ million 
boilers in the United States, less than 1 percent would be affected--
less than 1 percent would be affected by these emission limits.
  I have a chart to show what it looks like. This is a good way to 
actually think of this.
  The pie represents the 1.5 million boilers in the United States. Some 
are very small, and some are large industrial boilers. Less than 1 
percent need the technology to meet the emission limits prescribed by 
EPA. That is the red tiny slice here. About another 13 percent of the 
1.5 million boilers in the United States would need to follow best 
practice standards in ensuring that the emissions from those boilers 
are in order. And the rest--1.3 million boilers or a vast majority of 
boilers, a little over 85 percent--are not affected by the rules.
  Not everybody likes the fact that less than 1 percent of the boilers 
are affected by these rules, and some of our friends in the 
environmental community understand that we have been very unhappy with 
how slowly this whole thing has proceeded.
  The last thing I want to mention here--maybe two more things--in 
terms of moving from this point forward, how long would these less than 
1 percent have to comply with the regs that have finally been 
promulgated? I am told the sources would have up to 4 years to comply. 
The EPA is still taking public comment and hopes to finalize this 
regulation by late spring.
  The bottom line is that we have delayed long enough. Only 1 percent 
of our largest sources will need to clean up. The EPA has certainly 
tried to address many problems--maybe not all the problems but most 
problems--and they are still taking public comments. I am not sure we 
need to delay this boiler MACT any further.
  There are a lot of people who sneeze during the course of their 
lives, as I have just done here on the floor. That was just a 
coincidence, but a lot of people in this country suffer because of the 
quality of our air. We have made great improvements in cleaning up the 
quality of our air. We still have too

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many people who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases. The 
kinds of problems and emissions we are talking about here deal less 
with asthma and respiratory diseases; we are talking about substances 
that can kill people. In the case of the substances we are talking 
about here, they have the ability to kill more than 8,000 people a 
year.
  We don't have many large towns in Delaware. In Wilmington, we have 
about 75,000 people. In Dover--the central part of our State--we have 
about 30,000 people. And if you take 8,000 people, that is about as 
many people as live in any of the--well, Newark, where we have the 
University of Delaware, has about 30,000 people. But other than that, 
we don't have a lot of large towns. For us, 8,000 people could be the 
fourth or fifth largest town in my State. That is a lot of people. At 
the end of the day, even if these rules are fully implemented, we are 
not going to save all of those 8,000 people, but a lot of those lives 
will be saved in the coming years, and we need to do that.
  We need to let this process go forward and do our dead level best--
the EPA has tried to be responsive to concerns that have been raised--
to provide for a cleaner environment and not to dampen our economic 
recovery.
  The last word I would add is that I think the idea that we have to 
choose one over the other is a false choice. We don't have to do that. 
We can have a cleaner environment and we can have jobs. If you look at 
the growth of our Nation's economy since 1970, when the Clean Air Act 
was adopted, or 1990 when the Clean Air Act amendments were adopted, we 
have seen dramatic growth in our budget. We have seen growth in our 
economy, and we have seen the quality of air become a lot cleaner over 
that period of time. So one does not preclude the other.
  While some serious concerns have been raised about the earlier 
proposals by the EPA, a lot of those concerns have been addressed. I 
think we need to get on with it.
  With that, Mr. President, I think we are going to wrap it up here 
around 7:30, which is in another 10 minutes or so. I am looking around, 
and I don't see anybody else waiting to speak, so I will note the 
absence of a quorum and bid you good night.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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