Disappointed with the response of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to her letter earlier this month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has requested a face-to-face meeting with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to discuss how the agency plans to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under its Clean Air Act (CAA) authority.

“I received your letter dated March 26 and have carefully reviewed it. Regrettably, it fails to shed any new light on how your agency intends to implement its pending Clean Air Act regulations. By my count, your letter provides answer to just two of the 13 questions that I asked [in a letter] on March 5, despite the fact that most of the answers would simply require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response, or number or statutory reference. As a result I am left even more concerned by the approach your agency is taking and the lack of transparency surrounding it,” Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote Jackson Monday.

“At this point it does not seem probable that additional correspondence will elicit a sufficient level of detail for me and other members of Congress to understand what your agency is preparing to do, or the consequences that will accompany those actions. Therefore I…ask for an opportunity to meet with you in person during the week of April 12,” she said.

Murkowski’s letter coincided with the EPA’s announcement Monday that the agency plans to give stationary sources that emit GHG emissions — power plants and industrial facilities — until January 2011 to obtain CAA compliance permits (see Daily GPI, March 30). Jackson first disclosed this while testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February (see Daily GPI, Feb. 24).

Murkowski and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, are leading the charge in the Senate against EPA’s December endangerment finding, which provides the legal trigger for the agency to regulate emissions under the CAA (see Daily GPI, Dec. 8, 2009). The determination found that carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare.

In January the two senators introduced a “disapproval resolution” that, if ratified by both houses, could negate the EPA endangerment finding (see Daily GPI, Jan. 22). Murkowski and Lincoln “definitely will push forward” with the disapproval resolution, which has 41 sponsors, after the Senate returns from its Easter recess the week of April 12, said spokesman Robert Dillon. The resolution would only require 51 votes to pass the Senate. A similar disapproval resolution to negate the endangerment finding is pending in the House.

The Murkowski-Lincoln “disapproval resolution” is gaining traction in the Senate and beyond the Beltway, including with trade associations and a number of states (see Daily GPI, March 12).

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) did not welcome the EPA’s announcement Monday of phased regulation of GHG emissions from stationary sources. “We are deeply concerned and disappointed” because it “fails to resolve the many regulatory uncertainties surrounding permitting requirements for new construction or plant modifications at U.S. industrial facilities,” which could jeopardize job creation and “innovative green investments,” said ACC President Cal Dooley.

“Outstanding regulatory questions include the definition of ‘best available control technology’ — a critical item on which even the EPA’s own Clean Air Advisory Committee has not reached consensus. Another is the emission thresholds under the EPA’s forthcoming ‘tailoring rule.’ The regulations will also affect sources that have never been subject to PSD [prevention of significant deterioration] permitting for criteria pollutants. Those sources cannot be certain whether they will or will not be subject to EPA’s GHG regulations. We also don’t don’t yet know the path forward for states,” he said.

The proposed “tailoring rule” calls for the EPA to begin regulating stationary sources emitting 25,000 tons/year (a new threshold) of carbon dioxide-equivalent GHGs under two programs central to the CAA — the PSD and the Title V operating permit programs. The PSD program currently applies to sources emitting 100 to 250 tons/year, while Title V program permitting requirements apply to emitters of 100 tons/year.

Absent the EPA’s proposed increase in the existing threshold of 100-250 tons per year to 25,000 tons/year, the PSD and Title V requirements would subject millions of previously unregulated entities — hospitals, apartments and shopping malls — to the requirements under the CAA, and the EPA would find itself in the midst of a regulatory gridlock.

However, Murkowski and other lawmakers are questioning whether the EPA can single-handedly change the threshold amounts without first getting congressional approval.

“Given that the [Obama] administration has decided to proceed with GHG regulation at stationary sources without first defining the requirements involved, it’s now up to Congress to step in and provide a meaningful and much-needed delay to stationary source regulation as lawmakers continue to consider GHG reduction policies,” Dooley said.

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