Prepared Floor
Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley
Nomination of Regina McCarthy
Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Mr. President,
I’d like to speak for a few minutes regarding the nomination of Regina McCarthy for Assistant Administrator at the EPA.
I’m not going to speak specifically to this nominee or her qualifications.
Rather, I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight a few concerns I have with the EPA and the burdens being placed on those in rural areas and the agricultural industry because of the EPA.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining President Obama for lunch. While the purpose of the lunch was to discuss health care reform, I took the opportunity to bring up a few concerns I have with the EPA.
In particular, I raised four issues where EPA policies are the cause of tremendous concern and are burdening farmers.
The issues I raised to the President are indirect land use changes attributed to biofuels, fugitive dust, greenhouse gases and livestock producers, and point source pollution permits.
Since that meeting with the President, I’ve had follow-on meetings with Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the president’s legislative affairs staff. They heard me out on these issues.
They seemed sympathetic to the concerns I raised. But I’m not sure the message is being relayed to the bureaucrats at the EPA.
The first issue pertains to a component of the new Renewable Fuels Standard that requires various biofuels to meet specified life-cycle greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
The law specified that lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are to include direct emissions and significant indirect emissions from indirect land use changes.
In the proposed rule changes released by the EPA last week, they rely on incomplete science and inaccurate assumptions to penalize U.S. biofuels for so-called “indirect land use changes.”
The fact is, measuring indirect emissions of greenhouse gases is far from a perfect science. There is a great deal of complexity and uncertainty surrounding this issue.
Because of this uncertainly, the EPA has committed to an open and transparent review by the public of their process and findings.
The EPA compiled a system of models to analyze the land use impacts of U.S. biofuels polices.
They’ve indicated that these models have been peer-reviewed and that they stand up to scientific scrutiny.
That is true for the models independently, but it is not true for the way the EPA has overlaid and integrated the models. In addition, the models are not publically accessible. There is inadequate data on how the models and data were integrated.
As it stands, stakeholders are unable to replicate the EPA’s results. This process is neither open nor transparent.
Under the EPA’s analysis, ethanol produced from corn reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent compared to gasoline.
However, if you remove the murky science of emissions from indirect land use changes, corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 61 percent compared to gasoline.
The EPA’s models conclude that international land use contributes more in greenhouse gases than the entire direct emissions of ethanol production and use – from the growing the crop, the production of ethanol at the refinery, to the tailpipe emissions when it’s burned.
The ripple effects are greater than the direct effects. This conclusion is ludicrous.
The fact is, the model that the EPA has cobbled together to measure indirect land use is far from scientific. It’s more like a guess.
The rule indicates that itself by including the word “uncertainty” more than sixty times.
Even larger in this debate is the role of common sense. It defies logic that the EPA would try to blame a farmer in Iowa for the actions of farmers or developers in Brazil.
Do they really think Brazilians are waiting to see what I’m going to plant on my farm before they plant their crops?
It doesn’t pass the common sense test. The facts don’t support it either.
During the past five years, when biodiesel and ethanol production in the U.S. ramped up, Brazilian soybean acres decreased and corn acres remained unchanged.
Amazon deforestation has also fallen for the past five years. A recent study indicated that the primary reason for the land-clearing was for timber production and land grabbing, followed by cattle farming.
Nowhere on the list was U.S. biofuels production.
I think this debate comes down to a few simple questions. Do we want more production of green fuels or less?
Do we want greater dependency on Iran and Venezuela for our energy needs or less?
Do we want to increase our national security by reducing our foreign dependence on energy or not?
I don’t think the people at the EPA get the big picture. And, I’m pretty sure they don’t understand how American agriculture works.
While the EPA’s actions have a significant impact on the rural economy and the agriculture industry, it’s clear that the EPA has a lack of understanding of American agriculture.
I know this is the case regarding the indirect land use issue. Margo Oge, the director of the office in charge of this rule, admitted during a committee hearing in the House of Representatives last month that she’s never been on a farm in the U.S.
How can regulators with such a great impact on the agriculture industry have so little understanding of the industry their regulating? We need to encourage some common sense thinking at the EPA.
So, I’ve invited Administrator Lisa Jackson, and a number of EPA officials to come to Iowa to visit a farm to see firsthand how the agriculture industry works.
I’ve also invited Regina McCarthy, who, should she be confirmed by the Senate, will be the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation.
I’ve also invited Margo Oge, Director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality, the office that wrote the proposed regulations on indirect land use.
Next, I’m concerned about the EPA's attempts to regulate particulate matter, commonly referred to as the dust rule.
In 2007, the EPA published the "Clean Air Fine Particle Implementation Rule" in which the EPA inappropriately opted for the administrative convenience of regulating all particles that fall within the fine PM size range the same, including dust.
Instead they should have appropriately based the regulation on particle composition.
Essentially, this rule treats dust as though it were cigarette smoke, causing the same adverse health issues.
There are no scientific studies that show this to be the fact. Controlling dust from combining soybeans, gravel roads, and feedlots is impossible. Only God decides when the wind blows.
Compliance with the more stringent fine PM standard will be unattainable for many farmers and ranchers.
The fine PM standard is health-based and must be met at the property line of each individual operation regardless of cost.
This could essentially require farmers to sell some of their cattle, combine wet crops, or wall in their roads and driveways.
This would be a ridiculous way to regulate agriculture.
The next concern I have with the EPA is their decision not to appeal a 6th Circuit Decision which vacated an EPA rule that exempted pesticides applied under the Clean Water Act.
The EPA rule in question had exempted pesticides applied near or into waters of the US from obtaining permits when applied in accordance with the Federal Insecticide Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.
In vacating the rule, the court issued an opinion declaring that agricultural sprayers and nozzles are point source conveyances and that all residues and excesses of chemical pesticides that remain in water after the beneficial use is completed are "pollutants" under the Clean Water Act.
I share concerns of many who represent agricultural states as to how the EPA is going to implement the new permitting process without creating a burden on our farmers.
Producers could face legal liability if a permit isn't issued quickly, yet the farmer needs to spray immediately.
I urge the EPA to draft a flexible rule, that doesn't impede a producer's ability to apply pesticides and allows emergency application to be done expeditiously.
If they don't, we’re going to have major problems on our farms when bugs, weeds, and disease show up.
The final issue is related to some of Senator Barrasso’s concerns with the nominee we are considering. That is, the direction the EPA is heading toward regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
While this could have wide ranging unforeseen effects on all sorts of small businesses, I want to talk about how agriculture could be affected.
The Clean Air Act was designed for more traditional types of pollution that can have a direct, negative effect on human health and the environment in relatively small quantities.
Given the emissions thresholds in the law, a family farm cattle operation, for example, could be considered an emitter just like a factory smokestack, with all the red tape and costs that entails.
And, at the end of the day, how are you going to get cows to stop passing gas?
Nancy Sutley assured me that EPA has no desire to regulate livestock emissions in this way.
However, Senator Barrasso raises some good points about what would happen should environmental groups follow through on their threats to sue EPA to force them to regulate sources as small as family farms.
Rather than rely on EPA’s assurances, I would like these questions answered before EPA goes any further down this road.
I’m hoping that a visit to the heartland will help them better understand the real world implications of some of their decisions.
They owe it to the hardworking farmers and ranchers to get a better understanding of how U.S. agriculture works.
Hopefully, they’ll realize a little common sense will go a long way when making broad policy decisions that affect the farmers who put food on their table.
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