Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman's clarifying the statements just made from the other side. I think we all have the same goal, but the lack of certainty, when you put in rule that for today we are not going to determine it hazardous but we leave the thing open-ended just in case we change our mind, that is uncertainty. That is what we are talking about.

I come from a State, North Dakota, where, for nearly 10 years, I was a coal regulator. I regulated coal mining, among other things, including utilities, thank you very much. I appreciate the fact that we were able to mine our coal, burn it at the mine mouth, and generate some of the lowest cost electricity in the country largely because we are able to use the coal ash as a beneficial use for lots of things including, by the way, putting in the foundations of wind turbines.

We didn't need the Federal Government. We have been doing this since the 1970s. We didn't need the EPA's overreach to teach us how to do it. The regulation of coal ash disposal has been debated for decades--for decades. Fortunately, for those of us in North Dakota, we have done pretty well with it. We have had modern facilities and modern standards.

Our State regulators at the health department, along with the Public Service Commission, working with industry--and I stress ``working with industry''--to develop these standards and practices that have worked for all these decades really don't need further imposition of the Federal Government, and certainly not the EPA.

All of our regulations are tailored specifically to our coal types, specifically to the coal ash, specifically to our geology; and, frankly, this legislative approach may not be perfect, but it is better than the EPA's proposal, Mr. Chairman, which leaves way too many opportunities for extreme environmentalists to meddle, to use the courts to come in place throughout the years and impose much more extreme regulations.

I again thank the chairman for his leadership, and I thank the gentleman for introducing the bill.

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