Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chairman, the Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a $2 billion regulation on the lime industry that the EPA's own staff have found is completely unnecessary to protect public health and welfare.

Lime plants not only supply products essential for the proper function of critical activities concerning construction, but lime also keeps our roadways from breaking down and helps keep our water clean.

As recently as 2020, just 4 years ago, the EPA conducted a full risk assessment of hazardous air pollutants emitted by the lime manufacturing industry. The EPA found that risks from the source category are acceptable, the standards provide an ample margin of safety to protect public health, and more stringent standards are not necessary to prevent an adverse environmental effect. The EPA received no new data or other information during the public comment period that causes us to change that proposed determination. I emphasize that is the EPA's own staff and scientists.

This was published in the Federal Register in July of 2020. What is interesting is that lime is used for pollution control to absorb sulfur oxides, which helps prevent acid rain and reduces emissions of hazardous air pollutants, including mercury.

The only reason the Biden administration's EPA is issuing this expensive and unnecessary rule is because of a 2-1 split decision where the District of Columbia circuit court sided with an environmental group suing to ignore the EPA's scientific findings in favor of their radical climate agenda.

That case said that the EPA must set standards for all unregulated hazardous air pollutants when the agency conducts a technology review under the Clean Air Act. Congress intended that new, additional regulations should be added only if risk assessment demonstrated that risks are not acceptable with an ample margin of safety. Since the EPA has already found that emissions from the lime industry are already acceptable with an ample margin of safety, there is no need for these new, expensive regulations. I urge my colleagues to trust the science and support my amendment.

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Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chair, this amendment would be a step toward returning power back to Congress, where it belongs. Instead of complying with the agenda of radical environmentalists, Congress should reject their efforts to ignore science. I remind my colleagues that the EPA's own scientists said this rule is not necessary.

We have too many unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats making way too many laws in the form of regulations that are doing great harm to Americans struggling to pay their bills, struggling to put food on the table, and struggling to take care of their families.

This lime rule is another example of the fake science that is doing unnecessary harm to our economy and to American households.

I emphasize again, lime plants supply products essential to the proper functioning of critical activities to the national interest, including steel production, road construction, power generation, pollution abatement. As I pointed out, one of the things that my colleague mentioned was mercury. Lime is used to abate mercury in air.

I worked for two international engineering companies, and we built pollution control devices, including devices that use lime to remove sulfur oxides from gases being emitted from production facilities. It is used in drinking water treatment. Lime helps keep our roadways, as I said, from breaking down. Lime helps keep our water clean, and lime improves soil quality.

Unnecessary regulations like the lime rule add to the inflationary burden Americans are currently suffering under. The high price of building a new home, for instance, has placed home ownership out of reach of many Americans, and this lime rule will add to that cost. Funding this regulation would only make the high cost of living crisis worse.

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Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

As I said, having worked for two international engineering companies and in a think tank, I have found during my time in Congress that there is a serious lack of scientific understanding, and we just pass a lot of rules out of Congress that we really have no idea what the impact will be.

We also have, in many cases, a serious math problem. We don't understand how these things add up, pile up the cost of living on American households and the damage that it is doing to them. Right now, we are seeing grocery prices at levels we haven't seen in years. Cumulative inflation the last 3\1/2\ years of the Biden administration has been over 19 percent. Energy costs are up 40 percent. We just keep adding these things to the American people.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to reject the burdensome regulations, reject the radical environmental agenda, and support my amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

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