Boucher: Coal profits supersede environmental concerns

BRISTOL, Va. – In a speech to the Eastern Coal Council Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher vowed to fight for industry on two controversial

environmental measures.
Boucher, D-9th, said he will work to reinstate issuance of Nationwide 21 permits, which allowed a more streamlined permitting process for

surface mining, and will continue to work toward a greenhouse gas bill more favorable to the coal industry and coal-fired utilities.
He said it would be “a horror to our Appalachian regional economy” if the Nationwide 21 permits – which allow for the dumping of mine waste

into streams – are not restored.
“This campaign against surface mining is new, it is led by the more extreme environmental organizations, they clearly have targeted the

Appalachian states, and unfortunately, the administration has responded to that to some extent, I think, inappropriately and … wrongly, and

we’re going to do something about it,” Boucher said during the quarterly meeting of the coal council at the Holiday Inn at Exit 7.
“I am determined to pursue this and make sure that our surface-mining operations can continue in a way that is profitable for the companies

and beneficial for our regional economy.”
Boucher also detailed why he has actively supported the cap-and-trade bill being crafted in Congress to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
He said a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively ended the climate change debate and Congress does not have the political will to

override the ruling – meaning regulation in some form is inevitable. His role, therefore, has been to engage in the process in hopes of

creating a more industry-friendly bill, he said.
“The easy political vote for me would have been to simply vote no,” Boucher said. “I would be a hero at home if I had just simply voted no,

and I was aware of that, but that would’ve been probably the most irresponsible thing I could’ve done; that would not serve your interests

well. This bill was going to pass whether I was part of the process or not.”
Boucher said he has used his seniority and experience in Congress to “effectively rewrite the bill” to provide free allowances of emission

credits to electric utilities, allow utilities to offset emissions rather than reduce them, reduce emission reduction targets and add

funding for carbon capture and storage technologies.
He said the House version of the bill is only a starting point in a process that could go into next year and even past next year’s

congressional election, and he plans to stay part of it.
“At the end of this process we’re going to develop a bill with which the coal industry is comfortable,” Boucher said. “We’re going to do it

to your satisfaction.”
Ultimately, the congressman said, the bill “will open the door to coal’s golden age” with the electrification of transportation – a move he

said will shift America away from dependence on foreign oil in favor of domestically produced coal.
Representatives of utilities Dominion and American Electric Power, both of which burn coal to generate electricity, also spoke at the

meeting, explaining their reasons for supporting the cap-and-trade bill.
Bob Blue, of Dominion, said Boucher has done “a masterful job” of improving the bill.
“Make no mistake, if Congressman Boucher had not been in that position, a bill much less friendly to coal and to the American consumer would

have passed in the house in June,” Blue said.
He added that the power company supports cap-and-trade regulation because it would mean much-needed certainty in U.S. energy policy and

avoidance of “potentially Draconian” regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
He said the free allowances, carbon offsets and money for carbon capture and storage were critical, but he’s hopeful the final bill will

include a more gradual phase-out of allowances and lower emission reduction targets.
Tony Kavanaugh, of AEP, talked about another environmental debate that Boucher was in the thick of years ago – a debate on acid rain that

culminated in the creation of the 1990 Clean Air Act.
At that time, too, Boucher championed cap-and-trade as a market-based mechanism to address an environmental issue – and, then, as now, sat

across the fence from Henry Waxman of California, who sought stricter controls.
Major environmental legislation is again on the horizon, Kavanaugh said, but Waxman needs Boucher’s bloc of votes to get it through

Congress.
“There is a reason why he was able to turn around a number of skeptical CEOs of utility companies,” Kavanaugh said. “The chairman of

Dominion, the chairman of AEP have know him for a long, long time, have dealt with him a long, long time. … Convincing the utility industry

to get behind it, he proved that he could deliver and did deliver for us.”
Responding to questions, Boucher also addressed another hot topic in Congress: health care. He criticized a health care reform policy

championed by the White House that he said has so far been rushed and ill-considered.
“We need to take our time and get it right,” he said, pointing to a five-week process that brought a health care bill to the House floor

despite 100 pending amendments. “If the president really cared about health care, that should’ve come first, not greenhouse gases.”
He said the wrong public health plan could jeopardize the financial viability of hospitals, which depend on private insurance companies for

their bread and butter as they take a loss treating Medicaid patients.
A good health care bill might, for example, create a cooperative owned by policyholders to compete with private insurance companies rather

than institute a government-run insurance policy, he said, adding that any good health care bill must be bipartisan.
“The American public doesn’t understand what we’re doing; people are worried about it,” Boucher said of pending health care legislation.
“We should not have moved the bill out of the committee until our principles were clear, they were understood by the public and we were in a

position to get reasoned responses from the public,” he said. “I voted no for that reason; we just need to take more time.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701