Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. President, biomass energy development is not only a great economic opportunity for Oregon, it is an essential piece of the forest health puzzle. Biomass energy helps create a market and a way to pay for forest thinning and hazardous fuels programs. It is also a way for keeping local timber and wood products mills in business at a time when the industry, like many in the U.S. is going through hard times. Biomass also provides an important renewable energy option for the Nation as a substitute for coal and other fossil fuels. Every region of the country has biomass energy opportunities even if the exact nature of the biomass that would be used varies from region to region. Today, I am joining my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, and a bipartisan group of Senators, in introducing legislation to make sure that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency can, and will, issue regulations under the Clean Air Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act that ensure that the owners of these mills and biomass energy plants can continue to invest in them and maintain and create the jobs that are so badly needed.

Pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations governing boilers and incinerators will make it very difficult for biomass energy to be used in the U.S. To its credit, EPA recognizes this fact and has repeatedly proposed to rewrite those regulations to address the concerns of biomass energy users, the forest products industry, and other industries. The legislation being introduced today is aimed at making sure that EPA can collect the necessary data and reissue its regulations in an orderly process that preserves biomass energy as a national energy option and allows economically hard pressed timber and forest products mills to remain in operation.

On December 7, 2010, EPA, which was under court order to issue new Clean Air Act regulations for boilers and incinerators, filed a request with the Federal Court overseeing the boiler emissions rules asking for a delay in the court-ordered deadline for issuing the rules by 15 months so that EPA could reevaluate its own proposed rules and address the problems raised by the forest products industry and others. However, the Federal judge hearing the case rejected EPA's request and gave EPA just a month to fix the rule. In February 2011, EPA met that deadline, but continuing to recognize the flaws in its regulations, it immediately triggered an administrative process known as reconsideration to allow affected industries to provide more information and for the agency to revise its regulations. In May, EPA agreed with industry comments that the rule needed to be reviewed and it agreed to stay, or delay, the implementation of the existing Clean Air Act rules for boilers and incinerators. Unfortunately, EPA did not issue a stay of a related rule which defines which materials can be burned in those boilers and which need to be burned in incinerators. EPA has now proposed a schedule, which it confirmed in letters to me and several other Senators, to consider additional comments by industry and others and develop new Clean Air Act rules.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. Stays can be lifted by the courts. This legislation would statutorily affirm the EPA's stay of the Clean Air Act rules. And it would affirm EPA's proposal to issue new regulations by a date certain. That date would be 15 months from the date of enactment, the same period of time EPA claimed was necessary to draft a new rule. The goal here, which I believe EPA shares, is to issue Clean Air Act regulations that make sense, not to do away with Clean Air Act regulations for boilers and incinerators.

On the other hand, by not agreeing to make changes to the ``what's a fuel and what's not'' rule, EPA has made it very likely that many widely used boiler fuels can no longer be used, like wood scrap from door and window mills. And some results of the rule make little practical sense. For example, scrap tires that are picked up at a tire shop can continue to be burned as a fuel. Scrap tires that are picked up at a landfill cannot. EPA has indicated that it will try to develop regulatory guidance to help industry navigate the regulatory confusion it has created.

I appreciate the fact that EPA recognizes that there is a problem with the fuel-or-waste rule and that they are offering to try to fix it by issuing regulatory guidance. However, I am not convinced that EPA can fix the problems with the rule by just by issuing guidance. This legislation will direct EPA to establish new rules on what materials can be burned as boiler fuel, and which cannot, and give EPA clear statutory direction on what can be included. This direction limits allowable fuels to a specific list so that there are no surprises or backdoor exceptions. EPA can add to the list only after notice and comment so the public knows what, if any, additions are being made.

This process for defining which fuels can be burned in a boiler and which cannot is very important to me. While it makes sense to continue to allow many materials that the wood products industry and others have used as boiler fuels for generations, I do not think that it's appropriate to simply decide that any fuel that was used in a boiler in the past should be grandfathered in. The provisions in this bill defining what materials can be burned in a boiler ensure that will not be the case. This was a major issue in litigation surrounding earlier versions of these rules and I do not think it is wise to ignore this fact. Congress has the opportunity to try to address the legitimate concerns about what is being burned in these boilers and it should.

Finally, the bill would extend the normal 3 year period for boilers to come into compliance to 5 years. It is my hope that once there a final regulations and industry knows what it has to do that it will not take that long. However, there some 2000 boilers in the U.S. that would all have to upgrade or replace their units all at the same time and coincident with similar rules going into effect for electric utility company boilers. This extra time will mean that there will be no excuse for not meeting the final standards.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source